Is there an uglier garment than the £49.50 Marks and Sparks swimsuit burkini? This voluminous garment might appear modest on dry land, but – as Nigella Lawson demonstrated a couple of years back by emerging from the Sydney surf in a full length black version, cleverly foiling the papparazzi – once wet, the swimsuit burkini can make the wearer resemble a badly stuffed sausage.
Like other crimes against fashion – the poncho, mid-calf length culottes, stretch denim jeans and prissy pie-crust frilled blouses – the burkini bathing costume offers nothing except acres of coverage.
It’s hardly a compliment-magnet, far from it, but there’s a good reason why high-profile international designers like Dolce & Gabbana are offering shapeless clothing which covers the flesh in costly fabrics (they’ve launched a range of Islamic robes and veils) and why Marks & Spencer, alongside their latest trendy Alexa Chung range, are making burkinis: it’s cash, nothing more or less.
The international Muslim clothing market is said to be worth billions annually and you only have to step inside the M&S flagship store at Marble Arch in London to see queues of burka-wearing customers spending thousands of pounds every five minutes.
In France, the trend to exploit this market is seen as unpatriotic and has attracted much hostile comment. The Minister for Families has claimed that fans of the burkini and designers who pander to it are "like negroes who support slavery", adding, "when brands invest in this Islamic garment market they are shirking their responsibilities …and promoting women’s bodies being locked up". Fighting talk – and Pierre Bergé, who as Yves St Laurent’s business partner built a global empire, was equally dismissive, announcing, "we must teach Muslim women to revolt, to take their clothes off, to learn to live like most of the women in the rest of the world".
The French government has passed laws protecting their secular state by banning the headscarf (and other clothing which denotes religious affiliations) in schools and the wearing of the full veil, the niqab, in public. Both decisions have been upheld by EU courts, although there are few prosecutions. In a recent poll, more than 85 per cent of the French public supported the laws.
Nevertheless, the number of women wearing the veil in France and in the UK grows every year. For many, it is not merely an expression of their religion (though the Koran simply advocates that women dress modestly) but their right as feminists to wear whatever they want. Reluctantly, I have to accept this, although I find the sight of women enveloped in the shapeless black garment deeply depressing.
Wearing modest clothes or a burka doesn’t signal you are devout, or a feminist. You could just as easily be wearing the headscarf or the burka because of social or family pressure. Some young women will have no choice. Many Muslim women abhor the wearing of the veil, and the inference that women who wear more revealing clothes are somehow more promiscuous or less spiritual.
But the intemperate language of Monsieur Bergé and the French Minister is yet another sign that we live in intolerant times, when the simple matter of what you wear in public can have unpleasant and threatening connotations.
In the US, a black female student at San Francisco State University has just denounced a white male student for having the temerity to wear dreadlocks, because they "belonged" to her culture, presumably because the hairstyle is associated with Jamaican Rastas and their fight for freedom. The dreadlocked boy claimed they originated in Egypt, but that cut no ice with his accuser.
Can a hairstyle be the exclusive property of one particular ethnic group? How many of us have boarded flights home from holidays in the sun and seen small girls with their hair braided in corn rows? Presumably, this zealot would have berated them for appropriating a black tradition. Last Christmas in Australia, every farmers' market I visited in northern New South Wales was run by shoeless white men and women sporting dreadlocks, the 30-something children of the original Sixties dropouts, now earning a living as farmers selling their home-grown organic vegetables and designer coffee.
As for pandering to women who cover themselves, Dolce &Gabbana have form when it comes to faith – they stuck the Virgin Mary on T-shirts which sold for almost £300 a pop. Like all designers and pop stars, they will plunder anything for good source material if it sells.
Ironically, it was Yves St Laurent who put women in trouser suits, which covered a great deal more flesh than the mini skirts which had preceded them. And if he was still alive, rich Muslims would be his best customers.
Ronnie Corbett and Zaha Hadid were giant personalities cut from similar cloth
Zaha Hadid wasn’t just the most famous and successful female architect in the world, she was a huge star: someone who lit up a room, every bit as charismatic as the late David Bowie.
Zaha had the unenviable task of trying to persuade hard-nosed businessmen (and it was usually men) to invest in her vision. The result is a plethora of instantly recognisable buildings – from the Aquatic Centre at the London Olympics to museums, galleries and public buildings around the world, including the National Museum of 21st Century Arts in Rome and the stadium in Qatar for the 2022 World Cup.
Although Hadid’s first work was the tiny Maggie’s Centre Cancer Hospice in Scotland, few of her designs can be found in this country today. The Welsh chickened out of building her award-winning Opera House in Cardiff, frightened by the cost.
Unlike artists or pop stars, from the moment architects dream up a project, other people will try to chip away at it, scale it down, or stifle it with regulations, red tape and accusations of spiralling costs. And yet architecture remains the one art form that improves how we live, and it is also a true monument to a society’s culture.
The vulgar towers being built in the City of London, for example, are a chilling reflection of our lopsided finances – where the gap between rich and poor is greater than ever. The only other contemporary architect who has this gift of instantly recognisable “handwriting” in every example of their work is Frank Gehry, and the pair were great friends.
Anish Kapoor described Zaha’s buildings as “habitable sculpture” but they are much more than that – she understood perfectly that a brash, look-at-me building makes people proud. It raises morale, it makes a statement not about the architect but about the people using it. It becomes, like medieval cathedrals, a destination for pilgrims. Every time we met, Zaha was funny, outrageous and great company, with an unbelievably sexy smokey voice. We had both studied at the same college (the Architectural Association, although I failed to complete my course) and her office was around the corner from my house in Clerkenwell. Once she gave me a lift in her car – a Chrysler PT Cruiser, complete with chauffeur.
On Desert Island Discs recently Zaha chose poignant songs by Adele and Bryan Ferry, revealing her shy, romantic heart. Even then, she still had to fend off the persistent questions about failed projects and the “trials” of being a woman in a predominantly male world. Would anyone have asked the former of David Bowie or Anthony Gormley?
Ronnie Corbett – who also died this week – had an equally giant personality, although small of stature of course. He could have been churlish about the endless remarks concerning his size, but Ronnie turned a physical fact into a selling point.
Never lost for words, he would certainly have given Zaha a run for her money when it came to put-downs. In 1999 I decided to walk in a straight line from Edinburgh to London for a television series (don’t ask why) and spent a memorable day filming with Ronnie, as we walked out of Edinburgh, where one golf course leads seamlessly into another.
He had a lot in common with Zaha – he didn’t suffer fools and he had a quick temper. Ronnie’s intelligence is evidenced by the way that (like the best pop stars) he managed to prolong his career, as fashions in comedy changed from one generation to the next. Over the last 40 years, I’ve had to work with some repulsive male comedians – patronising, sneering, sexist and rude. Ronnie Corbett was unfailingly generous and a lovely person – just like Zaha. The world is a bit smaller without them.
