Chanel-hopping
Kylie Minogue has always fancied herself as one of the more stylish pop stars in the firmament: not for her the faux pas of wearing gold shoes now that the fashion victims have ditched theirs for silver. With the aid of her evercanny stylist, William Baker, she takes Hoxton as her benchmark, not Hollywood.
If never quite ahead of the latest trends, she is abreast of them, thanks to a tireless willingness to change her look as often as we mortals change our knickers.
I wasn't surprised to see her stepping out in head-to-toe Chanel when she graced London's Ivor Novello Awards the other week. After all, the new French boyfriend surely warranted a new French label to match.
Nonetheless, rumours abounded that there was another reason for Kylie's decision to wear Chanel, and that it had little to do with Olivier Martinez and everything to do with Victoria Beckham.
Kylie, you see, has long been dressed by Dolce & Gabbana, but the whispers were that she had decided to back off from wearing the label because Victoria was - wait for it - making it look tacky. Miaow, miaow and miaow again!
Pop stars are so deluded. In fact, they're almost as deluded as designers. In the current rush to sign up pop stars to endorse their labels - the latest is Jennifer Lopez at Louis Vuitton - designers are forgetting one thing: nobody makes a label look tacky like a pop star.
There is a simple reason for this: their heads never change to match their bodies. Kylie may have been dressed in demure black-and-white Chanel with a fetching pearl belt, but from the neck up she was stuck in pop-video mode, with frosted pink lip gloss, lashings of blusher and tousled blonde hair that had done battle with one too many volumising sprays.
Her head made her body look tacky, and if Karl Lagerfeld is chuffed with this latest slice of celebrity endorsement then I'll eat my quilted handbag. Or maybe he should. Lord knows he could do with a meal.
The truth is that Kylie suits Dolce & Gabbana far more than she does Chanel. She suits it almost as much as Victoria Beckham, another pop star stuck in stasis from the neck up. VB was never going to look as gorgeous as the catwalk model in the beaded Dolce dress she wore to a bash thrown in her honour in New York last week, but the label is a good fit with her style.
Both Victoria and Kylie make their livings from looking sexy, and Dolce & Gabbana is the ultimate sexy label.
In contrast, Chanel's charm has always lain in its understatement.
Women who don't do understatement should leave it alone: they're ruining it for the rest of us.
