It's a funny old thing, but there is a huge amount of food in the fashion world. It's there everywhere you look - mountains of the stuff at parties, tons of it at the international fashion shows. At John Galliano's fashion-fests for Christian Dior, a set made predominantly from hazelnuts, tangerines, and profiteroles could easily accompany the new season's look. Dolce and Gabbana regularly furnish their showroom with buckets of Turkish delight and honeyed halva; one memorable show of theirs involved a wet-fish stall, complete with cockles and whelks (don't ask). But here's the funny bit: none of it is for eating. It's for looking at, in much the same way as you look at a model - you don't expect to engage her in a discussion of the finer points of the private finance initiative.
At fashion parties - those frequent explosions of lavish grandeur held to celebrate the appearance of a designer perfume, say, or the birth of a pair of tights - the nibbles could really knock you out. At Dolce and Gabbana's parties in Milan, exquisite food is piled in tableau effect, part of the set rather than part of a calorie-controlled diet. There are great steaming bowls of gnocchi, troughs of ravioli, vast vats of fettucine just how mama makes it. There are hectares of carpaccio, great wheels of parmesan, banks of oozing figs and ripe tomatoes on the vine. At one particularly de trop affair, I remember being so overwhelmed by the sheer untouchable gorgeousness of it all that, when I discovered a solitary Werther's Original in my pocket, I seriously contemplated it as an alternative to dinner.
Of course, designers always seek to outclass each other on the canapé front. At one Parisian soirée, you might eat quails' eggs dotted with Beluga caviar and crowned with a shaving of Perigord truffle, served on individual spoons and garnished with baby zucchini carved into the shape of diving carp. At another - possibly on the same night - it might be minuscule portions of conch ceviche on a bed of lime and chilli, drenched in aged balsamic and served in a trumpet fashioned from the re-frozen meltwaters of Arctic glaciers. Or shards of foie gras on Bavarian pumpernickel topped with Armagnac-infused apricots and served to guests by Namibian virgins. And every bit of it, as my mother would say, touched by human hand. But even this wouldn't stop the models who decorated the event sticking to Marlboro Lights.
The idea (peddled by some in the fashion industry) that these girls love their grub is utter nonsense. A six-foot-three, 19-year-old babe simply cannot look fabulous in a size-four camisole, platform heels and a Lurex thong if she's been up all night scoffing kebabs. It just doesn't happen. However, in interviews, models regularly profess a love of fast food - and that you can believe. In fact, they love it twice as much as you or I - once on the way down and once again on the way back up. Look, the last thing that a Kate or Natalia or Andromeda wants is to disrupt the lie of a dress by eating a Whopper with Cheese before a show. She'd look like a snake who'd swallowed a rat. At photographic shoots for glossy mags the £20-a-head lunches - all sun-dried this and drizzled that - invariably end up as dinner for the make-up assistant's Jack Russell.
The people who really do chow down, though, are the British fashion editors. The press often attend 10 shows a day, with hardly a moment to stop for lunch. So, a delve inside their Gucci bags is fabulously revealing. I know one woman who keeps a couple of hard-boiled eggs in her Prada tote, 'just in case'. The Herald Tribune's Suzy Menkes has been known to unveil homely sandwiches and Scotch eggs, eating them at her laptop just before a Chanel show. Of course, the UK fashion editors would have you believe that their bags contain nothing but a bottle of Badoit and a Nars lip pencil. Forget it. I've seen kingsize Snickers, half-eaten sandwiches, Pepperami sticks, ginger nuts - and the sweets! The rustle and bustle that regularly sweeps the British front row at the shows is usually just some generous soul handing round a bag of licorice comfits. And it's always the Brits, never the French or Americans - just as it's always the British holidaymakers who pull over on the autoroute to eat their Tupperware lunches.
My most fascinating food/fashion encounter revealed the great difference between the UK and the US when it comes to eating. It happened several years ago and starred the fabled editor-in-chief of American Vogue. Anna Wintour - built like a cocktail stick and dressed like a canape - had come to London to address a group of women journalists. As interested as the gathering of well-upholstered, poorly dressed hacks were by Wintour's spiel, they were far more curious about what the great woman would do with her knife and fork during lunch. Anna was - and is - tiny, in that New York way which London women rarely achieve. Her bob probably weighs more than her body fat. And then it arrived: Wintour's personal plate, bearing a simple steak and salad leaves. She ate, judiciously and without obvious relish, and a diet was born. Remember, this was years before the low-carb, high-protein method had caught on, years before Geri and Minnie and Hurley and the rest. We women journalists made mental notes: 'no potatoes!', 'no dressing!', as we asked our colleagues to pass the bread basket.
And that is the bitter truth, I'm afraid. The top-flight international fashion industry really doesn't accommodate fat too well. On the whole, the limos, the entrances, the Manolos, the freebies are all geared towards the thin. And that, like it or loathe it, is what fashion is all about. So put down that butter knife, sucker. There are size-six frocks out there to think about. Mimi Spencer is the former fashion editor of the London Evening Standard
What supermodels ate for supper
A potted history of the canapés, the lettuce variants, the meat products and the hard liquor that have made the catwalk crowd what it is
Spring/Summer 1987
What they wore: Power suits
What they ate: Rocket and Parmesan salad, with a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar.
Bitter, chic, willowy leaves, which proved a little tricky to consume standing up backstage at some marvellous after show party or other, and therefore in no way threatened requisite fashion thinness.
Spring/Summer 1990
What they wore: New Age minimalism with optional crystal necklace
What they ate: Anything thin
Carpaccio of beef, flakes of truffle, slivers of darkest chocolate, whispers of angel hair pasta. The rationale, of course, was that eating thin would keep you thin.
Autumn/Winter 1992
What they wore: Hippy chic
What they ate: Sea Breezes
A liquid diet - how fun! After languishing in an anti-fashion no man's land for a good 10 years, the cocktail enjoyed a renaissance in the early Nineties, and the fashion set embraced the vodka, pineapple and cranberry mix as an entirely reasonable alternative to eating.
Spring/Summer 1993
What they wore: Grunge
What they ate: Sushi
It was a packaging issue as much as anything (consider the appeal of the beautifully styled bento box) although the near-negligible fat count helped make sushi the fashion food of the moment. As an added bonus, one had to be equipped with the necessary skills and urbanity to negotiate chopsticks, rendering it elitist food and thus inherently appealing to fashion industry types.
Spring/Summer 1995
What they wore: Lady-like clothes
What they ate: The mineral water cocktail
Austere sobriety was very much the statement of the season. This two-thirds Evian, one-third Vittel combo perfectly complemented the sensibilities of the time.
Autumn/Winter 1996
What they wore: Pashminas - doubled up as a first-class pillow
What they ate: The Jet Lag Diet
Flying from London to Paris via New York and Milan over the course of a single month could, the fashion crowd discovered, mess with your body clock so violently that all thoughts of regular meals fell entirely by the wayside.
Autumn/Winter 1997
What they wore: The new black
What they ate: Marlboro Lights and Diet Coke
An enduring regime, pioneered by Kate Moss and her disciples. Low maintenance and subversively toxic at a time when a burgeoning organic market and BSE concerns were persuading everybody else to be less cavalier about such things.
Autumn/Winter 1998
What they wore: Sexy suits and heels
What they ate: Cocaine
An appetite suppressant that speeds you up and requires you ultimately to check in to Narcotics Anonymous.
Spring/Summer: 2000
What they wore: Skin tight jeans
What they ate: High protein, no carbs
Variations tailored to the specific requirements of different fashion editors did the rounds, but the basic premise was the same: high protein, high-fat foods, no system-slowing bread, rice, pasta or potatoes.
Autumn/Winter 2002
What they're wearing: Designer combats
What they're eating: The botox and Bolly diet
Precise botox-ification of the wrinkle-inclined flesh round a fashion editor's mouth will ensure that she can't open it sufficiently to actually consume solid canapés. She is therefore forced to subsist on champagne alone.
Do you have a table for two size 10s?
In the Sixties it was Chelsea Kitchen, in the Seventies Mr Chow - the concept of the fashionable restaurant is nothing new. You are where you eat...
The concept of a fashionable restaurant may have started in the Thirties when Edward VIII, still Prince of Wales, made Quaglino's (today owned by Conran) the place to be seen. But it was not until the Sixties, when the aristocracy and fashion world mixed, that money and breeding no longer guaranteed a booking. Everyone wanted the new rock star and model crowd. Now, who goes is as important as who cooks. But the fashion crowd are a fickle lot - the latest 'in' place could be 'out' by the end of the season (who remembers the Damien Hirst-designed Pharmacy?)
So how do you spot a fashionable restaurant? It has to be in a fashion capital - London, Milan, Paris or New York. The exception is St Tropez but only when Claudia, Kate, P Diddy and Naomi Campbell are in town and only then if it is the Club 55 or La Voile Rouge beach bars (dress code: big wallet, tiny G-string). The manager must be able to name-drop Madonna (one visit is enough), a Jagger - Jade rates as high as dad Mick these days - and a supermodel (score extra points if pregnant because she might eat); he must also have supplied a takeaway to a celebrity mother in London's private Portland or St John and St Elizabeth hospitals and have a secret hotline and an ex-directory number given to 'special' customers (for special read famous).
Sixties
In 1965 Time magazine dubbed the capital Swinging London, in particular, the King's Road. The Chelsea Drugstore, Greene's (the basement of Mary Quant's shop, Bazaar and named after her husband, Alexander Plunkett Greene, who ran it; frequented by Jean Shrimpton, David Bailey, Terence Stamp and Vidal Sassoon) and the Chelsea Kitchen were the places to be seen. The Drugstore was modelled on Le Drugstore in Paris. 'I was standing in line with Mr Jimi and, man, did he look pretty ill,' sang Mick Jagger about Hendrix at the Chelsea Drugstore in 'You Can't Always Get What You Want'. In the evening everybody ate basic food at clubs - the Speakeasy, Whisky, Cromwellian, Scotch of St James.
Seventies
Elton John's Covent Garden restaurant Friends, Mr Chow in Knightsbridge, San Lorenzo, Beauchamp Place (Peter Sellers, Princess Margaret). The Rainbow Room (now the Roof Garden) on top of Biba in High Street Kensington was very starry. A band played while you ate - Stone the Crows were regulars. Langan's - regulars were Michael Caine, le tout visiting Hollywood, Joan Collins. In 1978, when the kitchen caught fire, founder Peter Langan sprayed the flames with champagne. Nightclubs with food: Tramp and Annabel's.
Eighties
Le Caprice became the canteen for Voguettes and a just-married Diana. It was challenged by a re-vamped Ivy in 1989, not that the owners cared - they ran both places.
In New York two British brothers - Brian and Keith McNally - controlled Manhattan's fashionable crowd (and still do). First with Nell's and then with Odeon.
Nineties
The era of the supermodel, and a Dane held the most fashionable reservations. Mogens Tholstrup, a blond with an It girl on each arm, ran Daphne's in Chelsea. In New York, the restaurant at the Royalton hotel (Tina Brown, then editor of Vanity Fair, and Anna Wintour, editor of American Vogue lunched there each day). In 1997 two restaurants opened for the global fashion set - Nobu in Los Angeles (then London) and Balthazar in Manhattan (another McNally venture ). Now if a restaurant didn't have a secret hotline it simply wasn't hot - New York's Le Cirque even had a secret fax line.
Coming up...
For a few months last year, a Notting Hill restaurant, E & O, was 'the new Ivy'. It had all the right credentials. Nicole Kidman, Sophie Dahl and, of course, Mrs Ritchie dined there. But it failed to knock the Ivy and Nobu off the top slots. After all, if a restaurant will not take bookings for at least six months (Ivy) or can boast a celebrity baby as well as celebrity parents (Boris Becker fathered a child in the broom cupboard at Nobu) it must be fashionable. Mustn't it?
