Alexandra Shulman’s Notebook
stay at home – and in most cases we did. We formed our own little hubs, shrank our lives, took up making elderflower cordial and inhaled box sets. Grandparents missed their grandchildren, parents missed their own parents but we consoled ourselves with the thought that all this wouldn’t last for ever. And it hasn’t. Next week, shops are reopening, certain school year groups are back, grandchildren are now allowed in the garden. But are we all jumping at these opportunities? Not with the alacrity you might expect. Stockholm syndrome is driven by a potent combination of fear, trust and acceptance. After nearly three months of having our independence denied, there is a very real temptation to succumb to helplessness; to prefer the more mindless enclosure of lockdown to the burden of having to make deliberate risk-reward calculations as to what our own next steps might be. It’s not helped by the fact that the information we are given to base our choices on often leaves us feeling as if we’re entering a hall of mirrors – with a different distortion depending on who you listen to. Face masks, for example – only a few weeks ago dismissed as pointless – will soon be mandatory on public t ransport. The NHS contact- tracing app we were promised as a worldbeating solution seems to have gone AWOL with no widely agreed ‘ up- andrunning’ date. Knowing how much we don’t know and how little our
Government appears to know, certainly encourages us to be fearful. But ultimately we all have to grab the opportunities to move away from the stagnation of lockdown if we want our future lives to flourish.
A cosmetic fairy tale I couldn’t make up
WHEN I first met make-up artist Charlotte Tilbury about 20 years ago, I would have considered her one of the very last people to build a $ 1 billion business. So far, so wrong since her eponymous makeup line has just been sold to a big conglomerate, netting her personally in the region of £500 million.
Not bad f or a party- l oving, creamy-skinned redhead brought up between an English boarding school and Happy Valley- style Ibiza, where her parents Lance and Patsy would house- sit for stars such as everyone’s favourite cad actor Terry-Thomas. Scattering ‘darlings’ in her breathy voice, crystals dangling in her bosomy cleavage and staggering around in maxi dresses and platform shoes, Charlotte could easily have been mistaken for the archetypal hippydippy chick. Certainly she didn’t look like the formidable businesswomen she has turned out to be.
Her success began with her deft way with the contour brush on fashion shoots but was helped by her gregarious and chatty personality.
Campy and gushing but funny and ready with a dash of high-class gossip, she was never daunted by the famous faces she was touching up.
And, in the Noughties, as Ibiza and its small sister island Formentera became the summer playgrounds of the famous and wealthy, her insider knowledge of the scene there, where she still spent weekends and holidays, became as sought after as her way with a cat’s eye flick.
The Ibiza factor paid off. When she told friends, sharing the dawn speedboat home after a night of island partying, of her dream of launching a company selling moviestar glamour in a jar, many of them became the vital early investors willing to give a helping hand to their guide to the Balearic beat.
Now she’s sold to the Spanish fragrance and fashion group Puig in a mega-bucks deal, they’ll have every reason to celebrate too.
Those hairy hipsters are facing the chop
MEN in their 20s and 30s often choose to go unshaven. These beards are denser than designer stubble but less than the whole ZZ Top. Think Bradley Cooper with a dash of Jesus as a template.
But this yen for facial hair could be about to change. I guarantee that nothing will have them rushing back to the Gillette than discovering that during lockdown thousands of oldies have adopted the style and are emerging from confinement like a nation of grizzled Captain Birds Eyes. After all, no guy wants to discover they’ve started to look just like their dad.
How did I manage to waste the lockdown?
WHAT’S happened t o all t hat time we were going to have over these past weeks? How come I’ve achieved so little? The plans for knitting, jigsaws, photo albums, deep-cleaning have been a dismal non-starter. All I am going to have to show for it is so much homemade chicken stock that the freezer is about to give up.
Cold comfort of a miserable summer
THERE’S something reassuring about our British weather returning to the old normal. Drizzle and cardies – how cosily familiar. At least that’s something we can rely upon.