Princess Superstar

So Paris Hilton is in Sydney to promote a new beer. I can't help thinking how Andy Warhol would have loved her. With her vacuous, half-amused stare and her teeny little voice she's the ultimate Warhol Superstar. In fact, Paris could be Warhol reincarnated with real hair, her umm and whatever substituting for his wow. So, give the girl a break. She's not Armageddon in a Vuitton bikini but a work of art. Paris' shopping spree, left, courtesy of the smh.

Cardonnay with the turkey anyone?

I'm having a noice Chrissie in Kath & Kim land, right in the heart of the Mornington Peninsula, Victoria. Luckily, it's cold enough for ugg boots and Cooggi sweaters so that's got the dress code sorted. Feeling a bit wobbly after getting stuck into the Bundy that was supposed to go into Nigella's Iced Rum Cream. But, really, that's enough of me pretending to be Australian. These are not my people.

Listened to The Essential Leonard Cohen all the way down the Hume Highway. Let me share with you my current favourite lyric, from Len's The Future: When they said repent, I wondered what they meant. Might be my slogan for 2007. But I am, as usual, getting ahead of myself.

First, the recipe for Iced Rum Cream, which can be whipped up tonight to go on tomorrow's pudding: Take 300 ml of double cream and whip it until thick. In a separate bowl whip two egg yolks until frothy. Into this beat 2 tablespoons of Golden Syrup and 2 tablespoons of dark rum. Fold the egg mixture into the cream. Freeze overnight. One hour before serving the pudding, take the rum cream out of the freezer and let slightly defrost in the fridge. Throw over pudding with gay abandon. (That's for you, Mark Trevorrow.)

Surf's Up

I live on one of Sydney's most beautiful beaches and look at the ocean from just about every window in my house. I'm married to a surfer. I even once wrote a novel, Two Shanes, about an Australian surfer in New York. But do you think I like waves? Nup. I'm scared of 'em. So it is quite a turn up for the books, as they say, that I was almost tempted to don a little red and yellow cap and join the corps of the Australian voluntary lifesavers last month after interviewing a swag - parade? - of female lifesavers for The Australian Women's Weekly. (2007 marks the centenary of volunteer lifesaving in Australia.) I'm usually a grouch at the beach - hate the sun, the sand in your bathers, the water which is always too cold, down here at least - but this bevy of beach babes made marching up and down the beach with flags, rowing big surf boats and zooming around on jet skis sound kinda fun. Oh well, in another life. A devoted sybarite, I usually don't do anything that involves rotating your shoulder cuffs. "If you go down to the beach today you’re sure of a big surprise. That lantern-jawed, fair-haired, bronzed lifesaver you remember from your childhood is almost as likely these days to be a woman." That's how the article begins. You can read the rest in the January issue of AWW.

What would Jesus do?

...throw all the money-lenders (shoppers) out of the temple (shopping malls) for a start. I am repulsed by retail pornography this Christmas: the tizzy, jingle-jangle smugness of it all. Yeah, we're prosperous, but come Boxing Day, we'll feel about as good as the crumpled pieces of wrapping paper we discarded. What we need usually can't be put in a box with a bow on it. Better, I think, to avoid the whole lot of it and donate to a charity like Medecins Sans Frontiers in the name of family and friends or, if they really insist on having something to unwrap under the Christmas tree, at least give ideas in the form of books or subscriptions to independent magazines like The Monthly. And, if you really must give something in a box, then have a look at Aussie brand Aesop's witty gift packs, such as The Republic of Hedonism, which includes six luscious skin-care products, a facial treatment gift voucher and a copy of Summer in Algiers by Albert Camus.

You know who you are

Milan bans super-skinny fashion models in line with Spain and Brazil... will someone please ban those angry skeletons who pose as fashion editors and stylists now? We know whose fault it is.

Pin Up of the Month

I offer this handsome gentleman as my pin-up of the month. He is Sultan Qaboos Bin Said Al Said of Oman, ruler of Ibadhi Muslim Oman since 1970, when he deposed his father, a rather charmless despot. The good king Qaboos seems to be much-loved by his subjects, although there is some nervousness about who might ascend to the throne when he dies. You see, the Sultan is a confirmed bachelor and, although he married briefly in the 1970s, appears to have no offspring. Rumours abound that he has a son hidden in England, as he was hidden by his father for much of his youth. It's a family tradition, it seems. Oman certainly doesn't suffer from having an "artistic" ruler - the country is art directed to death, with the men obliged to wear long white robes and the women jewelled black burqas. In the capital Muscat, all the buildings must be painted white and can't rise above six stories. Pure Arabian Nights. My story on Oman and the gorgeous new Shangri-La Hotel will appear in Vogue Australia some time in early 2007.

Bigotry du jour

Australians aren't racist? In this morning's news, the town of Tamworth, NSW denies five Sudanese refugee families residency on the grounds that they might induce a "Cronulla-riot-style situation" and another grave injustice is visited on our aboriginal people. In this Australia bigots have the confidence to speak out and the power to act.

Curdled Creme Brule

Yes, I've been silent for a week...jetlag after the Oman trip and the Christmas rush of magazine deadlines before everyone closes down. Well, that's the official excuse. Anyway, I'm putting my head up today to make an observation that struck me last night, while watching Counter Culture, the six-part TV series about global shopping habits, presented by Tyler Brule (or Creme Brule as my husband calls him.) Actually, the series is more about Tyler's profile and Tyler's clever way with knotting scarves than anything deep and meaningful about consumer habits. But listening to his precisely clipped vowels and noting the perfect fit of his pressed jeans, I thought - would someone please mate this guy with Project Runway's Tim Gunn? What a beautiful, sonorous, couple they'd make.

Is this the original size 00?

Here's to the $1 million dress! Let's hope it has gone to a good home and not doomed to a miserable life on Victoria Beckham's bony back. Made me wonder if there were any other cinematic frocks out there worth a Dr.Evil ransom. Suggestions please... Oh, on another note altogether (but somehow weirdly related, although I can't quite work out why) the new series of Australian Princess has begun. Twelve scrubbers in search of a prince. We may laugh, but if it can work for Mary Donaldson it can work for a pig farmer from Victoria. When asked who her favourite princess was, one contestant offered the following: "I like Princess Mary best because she went from a size 14 to a size 8." Aspirational!

China Blue

Yesterday I bought a smart pair of Sportscraft trousers. As with almost anything you buy these days - from Armani to Target - the trousers were made in China. I was in Beijing a year ago and it's impossible not to be struck by the cheap clothes and handbags on sale there in stadium-sized malls that go on as far as the eye can see. It's a sad testament to prosperity that we need all this knock-off stuff and there's no doubt we are trashing the planet in our mad craving for $5 pashminas and $20 Vuitton bags. But last night, a documentary that screened on SBS called China Blue, brought it all home devastatingly. Directed by Micha Peled and filmed clandestinely, the documentary traces the lives of the young village girls - mostly teenagers and many as young as 14 - who are forced to leave their homes to live and work in the factories that produce everything from cheap jeans to luxury items for the big European and American labels.

While the cost of these expensive goods seem to be getting more and more expensive at the retail level in Paris and London, the cost of producing them is getting cheaper - and on the back of considerable human rights abuses. The girls are forced to live 12-to-a-room in dormitories and, homesick for their families, work punishing shifts, which can stretch to 48 hours at a time. (They are poked with sticks and their 8-cents an hour pay is docked radically if they fall asleep.) They rarely see the outside world, let alone have the opportunity to do the sort of thing normal teenage girls do. Workers are paid whenever the boss feels like it (sometimes they go for months without anything.) What's worse, the factories' clients - the American retail chains, the big European labels - only pay lip-service to the conditions of these workers. Time sheets and working conditions are falsified to satisfy the occasional enquiry from a western brand.

Next time you buy any fashions made in China, you might care to remember that the girlhood of hundreds of millions of teenagers has been sacrificed in the production of that trendy jacket you didn't really want anyway and will throw out next season. For God's sake, buy less stuff! And put pressure on the retail chains to only do business with factories that treat their workers in line with Western practises.

Putting it on

I have very fond memories of the Ritz London. Years ago, when I was newby at Vogue Australia, I was sent to London to interview Barbara Cartland, the romance novelist, for her 80th birthday. Vogue didn't have a budget for the Ritz, or anything else much as it turned out, so I was lodged in the Royal Horseguards Hotel, where breakfast was included. Not being able to afford restaurant meals, I hit upon the brilliant idea of making my one other meal of the day aftrenoon tea at the Ritz. For four pounds I could eat as much as I liked in the most glamorous of surroundings - better than a cheap curry in a dismal Indian dive. But things are quite different these days, I believe. Ruth Jones, Director of Sales & Marketing at the Ritz, in Sydney to celebrate the hotel's centenary, tells me that tea costs almost ten times that much these days and that guests need to book up to twelve weeks ahead if they want to dine on weekends. I suspect it's still a bargain, though - especially if the waiters are still as keen to ply you with food. If you're thinking of taking tea at the Ritz you can now book online. Of course, if you're a guest at the hotel, tea tables are reserved for you upon checking in. Which, I suppose, might make it the most expensive cup of tea in London.

Shooting ourselves in the face

The following is the text of my most recent Deeply Superficial column in the (sydney) magazine and the (melbourne) magazine, December issues:

They call it the gift that keeps on lifting. It seems as if the hot stocking-stuffer for Christmas in our enlightened age is a voucher for Botox injections or one of the other non-surgical cosmetic procedures that every second shopfront is offering these days. Daughters give it to their mothers, wives to husbands, girlfriends to girlfriends, apparently. While I haven’t actually met anyone who has done this, I can believe it. After all, the physicians and beauticians who wield the needles have done a darn good job of positioning what they do as a “lifestyle choice,” no different to colouring your hair.

So when New York’s Baron of Botox, Dr. Frederic Brandt, came to Australia on a whirlwind tour to promote his range of skin care products and offered media tarts a complimentary taste of what he does best, I thought about it for a minute. I’ve been holding out for many years. In my humble opinion, by locking ourselves into a lifetime of expensive needles and laser beams we’re shooting ourselves in the foot as much as in the face. Our character lies in our faces. If this society is in denial of age then maybe it’s better to get over it – because a lot of us are getting old - and find beauty in what we have.

But I realise I have been sounding like a Luddite on this subject for quite a while now. So I considered Dr. Brandt’s offer. A friend, experienced in these matters, told me I was mad not to. “He’s the best.” But then my husband, bless him, said ”Don’t you dare.” And I discovered something interesting. While many women are tempted, their men are terrified of it, afraid their wives will get hooked on the stuff and end up like the frozen-faced mummies on E!News, their tender expressions of love and concern obliterated as if they were Stepford Wives. When I showed up at Dr. Brandt’s suite at the Hilton hotel for an interview, a publicist confided that I was not the only journalist whose husband had nixed the idea.

Dr. Brandt in person is an altogether charming man who, as expected, looks like Peter Pan crossed with one of the children from The Sound of Music. He certainly doesn’t look or sound like an evil doctor bent on turning us all into cyborgs. When asked him if what he did was exploitative of his patient’s insecurities, he didn’t mind the question. “I look at it in a positive way. I think if we didn’t care how we looked we wouldn’t cut or colour our hair. Sometimes it’s good to have a little vanity because it makes you feel better about yourself. Obviously, if you’re really insecure you’re still going to feel insecure regardless of what you do. Our job as doctors is to guide people in the right directions and if we can make improvements that are natural then that’s nice. Hopefully we can make people feel better but it’s not a panacea for everything that ails you.”

Dr. Brandt sounds so reasonable, I ask him if I were to consider a procedure, how should I go about it. “Botox is a nice introduction because it has very little recuperation time, you don’t get much swelling or bruising,” he advises. “If you’re new at it only try one procedure at once and not too many areas. See how you like it. If you’re little nervous start with a small amount, you can always come back for more. Complications are rare and it’s reversible.” Naturally, he advises going to a physician not a beauty parlour. Problems can arise from the injections being done incompetently. And you don’t necessarily know what is in the product being injected.

I come away from the meeting unsullied, but with a clutch of Dr. Brandt’s products (available at Mecca Cosmetica nationally), which are designed to use in between procedures or instead of them. “You see these women who have had three facelifts and their skin looks like old skin because they have not taken care of it. You have to maintain health of the skin and texture of the skin,” he warns. And, that of course, includes staying out of the sun. But, he adds, “No cream is going to have the effects of Botox. If they tell you that they’re lying.”