You’ve got to hand it to the glovemeister
There were a number of puzzling aspects to the late Karl Lagerfeld. For instance, he is said to have owned 150,000 books. he was 85 when he died, so to get through them all he would have had to have read 1,764 books a year, or roughly five books a day, every day, starting from the moment he was born. Even more peculiar were the gloves he always wore, indoors and outdoors, come rain or shine. he tended to favour gloves of the fingerless variety; faced with such a backlog of pages to turn, this was probably wise. Yet they failed to endow him with an aura of bookishness.
Instead, they called to mind Albert Steptoe, the rag-and-bone man played so memorably by Wilfrid Brambell in TV’s Steptoe And Son. Steptoe — invariably derided as ‘ you dirty old man’ by his aspirational son Harold — was a lifelong wearer of fingerless gloves.
Albert would wear his gloves to hold a mug of tea, to eat chicken legs, load his cart, and even, like the great Lagerfeld, to do his darning. In one episode, he took a bath in them. Yet for some reason he never gained the kudos that attached itself to Karl Lagerfeld. Life can be so unfair.
Personally, I have never managed to keep my hands on a pair of gloves, fingerless or fingerful, for more than 24 hours. Of all garments, they are easily the most losable.
One minute they are there; the next, they are gone. It is almost as though there were a worldwide conspiracy of gloves, nipping away when their owners’ backs are turned, as fast as their fingers can carry them.
Last year, I walked the length of the Thames. every mile or so, I would pass a single lost glove, planted on a stile or a fence, looking lost and forlorn, presumably placed there by a concerned passer-by.
What are all these single gloves doing there, on the banks of the Thames? The late Michael Jackson was well-known for wearing single gloves. Presumably, he had to order them in pairs, and then get rid of the one he didn’t need.
Could it be that the worldrenowned singer would take time off to walk — or moonwalk — up and down the Thames, dipping into his sack of unwanted lefthand gloves, then distributing them at regular intervals in the puddles and hedgerows? It seems unlikely, until you remember that Jackson was a friend of Uri Geller, who lived on the Thames in the village of Sonning, which is, incidentally, also home to the footballer Glenn hoddle and the Prime Minister, Theresa May.
Hoddle was always a midfielder, so had no need for gloves. Mrs May can sometimes be spotted in gloves as she emerges from the church in Sonning on a frosty Sunday, but I’ve noticed she always makes a point of wearing two at a time, which suggests she has never received Michael Jackson’s hand-me-downs. Long gloves were once an essential part of a woman’s wardrobe. But those days are gone. I have a copy of Debrett’s Guide To etiquette And Modern Manners from the early Eighties. Under the heading ‘Gloves’, it advises: ‘Once the sign of a well-bred lady, gloves have become optional accessories, largely reverting to their original purpose of keeping hands warm.’ abandoned Men, too, gloves. have Cars still have glove compartments, but there are no driving gloves to put in that dare not speak them: it its is name. the glove Of course, oven gloves, joined in the middle, can come in very handy in the kitchen, but look out of place when worn to a society ball or hollywood premiere.
WITH the deaths of Jackson and now Lagerfeld, the great days of the glove are over. Madonna used to wear black lacy gloves from time to time, but people don’t talk about her any more, and can’t even be bothered to check if she still wears gloves or not.
From now on, the most famous gloves in the world must be Sooty and Sweep, though their careers, like Madonna’s, seem to be on the wane. Perhaps they might consider joining forces in a double act, with Madonna taking to the stage wearing Sooty on one hand, and Sweep on the other.