Design by Kinder Aggugini

Lena Horne crashed my computer. Whenever I travel I take a half a tab of Unisom, a little blue miracle pill sold over the counter, to help me sleep. It works like a charm but gives you funny dreams. So I woke up my first morning in London with an inexplicable urge to hear Lena Horne and Eddie Anderson sing “Life’s Full O’ Consequence” from Cabin in the Sky, which I guess I was watching in my sleep. Five years ago, maybe even three, this would have been impossible. Now you just type a few words into YouTube and suddenly it’s 1943 and you are hanging out with Lena and Eddie. Unfortunately my computer, running off the battery, died with the last verse on the song.

But no worries! I’m in England (and very happy that it’s not 1943) and who wants to sit in a hotel room watching videos anyway? Especially since I am supposed to be here looking at fashion shows. (If I am going to goof off, I should at least go outside.) Actually, this season I am really soaking up whatever charms the runways collectively offer. After an exhausting New York Fashion Week I have come to London to do virtually the same thing — only this time without a whole closet full of clothes to pick from every morning and the comfort of “Beverly Hills 90210” reruns on Soapnet (the original, not the horrible new show) at the end of the day. And after this I am going to Paris, where the television is annoyingly in French and God knows what, if anything, I’ll get invited to. But who’s complaining? As Miranda Priestly put it, really, who wouldn’t want to be us?

Kinder Aggugini

Design by Kinder Aggugini

I convince myself that it is better for me, better for my work even, to soak up the local atmosphere than to rush immediately to the catwalks. So I go to a tiny, not very interesting antiques show at the Park Lane Hotel which is ok, since the day before I spent the entire afternoon at the Portobello Road flea market, where I headed practically straight from the airport. In the process I missed the Kinder Aggugini fashion show, a presentation my colleagues said was very me. (When pressed they characterized it as “sort of Malice in Wonderland.”)

Who says I don’t live a charmed life? I am walking from the Park Lane to Selfridges because: 1) it is open Sunday and 2) I think I need to investigate the atmosphere of a department store for my writing, no? And then suddenly I pass an outdoor café where none other than the designer Kinder Aggugini himself and his entourage are enjoying the fine weather. They recognize me, persuade me to join them, and 20 minutes later I am in Kinder’s pop-up shop viewing the collection he showed on the runway yesterday. Kinder, who wears his hair in a slight pompadour and has a charmingly acerbic edge, says the collection is meant to represent the “dark moment in a fairy tale.” And what do the racks hold? Only a riot of polka dots, a gaggle of silvery tutus, a jacket based on a deconstructed child’s blazer, a naughty Red Riding Hood frock, and other extravaganzas.

My friends are right — not only do I love them. I would gladly pop them on and wear them to the grocery store.

PHOTO CREDIT: Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty Images