Grace tips an extraordinary hat to capital’s arts culture

GRACE JONES lived up to her maverick reputation by wearing a foliage-style headdress to the premiere of a documentary about her life — and declared that London is the “heartbeat of artistry”.

The model, singer and actress brought BFI Southbank to a standstill as she showed off the creation by milliner

Philip Treacy before heading into a special screening of Grace

Jones: Bloodlight

And Bami, by

Sophie Fiennes.

She reve aled that her outfit for last night’s event was a tribute to her late mother Marjorie. She said: “I just buried my mum a week ago, so I said to

Philip, I need a kind of mourning, but not mourning outfit so I didn’t have to show my eyes because I have been crying a lot. My mum loved to dress up, so this is for her. I’ve got a lot of mixed emotions. It’s a strange time for the film to be coming together.”

Jones, 69, also paid tribute to the capital, saying: “There are a lot of amazing artists here — the heartbeat of artistry is here.”

She said her best memories of London were from nightclub Heaven in Charing Cross — rather than slapping chatshow host Russell Harty on live TV in 1981. She said: “I played at the Heaven club, the big gay club, a long time ago. They just let me be myself.

“That was the most outrageous memory. To just be myself. I know you want me to talk about Russell Harty, but that wasn’t really my biggest memory!”

Speaking about the rise of social media and the effect of the internet on the arts, the Jamaican star told the Standard: “You can have internet, one hundred million tweets, views, this, that, but how do you go forward? I believe performance is the key.”