Ballgowns Opens

Sonnet's Ballgowns goes off with a bang Tuesday evening at the red-carpet opening gala and we are surrounded by the Great and the good. Also Russians and long legs but who's looking?  I bring the kids and Kamila and Stan who is with us for the week.  By coincidence, the Queen is in Richmond Park and drives by our house - the kids off from school to see her and play in the make-shift wonder-land complete with helter skelter. I can only think of Monty Python.

Ballgowns includes 60 British evening designs from the V and A's collection: Victor Stiebel, Zandra Rhodes, Jonathan Saunders, Alexandre McQueen ... Ralph and Russo, who I chat with by another Beyonce bespoke.  Most famously displayed : Diana's 'Elvis Dress' by Catherine Walker.  My favorite : a beautiful latex fetish by Japanese designers Atsuko Kudo who is (of  course) married to an Englishman. Sonnet has been scrambling around giving interviews with the FT, Style and the Guardian and appearing on the BBC.  Martin Roth, the Museum Director, makes a speech and the show's sponsor, Coutts bank CEO Alexander Clausen, tells us "glamour is growth industry."  The kids are appropriately impressed, and I let Madeleine walk about with my camera and, accordingly, get a bunch of shots of shoes and mid-riffs. One forgets a kids' perspective.

But perspective, indeed. The exhibition opens in the newly renovated Fashion Gallery and it all sparkles.  As Kamila notes: "The Queen and this - I cannot believe my day".  And I must agree with her : surrounded by friends , family and colleagues : Sonnet does us proud.