ALEXANDRA SHULMAN'S NOTEBOOK: I’m a party expert: here are my do’s and don’ts
After 25 years hosting parties at Vogue, I reckon I’m something of an expert on party etiquette - both for guests and hosts.
Although Vogue parties aren’t exactly like having friends over for a drink and a sausage on a stick, the issues are surprisingly similar, and bad manners are bad manners wherever they are.
Here are a few of my top do’s and don’ts for anyone giving, or going to, a festive party.
Hosts
- Dress codes are ghastly - why make people wear something they don’t necessarily look good in and will probably never wear again. PS: Fancy dress is totally unacceptable.
- Never seat couples next to each other at the table unless you are in America, where, for some reason, the practice is common. It amazes me how often people do this for weddings. Who wants to sit next to the person they are sharing the car ride with?
- Allow people to bring a plus-one - but perhaps not their mother. Leonardo DiCaprio once brought his mum to a Bafta dinner, but not everyone is Leonardo DiCaprio
- Don’t apologise to your guests for anything - let them assume everything is just as it should be.
- Remember that young people don’t drink wine they inconveniently love cocktails.
- Don’t fret about the food as no one remembers what they ate if they had a good time. Although Daylesford Organic founder Carole Bamford’s ‘caviar and carols’ party is an exception because even the grandest guests are like pigs at the trough when it comes to caviar.
Alexandra Shulman gives a few of her top do’s and don’ts for anyone giving, or going to, a festive party
Leonardo DiCaprio once brought his mum to a Bafta dinner, but not everyone is Leonardo DiCaprio
After 25 years hosting parties at Vogue, I reckon I’m something of an expert on party etiquette - both for guests and hosts writes Alexandra Shulman
Guests
- Never accept an invitation to an event you know you’ll want to skip when the day arrives. Nigella Lawson refers to this as the ‘distant elephant’, the obligation that lurks in the mind and gets larger as the day comes closer.
- Don’t ask who else is invited.
- Never involve the host in your transport issues.
- Don’t bring flowers. No host wants to scramble around for a vase.
- Never fiddle with the seating plan that the host has spent hours working out. Recently, I sat next to a man who wasn’t supposed to be in that chair. He had switched the seating because he didn’t want to be opposite someone whose wife he’d had an affair with. Understandable to a degree, but before learning the circumstances, I thought the person meant to be next to me had moved to avoid me.
- Make a French exit and just slip away. Hosts don’t need to know you are leaving, and when they have just got around to being able to relax, they don’t want to start saying goodbyes.
- Don’t sit in a corner with your best friend.
Forget furoshiki – just fix the potholes!
Our local council, Brent, in North London, has given residents an A-Z guide to Christmas recycling.
Bows and ribbons, apparently, can’t be recycled and should be kept for next year; metallic mince pie cases and sweet wrappers should be scrunched into a ball to be put into the bin heading for landfill; and we should think about adopting the Japanese practice of furoshiki – using fabric, rather than paper, for wrapping gifts (Stock Image)
This is the same lot who once sent someone round to advise me that if I thought I had too much food for the recycling caddy, I should consider using old cheese to make a quiche rather than chucking it out. In that light, I was intrigued to see their latest advice.
Bows and ribbons, apparently, can’t be recycled and should be kept for next year; metallic mince pie cases and sweet wrappers should be scrunched into a ball to be put into the bin heading for landfill; and we should think about adopting the Japanese practice of furoshiki – using fabric, rather than paper, for wrapping gifts.
Personally, I’d rather the council did something about the terrible state of the pavements.
Figures aren’t Clive’s specialist subject
Lame excuse of the week: Clive Myrie, the BBC newsreader and Mastermind host, who is clearly an intelligent guy, claims that he muddled up the paperwork as the reason he didn’t declare more than £150,000 of freelance speaking fees. With those earnings, on top of the £310,000-a-year he gets from licence-payers, he can surely afford an accountant.
Would Gregg say I’m middle-aged?
When Gregg Wallace claimed it was only ‘a handful of middle-class women of a certain age’ who objected to his distasteful behaviour, I wondered if I qualified.
Gregg Wallace claimed it was only ‘a handful of middle-class women of a certain age’ who objected to his behaviour
Middle-class, yes, but am I middle-aged? What’s the cut-off point when you become elderly rather than middle-aged?
And did he consider that Gen Z, who we all know are the most censorious generation ever, would give him a free pass?
Brilliant Eddie, the baby-faced assassin
Thinking of age, it’s not only policemen who are looking younger, but assassins.
Eddie Redmayne, brilliant as the killer in The Day Of The Jackal, looks like a fresh-faced undergraduate compared to how I remembered Edward Fox in the same role. Eddie is 42 but Fox was only 36. At the time, though, when I was a teenager, Fox seemed nearly ancient.
The show goes on – without canny Anna
Judging by the reviews, it sounds as if the musical The Devil Wears Prada has fallen into the usual trap that anything based on the fashion industry falls into. They’re almost always a bad caricature and never convey anything like the glamour of the real thing.
To support Elton John, who wrote the score, Anna Wintour was at the first night, wearing Prada, but sensibly slipped away before watching the show. No one knows better than her that it’s all about the optics.
Will the last shopper turn out the lights?
Oxford Street used to be the high point of London’s Christmas lights. But now the big money is on Bond Street where the spectacular decorations outside stores such as Dior, Cartier, Louis Vuitton and Brunello Cucinelli cause traffic to grind to a standstill because of crowds taking selfies.
But is anyone going inside to shop? Well, not so much.
