Read Vogue, buy the perfume

So they got Sophie Dahl to do a column on perfume.

A while ago, the husband bought me the book on perfume (called, I think Perfumes) by Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez that covers almost every scent since it was first made commercially available – except my favourite, Jardin Clos by Diptyque – and in the process creates a whole new syntax and vocabulary for describing olfactory moments.

I loved Patrick Suskind’s Perfume when it came out and was amazed that he could sustain his hypnotic descriptiveness of these moments across three hundred pages of historical serial killer suspense.

Anyway, back to Vogue. I’m slightly nervous when I hear Sophie Dahl is going to have her own column. She’s a published writer and the grand-daughter of the granddaddy of them all, but will she actually have the time to write all the words herself? I hope so, because they’re lovely words and I’m enjoying the column and, guess what, it worked, and this kind of one-stage-removed subliminal sales stuff almost never works on me.

She described Cristalle, by Chanel. I wore it when I was in my twenties and doing fun stuff like falling in love and reading a LOT of books. I must have been happy, because the smell of it now makes me supremely content. And I’m smelling it now because when I was out shopping, with my MW cardigan fresh in my bag, I bought a bottle in Liberty.

My Perfumes book gives it five stars – an exceptional, timeless scent – but points out that it can be a bit scary and reminds you of a glorious woman getting up and putting her clothes back on after a night of sublime passion. Not the promise of it, but the suggestion that the woman in question, although perfectly capable of it, has other things to do.

It doesn’t suggest this to me at all, of course, although they’re usually right in that book so I bow to their judgment. To me it suggests writing a children’s novel people are starting to like and shopping with my stepdaughter (we went to Abercrombie & Fitch and she looks jaw-dropping in the results, no surprises there) and finding THE LAST MW CARDIGAN IN LONDON and coming home to the man who buys me surprise dresses when I make enough suitable hints.

I may be wearing it for a while.

The sign of the feather

Matthew Williamson's first show - the cardi

Some things are meant to be.

I blogged here a while ago about my favourite fashion moments. One of them was Matthew Williamson’s first show, when he got his mates to model and they included Jade Jagger and Kate Moss, and he dressed them in rainbow-bright colours with cheeky cardigans and their hair in unusual oversized buns.

I’ll always remember the photos of Kate, hair up, dress v sexy, bright turquoise cardigan v cute, looking like a girl who’d just found a fabulous new best friend in this amazing designer.

So now he does a high street collection for H&M. Something I’m researching at the moment, so taking an interest is actually work, as well as immense pleasure. Despite living in London, I know for a fact that everything will sell out in the first hour to people with sharper elbows than me, and probably big accounts on ebay, so I don’t even bother to go.

But on Saturday, I’m shopping in town with my younger stepdaughter and we happen to be in Oxford Circus and we go into the wrong H&M store (the one that doesn’t do children’s clothes), and there is a rack with about 4 MW items on it – the things that didn’t sell or got returned, I assume.

And one of them is his signature bright pink cardigan, with his signature peacock feather on it. The only one left. In my size. Stepdaughter says buy it, so I buy it. And there it is, in my wardrobe, a piece of fashion memorabilia that I won’t bother to add to the massive number of pieces already marked down for various children in my will, because by then it will be overused, holey, bobbled and unwearable.

It fits, it goes with nearly everything, it’s beautifully made, it wasn’t that expensive and the detailing (dah-ling) is an instant pick-me-up: pink sparkly buttons and tiny beads on the feather, which extends across the upper shoulder.

Clever Matthew. You really can have a dream, and make it, and sell it, and make other people happy with it.

Especially when they don’t have to fork out a fortune on ebay to get their hands on it.