“Never miss a party… good for the nerves – like celery”
F Scott Fitzgerald
It is overcast and chilly on the evening I sit down to write, yet on the streets around the house, what sounds like a fin-de-siècle party is just kicking off. The strains of Ella Fitzgerald float on the air, mingling with shouts of laughter, clinking glasses and the scent of roasting meat, flowers and cigarettes.
I may live in north London, rather than West Egg, but nevertheless I feel the spirit of Jay Gatsby is abroad. And whereas, in my pre-pandemic life, I would probably have slammed the window shut, muttering about the neighbours’ lack of consideration, now I lean out and take deep, wistful breaths, thrilled at the novelty of experiencing a little FOMO. “Never miss a party… good for the nerves – like celery,” F Scott Fitzgerald declared, and now I see how right he was.
There has been much speculation about how the pandemic will permanently change our society. Not least because after a year of sedulously avoiding one another, wearing masks and sanitising every surface, who will feel comfortable partying in close proximity ever again? No wonder many have turned their backs on cities in favour of rural serenity and space, swapping Balenciaga for Barbour, and high heels for sturdy wellies.
But the lessons of history are all the other way. According to the contemporary writer Boccaccio, wild hedonism gripped survivors of the 14th century’s plague outbreak. “They spent day and night moving from one tavern to the next, drinking without mode or measure… engaging only in those activities that gave them pleasure”. And almost exactly a century ago, society was reeling from the devastating impact of the First World War, followed by the even more devastating Spanish Flu epidemic that killed 50 million people – most of them young – around the world. Yet the decade that followed was a byword for lavish spending and an explosion of creativity and social change.
So will the 2020s roar like the Jazz Age? Certainly there seems little of the anticipated reluctance to re-enter society. On the first day we were legally permitted to meet (in groups of six, outside), I took a stroll in the park and found a crowd of Woodstock proportions, carefully distanced, picnicking, drinking, playing games and dancing, the air thrumming with their happy chatter. Now that restaurants and bars have been allowed to reopen, the socially distanced tables are seething with happy and self-indulgent diners, who had the foresight to telephone the instant the lines were opened. “The aperitif is back, our Horse’s Neck Martini is basically ordered by everyone on arrival,” says Will Woodhams, CEO at The Fitzdares Club. “The most exciting aspect we have seen is the return of the long lunch. On reopening the terrace this week, every single table stayed till 6pm from a 1pm start. It’s wonderful to watch.”
At The Dorchester - the location of the 2021 British Luxury Awards - executive chef Mario Perera tells me there were more than 2,000 booking requests within the week of the hotel’s announcement of the launch of The Dorchester Rooftop. “We have definitely seen a rise in guests ordering champagne to mark the return to hospitality,” he continues. In a similar vein, a spokesperson for Claridge’s – a favoured hotspot of the Bright Young Things who flocked there to embrace life and luxury in the 1920s – says there were “waiting lists for all our terraces, bars and restaurants, and there is a true feeling of people wanting to treat themselves with delicious food and drink while reuniting with their friends and family making up for lost celebrations.” At the River Café, there is no getting a table for months, even if its owner Ruth Rogers herself lobbies to get you a spot on the restaurant’s Thames-side terrace, as I know to my cost.
The fashion shows are often eerily prescient, and though planned long in advance, the same spirit of hedonism has been visible in the most directional brands. Chanel’s autumn/winter 2021 show was an ode to the joys of hitting the town in your glad rags. It featured models heading into a Parisian nightclub, Castel, and getting dressed up in disco-inspired party wear to strut a glittering catwalk. “I don’t know if this is because of the times we live in, but I wanted something warm, lively,” the designer Virginie Viard said in her show notes. “I imagined the models doing a show for themselves, going from room to room, crossing each other on staircases, piling their coats up in the cloakroom and going up to the next floor to get changed.”
The latest Gucci collection, Aria, was also set in a nightclub, this time at The Savoy hotel – a nod to the house’s founder, Guccio Gucci, who worked there as a bellhop. This featured models sashaying down a catwalk exploding with flashbulbs, clad in unashamedly glamorous, logo-bespattered outfits; while at Celine, a show set amid the gilded fountains and manicured lawns of Vaux-le-Vicomte incorporated a firework display and models in outsize glittering crinolines.
Michael Kors celebrated his 40th anniversary show with a tribute to the stars of Broadway and a look forward to the time when we will be able to applaud a sellout show in real life. The trend for unapologetic glamour reached its apogee at Lanvin, where, to the soundtrack of Gwen Stefani’s Rich Girl, a group of models partied together at Paris’s Shangri-La Hotel in fake fur and feathers, velvets, sequins and sumptuous gem-coloured silks. Nary an elasticated waist in sight.
I have passed through the same trajectory, on a personal level, over the past year. At first, swapping trousers for a tracksuit and high heeled boots for slippers seemed a consoling response to a terrifying situation; gradually, they began to symbolise the shapeless dreariness of lockdown, and eventually I found myself getting dressed up to stay at home.
My high heels, which had been relegated to the depths of the wardrobe, reasserted themselves in the front row, just because they are so much nicer to look at. At work, I now dress as for a party, deeming a polka-dot sequinned net Michael Kors skirt and Rupert Sanderson heels just the thing for a humdrum Thursday in the office. But then, a Thursday in the office isn’t routine any more – it’s a thrill all of its own.
Male colleagues are finding that getting back into a suit is both a mental sharpener and a, perhaps unwelcome, reality check. At bespoke tailor Thom Sweeney in Old Burlington Street, they’re rushed off their feet by customers who’ve just put a suit on for the first time and realised that not everything has stayed in limbo over the past year. As one of the in-house tailors says, “some have had a fitness drive and dropped two sizes, others have let things go a bit and gone up two sizes, no one seems to have just kept stable.” My husband claims that returning to the formality of a suit after a year in shirtsleeves has had the surprising effect of sharpening up his ideas as well as his silhouette. And that return to smartness has led to a mini boom for Savile Row. Lest we forget, Jay Gatsby was the epitome of a flashy dresser – sporting a white suit, silver shirt and gold tie to his own parties. Nothing under the radar there.
If we’re entertaining at home, we still feel the desire to do it in style. Even an evening in is an excuse for a sartorial and gastronomic flourish these days. So last night I had friends round for an outdoor supper, and, having got in the habit of ordering seafood straight from Cornwall, I spoiled my guests with lobster, and served it to them wearing a Brunello Cucinelli ball skirt and a vintage navy blue mink jacket. Because… why not? No wonder that top of Net-A-Porter’s bestsellers is a £26,000 pair of rubellite, diamond and sapphire earrings by Martin Katz. After all, a year in which none of us could take our accustomed holidays, eat in restaurants or stroll to the shops has meant that in the UK we’ve accumulated extra savings of £100bn and a burning wish to spend them on having the best time possible.
In France, the Roaring Twenties were known as Les Années Folles, the Crazy Years. And it certainly feels as though we’re bouncing out of a year of extreme fear and suffering with the appetite for 365 days of fun. For our time on this Earth is short and, as Coco Chanel said, “We live but once; you might as well be amusing.”
Sasha Slater is head of magazines at The Telegraph.
