SIGNATURE WALK: When striding the globe was just not enough.

 

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Introduction

Why learn to walk before you can run? Sometimes you want to get where you wish to be faster than the traffic will allow and walking can slow you down. If you can and are confident enough, start with a flourish, a bang then wait for the dust to settle. You’ll soon realise what path and pace is for you and for how long. Also to follow something like fashion is valiant, commendable. It’s good to have a leader. Sometimes leading nobody but yourself is good too. It’s trailblazing. However, following with no leader is just a whole bunch of lost. 

 

 

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Chapter 1 Throwback Thursday’s Child

Throwback Thursday’s Child

 

Elaine had a signature walk. Constance admired it. She watched old YouTube footage, any footage and every video of the supermodel, now retired, that she could get her eyes on. In fact… so consumed by the statuesque catwalk cover girl was she that she went to great lengths to emulate her in almost every way.  

Elaine was one of a breed of fashion freaks, the too-elegant-for-everyday-life breed of model that clustered around the very few others like her and they resembled exotic and unreachable blossoms at the top of the fashion industry tree. The sprawling, tangled and timeless tree that has its seductive roots firmly planted in the hopes, dreams and neurosis of the world’s young girls and its splendidly ornate, lustrous, leafy branches giving shade to the fortunes of vain, amoral, asexual and greedy old men desperate to avoid the truth of the everyday sun. Elaine’s fan, Constance, couldn’t know what weeds of fresh hell were taking route in the very path she had no idea she was about to tread. 

Constance looked backwards for her sartorial inspiration to the decades that held Elaine still for the covers of Italian, French, American and British Vogue and all the vague fashion tomes of the wide world of print and editorial spreads; the seventies, eighties and nineteen-nineties. Every day was ‘Throwback Thursday’ and every shoe was Jimmy Choo. She combed Chelsea charity shops for donated Paul Smith stripey everything and Vivienne Westwood’s tight, tartan anything. She scoured second hand rails in Carnaby Street for the freakiest Thierry Mugler faux bondage cut-away cat suits and lost her mind in Primrose Hill’s vintage boutiques trawling for Hervé Léger bandage dresses. Constance was unlike her namby pamby friends. Constance was committed and focused and achieved whatever she set out to do as did her two dimensional idol, Elaine. Her clotheshorse crush who knew English royals and beach-partied on Mustique with Princess Margaret and Mick Jagger; who hula- hooped backstage at Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee with Grace Jones. The one-woman fashion institution at home on the slopes of Vale Colorado with Cher or walking her dogs in Central Park with Liz Taylor. Elaine, the glossy faced seventies vampire of the night who partied with Divine at Studio 54 shimmering like fire in Bob Mackie’s revealing form-hugging, sequined, full-length body nets. The wild, unpredictable, hot-headed showgirl with powder-ringed nostrils who gave hand jobs to naked Puerto Rican men entwined on Studio’s decadent celebrity sofas. Elaine’s life was legend and a powerful vision. Against all odds Constance believed in her own vision, even if it was a mirrored one. But mirrors grow dark and reflections tell lies.

 So Elaine had a signature walk and Constance? Well, she forged it. In Elaine’s day and at the height of her career she was called the ‘Countess of the Catwalk’ by fashion press and another similar name, spelled without one particular vowel, by her rivals and detractors. She was also known as ‘The Walk’. She favoured her right hip when she sashayed and the slight unbalanced strut brought an unexpected looseness to her eagerly anticipated passes down the catwalks at Fashion Weeks around the globe. Constance adopted the walk as best she could and it worked for her. There had been enough time passed since Elaine’s heyday that Constance’s tribute to the mannequin star, her version of the model’s walk, played nicely into her own catwalk persona. Favouring her right hip, emphasising a leading thrust with it, her dropped shoulders and loose arms flounced along just behind the theatre of her pelvis. This theatrical pre-ambulation with its exaggerated backwards lean combined with her impassive face bouncing slightly from side to side atop her long neck, was garnering pet names for her in the industry that were making it out to the world at large via the tabloid press. Constance was well liked by all the top designers and known to powerful magazine editors as ‘The Lean Machine’. American Vogue’s Anna Wintour coined this play on words in her magazine which the press quickly latched onto and a new star was born. To the French, being known for their paring back on excess, Constance was simply hailed as ‘La Machine’. Now five years into her supermodel persona she was draped and wrapped in the rarest and most expensive of haute couture materials and styled into multitudes of fashion confections and jewelled to the top of her throat. On the catwalks and in her edgy editorial spreads she struck those desirable balances between high-class hookers, film stars, multi-millionaire daddies’ daughters, wealthy Ambassadors’ socialite wives and high octane Ru Paul-styled big blonde drag queens. Nobody wore those clothes, jewels and hair in earnest. It was dress-up, make-believe, but she was really a model so she went to work with honesty.

Hookers were hired, lying opportunities of un-judgmental sex. Film stars really only existed when paid to pretend to be other people. Spoilt daughters of wealthy men were good-little-girl lies. Ambassadors’ wives, paragons of political and social politeness, consistently swallowed elite guff with fake open smiles like daddies’ daughters swallow black market slimming pills and free Champagne. And big blonde Ru Paul was a little black man. The only things they all wore for real were high priced heels. But models, they were booked to pose, walk and occasionally talk. But really?  Really they were paid to be blank canvases on which to paint. They were living dolls to dress. They were easy girls to crush, mannequins to be murdered. Yet theirs was perhaps the most honest of professions.

Off the pages, away from the cameras and catwalks, Constance was just her own off-duty Throwback Thursday’s child, a vintage boutique & thrift store version of Elaine. She dressed and styled herself just as she had when she signed in 2010 as the first model to London’s new BlackBOOKS  Models Inc.

 

          

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Chapter 2 Thrown Back to The Beginning

Thrown Back to The Beginning

 

“I woke up catching flies.” Constance gasped breathlessly falling through the door into Ange Watson’s bijou stylist boutique Yawoma nestled in Spare Mews just off the Earls Court Road in West London. It wasn’t any distance from Constance’s shared two-bedroom flat only two blocks away on Nevern Square. This was a flat that she found with one of the first friends she made in the city when she went to work at Harrods on the sixth floor in The Perfumery Hall. Nancy was an American Ivy League art major who had been back and forth between her doctor father’s apartment in New York and being chased with hammers in various squats and lodgings in London. Constance had walked away from her childhood friends and school mates in pursuit of a big city life and Nancy had flown away from an earlier marriage to a clubber who overdosed and she bagged a job with her American accent and size eight body in the famous department store selling up-and-coming designer gear to Arabs, Europeans, Japanese, Russians and Americans like herself. The two girls didn’t need Rimmel to get the ‘London Look’. They ran for double deckers in sharp kitten heels and had their pencil skirts groped on the Piccadilly Line. They lived the London Life.

“Flies? Strewth! Sleeping nude again were you, in this heatwave with your windows wide open?” chuckled Ange, an Australian make-up artist who augmented her career with a talent for cutting hair and sourcing retired designer clothes from London’s many second hand shops. Yawoma’s one-stop-all-under-one-roof offerings was a boon to Constance once her free daytimes, before she took the Harrods job, were handed over to spraying tourists and white wine ladies with Coco Mademoiselle. Ange had left a voicemail earlier that Saturday morning telling Constance that she’d just got some Versace blouses with louder than loud palm frond and polka-a-dot prints in through her door and onto her rails. Constance had woken late and the flies she alluded to were big-assed blue bottles that were crawling over a half-eaten aluminium container of chicken chunk curry and pilaf rice from Star, the Middle Eastern take way on Earls Court Road. Two evenings before, on a Thursday, Constance received a text from Ange as she was finishing her aromatic work in The Perfumery saying that two pair of Versace baroque print leggings with her name on them was fresh in stock. When Constance arrived to see these marvels there was a woman there with a camera, Melissa Buchanan. She was an ample and well-proportioned woman of about fifty years of age wearing gold shiny heels and a chunky faux gold statement necklace above a plump cleavage. Those are the three things that stood out to Constance. She claimed she was a scout, the only scout for the new modelling agency that she had just formed, BlackBOOKS. Constance was scouted as she strode through the door to Yawoma at six-forty-five PM in her trendy tight black skirt and white blouse ‘work uniform’.

“I’d really like to do some test shoots with you.” the woman stated as she viewed Constance’s body in sections, “I’m back up from Brighton this weekend. How about we meet here at Ange’s on Saturday?”

Ange stepped in to make the introductions as she could see that Constance was already wrong footed and looking distinctly awkward. Afterwards the two women spoke easier.

“Test shots?” Constance repeated to Melissa.

“Yeah, I think we should look at putting a book together, unless you are already signed to an agency. Are you?”

“Um…no. I work in The Perfumery Hall at Harrods.”

“Ha!” the model scout let out a big deep laugh, “Kid, what are you doing there? You’re wasted there.”

“I like it, it’s good fun and we have a wild time at Harrods.” Constance protested slightly.

“Oh hun,” Melissa sprang back, “I know all about the wild times, hidden rooms, secret walk-in cupboards and the sexy goings on at Harrods but I think with your proportions and height that you’d have a good chance in the fashion industry.”

“Really?” Constance asked wide-eyed, the memory scent of The Perfumery already fading away in her workplace mind.

“Ha!” Melissa’s laugh rumbled again, “Yeah, I do.”

“You know I think she’s right.” Ange agreed as she approached the two ladies in the front of Yawoma with the Versace leggings. “All I know Constance is that whenever I walk into that perfumery my head swims from all the clashing aromas and I get an instant headache. I couldn’t work like that and I don’t know how you do it.”

“True,” concurred Melissa, “and what I hear is that half of the girls in that perfumery hall are part-time hookers.”

“What about the men who work there?” rounded Constance locking disbelieving eyes on the model scout.

“Full-time rent boys.” Melissa replied flatly. The three ladies began to talk agreeably about the leggings Ange laid out on a rectangular, rustic, wooden table top.

“What’s your personal dress style?” Melissa began now dissecting Constance’s work clothes with her photographic eye.

“Stuff like this. I really like the excess of the nineties, the euro-trash of the time.” Constance smiled as she ran her hands slowly and reverently over the stretchy Versace garments before her.

“Yeah,” Melissa chuckled lowly, “It was a wild time for fashion and for the sex-filled, rent-boy crammed secret cupboards in Harrods too I bet!” she added wickedly, “But you know, we could have some fun with you in the look of this era. Believe it or not, looking back is the new looking forward, it’s edgy.”

Both Ange and Melissa nodded their heads approvingly at the idea, the budding concept for a shoot.

“What do you think of her hair Mel?” Ange asked thoughtfully. She finger played with Constance’s long loose curling dark blonde tresses.

“Too Elaine,” Melissa was quick to observe, “Some things from that time are played-out and best left with Cindy’s mole and Turlington’s boxy nostrils. Hell, even Naomi has wigs from back in the day that she’d rather wear as epaulettes on her jackets than put on her head now. Sort her out with a Wintour bob cut why don’t you Ange?”  

It was the new bob, another look borrowed from another fashion icon and Melissa’s pictures with Ange’s styling that brought Constance firmly to the first signing to BlackBOOKS and to the attentions of her hero designers. She was lucky. She was the sell-out cover of that Autumn’s British Vogue, poorly paid but highly exposing and ‘BACK IS THE NEW FORWARD’ read the matte gold words positioned by her left cheek (but it was really her right as the image was reversed). Inside she posed in an editorial spread, a nineties homage shot in the Morgan Stanley Investment Brokers city offices as well as a two page spread with a bottle of Chanel No. 5. The fees for latter spread, the perfume campaign, would keep her in chunky chicken curry and covered in flies for the remainder of the year and into the next if she never booked another job. Her new career took her straight back into The Perfumery Hall in Harrods where her print ad was placed high above the Chanel counter for the following six months.

The day she sheepishly returned to meet Nancy for lunch and visit her old work colleagues, backs were turned on her by the black skirted, overly scented females. The so called rent boys Melissa referred to the male staff as tried to do everything for her perfume and scented lotions needs short of carrying her hand bag. Harrods’ Head of Security, a sexy middle-aged Scottish redhead man that had always eyed her up at the staff entrance, who she secretly fancied, invited her to his offices in the basement to ‘catch-up’. He sat on the edge of his desk in front of her chair and openly displayed his continued enthusiasm for her; the length of his fully engorged manhood, its contour straining underneath soft quality pinstripe fabric of his suit trousers. 

 

At nineteen she had little knowledge of men, only boys and boys who cut a swathe through the fridge of flat four at Nevern Square. They’d arrive hungry, horny and broke with maybe one bottle of cheap white wine. Nancy’s boys were much the same. More often than not their boys would bunch up and take over the flatscreen to watch football fixtures that would last for a whole Saturday afternoon. They never had money but mysteriously have enough cash for cans of Oranjeboom, the Dutch lager and for hashish. When the game and its post-game highlights would run their monotonous course the lads would roll out in the evening to one of the local pubs in like the Australian male-heavy Prince of Teck pub. They would leave Constance and Nancy wondering what just happened; hungover, crappy, piss hard-on morning sex, all day football, an emptied fridge and a trash can and a carpet full of empty larger cans.

 

Five years later the girls would struggle to remember most of the boys’ names. There was ‘Pipe’, one blond boy Constance recalled because he smoked tobacco in a pipe that he thought, along with his horned rimmed glasses, made him look beyond his age. It was his father’s pipe and that pipe was beyond the actual age of the boy who smoked it.  There was another ‘Pipe’, a builder that followed Nancy to her door one evening after work at Harrods who was remembered as Pipe simply because he had a long, wide, cock and an empty mind. However, Constance, now celebrated, famous and wealthy, would remember Harrods Head of Security. The tenacious, amorous, Eamon Logan. The user.  

  Eamon Logan, the pin stripe, suit wearing Head of Security stood quickly and straightened his suit jacket as he caught a look of insult in Constance’s eyes. His display was wrong-footed and he immediately realised his error. That sort of lewd seduction worked on the hundreds of young gay boys and closeted young straight men that comprised a huge chunk of the shop’s workforce both on the shop floor and in the myriad of unseen tunnels linking the stockrooms underneath the iconic building. Constance was caught in his predatory stare as her eyes followed his as he rose to his feet.

“Are you free for lunch?” he asked and smiled his slow, knowing and most charming smile.

“Actually, yes, I am.” she stood up square to him and smiled back.  Now, five years later as she reflected on that inappropriate posturing by Eamon Logan, she remembered the name of the boy who smoked his father’s pipe, Ian. It was Ian. That afternoon five years ago when Constance finally exchanged more than a smile with Harrods Head of Security she also remembered forgetting her lunch date with her roommate but that’s what living in big girl city and her new model fame meant then.

 

Eamon Logan and Constance walked out onto Basil Street through the Harrods staff entrance. She had a pang of separation anxiety knowing that she no longer held her heady job in the cloying aromas of The Perfumery and this, almost secret entrance, was a thing of the past. Harrods staff were not allowed to arrive to or leave the building, this bastion to upscale retail life, when on duty through any other public door.  The pair stepped into a bright London summer’s day. Knightsbridge was working as it always did; the pavements as busy as the lorry and black cab clogged streets.

They walked along chatting easily about two things; Eamon Logan answering Constance’s questions about gossip at her old work place and Constance answering his questions about her life in the ‘erotic world’ of modelling. Well, erotic in Eamon Logan’s expectations.

“What’s it like now for you?” he asked her as he guided them along the shop’s massive exterior. Black cabs one after the other were depositing parties of Arab female shoppers to the quiet back doors along Basil Street. As they rounded the corner they could see up towards the side entrances. They were teaming with less discreet foreign tourists in their bright T-shirts, golf shirts, sun hats, khaki shorts and polyester trousers. They were the ugly side of the shop. The day trippers that descended on Harrods throughout the English summer to squeeze through the doors to lay waste to shelves and displays of the less expensive items; teddy bears, biscuit tins and T-shirts with the ‘Harrods Green’ and gold logo emblazoned on them.

“What’s it like for me?” Constance answered back with a question.

“Yes, your new career. I must say I was taken aback when I saw your picture looming above the Chanel counter in The Perfumery. It was then that I realised I hadn’t seen you coming and going through the staff entrance for a few weeks.”

“Yes, well. It’s all happened rather fast. One minute I’m off home from a Thursday’s shift and by the Saturday I was doing test shoots and by the following Wednesday I was the first model signed to a whole new agency, BlackBOOKS. Mad really.”

“And when did the Chanel advert come about?”

“I guess I heard they wanted to meet me about two weeks after I signed to BlackBOOKS.”

“And they flew you to Paris?”

“Heavens no, nothing as glamorous as that Mr. Logan!” she gasped, “I was asked to a lunch meeting at Mr. Chow, right here in Knightsbridge.”

“Wonderful, Simon Cowell eats there so that’s where we’re headed then. Mr. Chow and please call me Eamon if you don’t mind my calling you Constance?” he proffered gently taking her elbow and pulling her closer in to his side to avoid her colliding with three extremely large Belgian ladies. They were eating up most of the wide pavement walking abreast of each other. They had cameras hanging off their bodies. They wore shiny white stretch trousers, trainers, pastel-coloured T-shirts and were carrying huge canvas handbags.

‘They’re either going to decimate The Harrods Food Hall,’ he thought, ‘or steal it. Either way, I’m off duty.’

“Of course you can call me Constance if you’d like, Eamon.” she assured the Head of Security and they disappeared into the crush of the touristy, shopping-mad, Knightsbridge pavements. 

 

 

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Chapter 3 Mr. Chow Knightsbridge; Dining on Deception

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Chapter 4 Harrods & Harvey Nicks

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Chapter 5 Arriving in Paris

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Chapter 6 Walking For McQueen

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Chapter 7 Mean Models & Saviours

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Chapter 8 La Coupole

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Chapter 9 The Great Elaine; Supermodel

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Chapter 10 Même Chose; French Model

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Chapter 11 The Walk to Die For

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Chapter 12 Linda Case-Broughton

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Chapter 13 Curenevaca, Mexico

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Chapter 14 The Sherry-Netherland Hotel

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Chapter 15 Cast Iron New York Models

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Chapter 16 Amble Turner-Jones

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Chapter 17 Catwalk Pretty New York City

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Chapter 18 The Stolen Mac Brush

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Chapter 19 Laurent’s Confliction: He? She?

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Chapter 20 Sports Illustrated: Miami

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Chapter 21 The Delano Hotel, Miami

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Chapter 22 East Tenth Street: The Candy Store

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Chapter 23 Killing Manhattan

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Chapter 24 Seventeenth Precinct

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Chapter 25 Gramercy Park Hotel

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Chapter 26 Interpol Inspector Capacious Trou

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Chapter 27 Soviet Spy

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Chapter 28 Pack of Lies

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Chapter 29 Night Ride in Central Park

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Chapter 30 Virgin Uniques to London

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Chapter 31 Nancy & The River Café, West London

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Chapter 32 Laurent Trần

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Chapter 33 Yawoma Sphere-Muse

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Chapter 34 Harrods Village

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Chapter 35 The Pictures

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Chapter 36 Walking Yawoma for Naomi Campbell

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Chapter 37 Debut Diva

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Chapter 38 Vicious in Versace!

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Chapter 39 The Dead Face of Fashion

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Chapter 40 Elaine Was in Her Cups

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Chapter 41 Double Dutch

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Epilogue: How Can I Be Sure?

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About The Author

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