Getting Dressed – Nicky Haslam
Rajah, mod, cowboy, rebel… the ever-changing styles of Nicky Haslam
I hadn’t seen Nicky Haslam for decades when I met him at a small drinks party a few years ago. For some reason (actually, he never needs a reason), he was dressed as a Taliban fighter. I remember asking what the Arabic writing on his trainers said and he told me it was ‘F*** the system’. Only a couple of months after that, I bumped into him in the street in London and he looked the epitome of the perfect English gent, dressed in an immaculate tweed suit.
I’d known him in the early Sixties when he claims to have invented the Mod style favoured by the Beatles, and the truth is that Haslam has redesigned himself more times than a cat has lives: first, the eager art student at Eton winning all the prizes; next, painterly ambitions – abandoned in favour of a job as the young assistant on the beauty pages of Vogue, knowing everyone who was anyone in Swinging London.
After that, he reappeared as the assistant art director of Vogue in New York, where he had gone for a ten-day holiday with David Bailey, Jean Shrimpton and the late Vogue editor Clare Rendlesham, but was recruited by the magazine and stayed for ten years (and soon got to know everyone who was anyone there, including Marilyn Monroe and – this truly amazes me – Kerensky, the man who helped start the first Russian Revolution in 1917.)
Next thing, he was off with his boyfriend of the time, to breed horses on a ranch in Colorado (‘Who hasn’t wanted to be a cowboy at some time in their life?’) where he wore chaps and Stetsons, as well as fringed shirts and trousers in suede that had been chewed by Indian squaws to make it soft as cloth. (I know... I am only repeating what he told me.)
Then he was in Los Angeles working with film producer Dominick Dunne ( The Boys in the Band) and getting to know the stars – his very first interior design project was for Natalie Wood’s house. And then, in 1972, he was back in London, not just as an interior designer but the interior designer. His client list reads like Who’s Who: the Heseltines, the Lloyd Webbers, Rod Stewart, Bryan Ferry, Charles Saatchi and many, many others, including oligarch Roman Abramovich. Haslam runs his business from his flat in Cromwell Road (‘Opposite the hospital – I am not stupid’); he also designs furniture for his friend Annabel Astor, boss of the furniture company OKA (and mother of Samantha Cameron), and writes witty articles for various magazines, including The Oldie. Most people of 78 might consider all this enough to be getting along with, but Haslam has branched out into a whole new career – as a cabaret artist, and has been singing the songs of Cole Porter and other golden oldies to full houses at The Pheasantry in Chelsea. Hannah Rothschild used him as the model for Barty, one of the central characters in her wonderfully entertaining novel about the art world, The Improbability of Love. She has also made a film about him: Hi Society: The Wonderful World of Nicky Haslam – and he seems to turn up in every documentary about the international glitterati, showbiz or design. Haslam revels in it all – and never holds a grudge. ‘Life is too long for that,’ he says and, though he lives and works in a milieu known for its bitchiness, he is universally liked. ‘He knows everyone’, says a friend, ‘and he is nice to them all and everyone adores him.’ One of Haslam’s endearing characteristics is that he is open about everything: his facelift, done in 1999, was ‘the best thing I ever did’. His tummy tuck, which reduced his waist from 38 inches to 32, was ‘better than the best diet’. As for his chin-lift, ‘It didn’t cost that much and took only half an hour under local anaesthetic – miraculous!’
I felt like rushing off to his surgeon and having everything done in one go.
His hair is cut by Derek Hutchins of Me (in Abingdon Road, London) – ‘A genius – everybody ought to go to him.’ He buys his clothes from Primark or from his tailor, Hanish Patel, who comes to his house.
Haslam smokes like a chimney (appropriately, Vogue cigarettes) and is fit and slim – ‘Have you noticed how obesity became a problem when people stopped smoking?’ He lives off junk food – ‘My last meal would be a sandwich of cheese slices in buttered, sliced Wonderloaf, that bread that you can see your toothmarks in when you have taken a bite.’
Haslam’s first foray into society, long ago, was to a Chelsea Arts Ball – ‘I dressed as Valentino in a film called The Young Rajah: naked except for a loincloth and miles of pearls – do you remember those pop-it pearls? I dyed my body brown and my hair black. It looked amazing.’
He has looked amazing ever since.