Apparently Female Founders Are the New Influencers. I’m Still Trying to Find a Boat.

View this post on the web at [link removed] I have a new partnership developing with a company called Wendover Art. Exciting. They are based near Tampa; getting there from Harbour Island looked wonderfully straightforward. A hop, a skip and a jump. Arrive on Monday at lunchtime, ready for meetings. Unfortunately, the hop required a boat, the skip required Western Air, and the jump depended on making a connecting flight. At 6.15 in the morning, standing in the dark at the dock, I discovered we had fallen at the first hurdle. No boat. It is hurricane season, when there are very few people on the island and consequently very few ways of getting off it. Eventually, a boat materialised. At the airport, however, my Western Air flight was delayed. No reason was offered. We were simply invited to develop patience. I missed my Breeze flight to Tampa. By the time I arrived, I could have been in London. Possibly through immigration and halfway through a cup of tea. Thankfully, the next two days made up for the journey. Wendover is an extraordinary operation, and I’m particularly excited about the possibility of working with Friedman Brothers, now part of the group. Founded in 1903 by two brothers who emigrated from England, Friedman Brothers is renowned for beautifully crafted mirrors, intricate wood carving and traditional gold-leaf finishes. Over a century of making rooms look rather grand. Then New York, where I went to see my wonderful friend Maury. I met Maury when I first moved there in my early twenties. He was a hairdresser with stories. Proper stories. Roller-skating around studios in the sixties. He went with his friend Elizabeth Taylor to a fat farm in Florida (his words, not mine) where they nicknamed their bungalow “Butterfield Ate”. He became Felix’s godfather. Hello magazine covered the christening: lots of pictures of smiling godparents. Maury took a copy of it back to his dentist. “See,” he said, “my teeth look great.” He has been working for years on a book called A Brush with Fame, an excellent title for a hairdresser who knew everyone, and saw everything. He is now very ill with cancer of the spine and confined to bed. When I tapped on his door and walked in, he woke up. “My God,” he said. “Am I on the plane? Are we about to land?” After a lifetime of travelling, Maury has decided that this prolonged period in bed could only mean a very long flight. We both laughed. “God, I hope I am in first class,” he said. I had lunch with my publisher and editor. Sounds grand, considering I write fluffy books on folding napkins. They came with the news that the book is selling well. That makes me happy as every word was written by me. No robots employed in the making. The book has now been launched in London, Paris and New York, with San Francisco, Connecticut, Atlanta and Toronto still to come. Toronto is particularly special because my friend Sean hosts me and I buy ridiculous stocking stuffers from his store Teatro Verde, which is filled to the brim with tiny treasures and irresistible trinkets. You can barely move without knocking something over or deciding you need it. Sean once shared his merchandising secret: put whatever won’t sell in a cupboard and leave it slightly open. Inevitably, someone asks to look inside; explain it’s only for very special customers. Then reluctantly allow a tiny peep. Nothing makes something more desirable than being told it’s reserved for a select few. Even when it’s the clutter you haven’t been able to sell. (Pop down to the Sugar Mill this Christmas; we’ll allow you a tiny peep in our cupboard.) So, Canadian friends, please join me at the Hazelton Hotel November 10th [ [link removed] ]. (Click that link for more info) One question keeps cropping up at my book talks: what should you bring your hostess? Apparently, flowers are a shit idea…they require her to find a vase at precisely the moment she’s trying to find everyone a drink. Send them the day before and she may feel obliged to display an arrangement she privately loathes. My friend Nina settled it: “Don’t bring flowers. Don’t bring candles. Bring jokes.” No vase required. Just decent timing. I also had tea with Tina Brown, in a fancy hotel. Her Substack is so sharp and assured that I confessed to feeling a little embarrassed about mine, which tends to drift from one thing to another without necessarily arriving at a firm position. When I told her this, she said, “Don’t be silly, everyone wants a reprieve from the hard news and opinions.” (Have you seen my niece Angelica Hicks’s ‘Get Ready with the New White House Press Secretary’ on Instagram [ [link removed] ]?! Nobody get their knickers in a twist, it’s comedy, not a manifesto.) I asked Tina about the midterms; she asked me about Ukraine (don’t get me started). Then we went upstairs to see my cousin Daisy Knatchbull, who was on about day 2000 of traveling round the US with her brand KNATCHBULL [ [link removed] ], encountering David Cameron looking slightly lost in the hotel lift. Three Brits in a lift in New York. Nina would probably have known what joke to bring. I read recently that female founders are the new influencers. Someone has clearly met Tina and Daisy. Then on to London to host the launch of TWP, owned and founded by my friend Andrew Rosen, whose appalling table manners get a mention in my new book. His business instincts are, thankfully, rather more refined. Through a fortunate combination of a client and a friends-and-family rate, I found myself staying in the Chancery Rosewood, somewhere so luxurious that your butler starts a WhatsApp group for your needs. Shortly before leaving for my TWP [ [link removed] ]event, I realised I wanted ribbon to wrap the book I was taking as a gift for our host. Jo was doing my hair and makeup. “I’m going to test the WhatsApp,” I told her, before typing: “I desperately need ribbon before 5 p.m.” I looked up. “Gosh. Do I sound like a diva?” “Not at all,” said Jo. “You’re not asking for a body bag, a lawyer and an alibi.” The TWP event, at the beautiful new store on Bruton Street, was packed with interesting people, followed by dinner in another friend’s perfectly proportioned restaurant to cosily seat 35 guests, with the pleasure of seeing fresh eggs in a basket on the bar and cigarettes on silver trays. Small, old-fashioned details. The sort of things I remember long after I have forgotten what I ate. Somewhere in all of this, my new Pomegranate collection launched. We filmed it around the countryside where I grew up, which I wrote about in my last post, along with one afternoon as my mother lay dying, when she pointed to a small picture of Britwell House on the wall beside her bed and asked me to take it down. It was the beginning of the last thing we would do together. In that post, there was a little thank-you to my paid subscribers, whose support means so much to me: 15% off the new collection until Friday night. If you’d like this gift too, simply subscribe. And finally, a weekend with my beautiful daughter, home from Madrid. The simple happiness of just being with her felt extraordinary. And of course, my mother, lying peacefully close by in the soft green church graveyard, quiet but for the birdsong. I also spent time with her. How much it meant to have them both close that weekend. Unsubscribe [link removed]?