Life and times

Telegraph head of fashion and style Lisa Armstrong

SHE’S WAITING expectantly on the other end of the line – the friendly journalism student who’s just uttered the words of doom. ‘What’s the funniest thing that’s happened in your career?’

Why is this question always so hard to answer? It’s not that funny never happens in fashion – Zoolander was practically cinéma-vérité. But so much is context-dependent, so every anecdote requires two pages of exposition.

‘Shall we move on?’ I suggest. ‘Most embarrassing moment?’ she asks. This one is easy. The time I interviewed Alexander Mcqueen, who could be a bit scary, and discovered later the tape was blank. These days I never turn up with fewer than two recording devices.

‘Your job looks very glamorous,’ she continues. I’m about to begin a homily about hard work, accuracy etc, but stop myself. Hell, it is one of the more glamorous ways to make money.

And the travel. As you read this I’ll be in Paris, Milan or possibly Seoul – the tentacles of fashion have erupted everywhere. Let’s hope North Korea is one day in a position to host a fashion week that welcomes international journalists.

In January, I was in Berlin to meet Dorothee Schumacher, founder of one of Germany’s biggest fashion houses. I hadn’t been since I was a student working part-time as a tour guide taking Americans around Europe. My mapreading was diabolical but, in 1985, even I couldn’t miss the Wall. Checkpoint Charlie was alsations and armed guards a gogo. Mcqueen should have seemed a doddle after that.

ON THAT 1985 JOURNEY we went on to Munich, where a local guide booked to take us round Dachau concentration camp decided she wouldn’t. ‘I bet your group is full of Jews…’ she began. On the train back to Calais I sat opposite some elderly Germans and wondered… Thirty years ago, the country’s past seemed too present so I stayed away.

Today, Berlin is the opposite of its old self. The drab eastern section is the most fashionable area, and the city has gone to great lengths confronting its past.

By the way: no indiscreet gynaecological conversations in the back of a taxi, or launching into your theories about German society (after 24 hours in the place). The driver will quickly correct you in immaculate English. I’m sure it’s well intentioned, but hello, haven’t they watched The Lives of Others, set in Honecker’s GDR and the most haunting film ever, about life in a totalitarian state where everyone spies on each other?

SPEAKING OF WHICH, hilarity and alarm in the office last week when I was served with a £400 council fine for flytipping a DFS sofa on a high street I’ve never been to. The incriminating item was a carrier bag addressed to me at the Telegraph offices, found lying near the sofa. Who knows how it got there? My advice: remove all names and addresses from anything you recycle. Or give bags to my friend’s 11-year-old son, who’s discovered there’s a roaring trade in used carriers on ebay. He got £40 for a Balenciaga – a snip compared with Waltham Forest Council’s strategy, but not bad.

The irony is that until The Letter, I was worried I might be turning into Lynda Snell. I’m usually the one picking up litter. Plus, I’m on first-name terms with the man at Brent Council responsible for chopping down so many trees in the borough, though I think we’re about to fall out. In London alone, councils have removed 50,000 trees in five years. Many won’t be replanted. My erstwhile pal says, ‘There’s no money.’

What? Our rates haven’t gone down. I’ve taken to photographing all the stumps as I prepare my damning dossier. What was it I said about glamour?

Funny things do happen in fashion – the film Zoolander was practically cinéma-vérité