Richard Dennen: Besotted with my Blitz Kid

10 April 2012

There's a definite pecking order in the tents of Somerset House during London Fashion Week.

It's taken me a couple of years of hard graft to establish my seating rights and while not yet a celebrated fashion personality, I am a de facto second-row one — though I haven't been back to Issa since two seasons ago I was asked to move to make room for Pippa Middleton. So this season I decided to concentrate more on parties.

Thursday night saw my flatmate Willa breaking me out of Notting Hill and an hour into south London to an art exhibition about Jimi Hendrix. It turns out we don't know anyone in south London.

On Friday I went to the PPQ show after-party. The first person I bumped into was a brief ex, who when we went out wore black leggings, had purple hair, and wore a burnt plastic doll around his neck. He described himself as a "Blitz Kid" in the mould of the 1980s London club made famous by Steve Strange. When I turned up for dinner with friends with him in tow they fell about laughing. And have done pretty much ever since.

I've been on the hunt for him for two years, since he came home with me and left the next morning with a Philip Treacy top hat that Issie Blow had given me a few months before she died. I chased him across Westminster Bridge but he slipped into the night.

But on Saturday I was far from the maddening Fashion Week crowd and at a 21st birthday party near Peterborough — at the house Daphne du Maurier based Manderley on — when my cousin from LA called. She was in Florence holed up with a dealer in her suite in a hotel on the Tornabuoni.

I looked around the marquee I was in. The theme of the party was "food" and a ketchup bottle was in a deep embrace with a banana. My cousin called me again, she was getting insistent and every few minutes put down the phone to have another line.
She'd picked up a waiter from the restaurant she'd had dinner at that night and needed me to
get her the morning-after pill — you have to fill out forms in Italy she said.

By 5am I was in the queue for the Ryanair flight to Pisa and my phone started buzzing, the Blitz kid was replying to a facebook message and could we meet up? But I got distracted as security pulled me to one side for questioning. Why, they enquired, was I dressed as a carrot?

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in