Alexandra Shulman’s Notebook
Claudia, the TV queen of glitter – and the dark arts
IDON’T get the appeal of The Traitors, the newest TV sensation. But then I didn’t get Love Island, so it’s lucky that I’m not in charge of commissioning programmes. However, I am transfixed by Claudia Winkleman and so for her alone I am dipping in to watch.
She’s surely the only host on TV who can get away with wearing fingerless gloves and jeggings. Winkleman has brilliantly created her unstoppable CW persona. Many
famous people have developed a trademark style – for example, Anna Wintour, the late Queen and Grayson Perry. Winkleman’s is dense, orange skin and a fringe that conceals any wrinkles as effectively as a balaclava.
Who knew such a look would work? But not only has Winkleman constructed this appearance and managed to look rather wonderful (helped by black hair as smooth and shiny as an oil slick) but she happily admits to the deliberate creation of a recognisable style. Not for her the trap of people suspecting that she might be manufactured and not in reality just like she appears on TV. Indeed, she’s the first to admit to it.
She knows a good line is always worth repeating. So we learn in every interview that as a youngster she had no mirrors and her only ambition is to have grandchildren.
Additionally, although she’s a Cambridge graduate and like many of us a nepo baby (with her mother the equally fabulous ex-newspaper editor Eve Pollard), she attracts none of the envious vitriol often attached to such personalities.
With her warm, democratic Hampstead voice that veers between posh and matey, she seamlessly scoops up all the gigs from the glitter of Strictly to the steely mistress of the dark arts in The Traitors and, until recently, a long-running chatty BBC2 radio show, to become the Queen of Reality TV and one of the most wellpaid women in broadcasting.
I don’t know Winkleman despite running in similar worlds, and though I once sent her a copy of a book I had written, it was never acknowledged. Still, who am I to bear a grudge?
Long may she reign.
Baby boomer world’s going bust
IT’S scarcely credible but the youngest baby boomers were born 60 years ago. So here we are now with some of my generation heading towards 80 having benefited from free university education, low mortgage rates, reasonable pensions and relative peace. In theory, we’ve accrued something to hand on to the next generation when we shuffle off.
When this handover happens, it should change the housing landscape as a generation of young people stuck in a rental trap find themselves able to buy property with their inheritance. That is unless we baby boomers live for so long, it’s all spent on old age care.
Even so, there’s no guarantee that the next generation will spend this redistributed money in the same ways their parents have done.
For, the property scene aside, there is evidence they will choose not to invest in hefty possessions such as art, jewellery and furniture and, instead, splash out on three holidays a year on the ski slopes and islands in the Indian Ocean. Perhaps they will buy property, but not in this country. Even the richest boomers are likely to find their wealth used in different ways.
The new edition of the renowned The Art Newspaper claims that museums and institutions substantially funded by the philanthropic model can no longer rely on the next generation of wealth for support. Whereas arts and culture were often second on the list of priorities for very rich boomers, they’ve been substantially downgraded by their heirs. Naming rights in a national gallery no longer has its appeal.
Most of us are not among the 1,000 boomer billionaires who’ll hand £4trillion to their children in the next two decades but even so our combined wealth is likely to make the world look a different place in 30 years when most of it will have changed hands.
The secret behind Camila’s allure
LIKE many, I was wooed by the persuasive charisma of Kids Company founder Camila Batmanghelidjh. When I edited Vogue, we got involved with a couple of initiatives in support of her charity and I have no regrets.
There was an amateurishness about the operation but, ultimately, on the basis that some children, rather than no children, were helped, the scales tipped to positive rather than negative, even though in later years there were accusations about mishandled funds.
I do wonder though whether Camila would have attracted so many supporters if she had dressed more conventionally, in the kind of clothes that middle-aged women of her undoubtedly substantial size are likely to wear.
With her colourful, patterned robes and turbans, she cut exactly the figure many Establishment folk like to support. Somebody a bit exotic – (are we allowed to use that adjective now?) – and adventurous. Had she appeared in a floral dress and blazer, I doubt she would have had the same allure.
Ringing the changes with another gizmo
NEW year, new fitness gizmo. This time an Oura ring, a gift from my son which promises to tell me much about how my body is behaving – sleep patterns, heart rate, paces etc.
My record with fit tech is spotty. I still have a beautiful Apple Watch in its box with limited edition Hermes leather strap that never made it on to my wrist. And I always think heart monitors give wrong readings, so remove them.
Last year, like many others, I subscribed to the Zoe app which is meant to improve energy levels and also to possibly lose weight. I religiously logged meals and checked my personalised eating scores, learning that in my case cheese is the devil and lentils are angelic – surprise, surprise.
But it felt like doing Veganuary, urging me to a fat-lowering diet of spinach and chickpeas which I already knew.
So Zoe’s gone the way of all such improvement apps, to be replaced by the wisdom of the Oura ring. Watch this space.
Let a tree brighten a home in summer too
IT’S the sad season of Christmas tree dumping. They sprawl, denuded of their lovely lights and baubles, having left houses bare for another year. How about a summer tree idea that can add similar sparkle to our homes?