This was literally a fashion parade, and no one came out of it better off than us. Here are the highlights of the after-party hosted by Prada at the Savoy, dedicated to the late Mark Fast and his wife Shelley.
It wasn’t easy being Kinski. Mark Fast was there with Shelley – and not because he is one of the most powerful people in menswear today. Like all fashion outsiders who suddenly emerge onto the scene, Mark’s story includes two traumatic crimes (though which they seem to have been, by their designs, relatively few), and some punchy lows. He had a long acting career and a taste for the middle-aged and the ugly, which you only find among the well-heeled few. He was always going to end up here, if only because he was as much a part of London fashion as the Brangelina/Bono crossover.
“Mark was ‘basically a schmoozer.’ Nothing makes an impression like not being alone,” Shelley Fast said on Thursday evening, tearfully recounting the various relationships they’d shared in the last few years. The fashion business and its media constantly seemed to rely on Mark, who could serve him drinks at their level, and Shelley’s professions of love. For Mark’s associates, he was the best ever at winning over people. A lifelong enthusiast of fashion, he ended up missing the season in which his very show for Dolce & Gabbana showed him who had won. Another one of his low points was the opening of a project he was working on, which was never going to happen. But he was the kind of man who could earn money on moonwalking at events like the Costume Institute Ball, and Shelley kept dancing with him for hours. “There were some dark times,” Shelley said, “but that’s not why he’s here.” He asked her if there was a dress for their special occasion. Her answer: “I’ve made your dress already.”
Models walk the ramp at the 2019 Vogue Italia Men’s Fashion Night Out at Milk Studios on September 28 in Los Angeles. Photograph: Frederick M Brown/Getty Images
The evening brought together a wide and generous group of attendees: designer Giles Deacon, actresses Antonia Campbell-Hughes and Charlotte Rampling, and photographer Rankin. Damien Hirst and Vogue Italia editor Edward Enninful were there, taking to the table with Vogue’s Hamish Bowles; Lady Kitty Spencer was there, cheering on the models; Thandie Newton was there, mingling; Wigmore Palace photographer Andrew Slevin was there, talking to Cara Delevingne; Andrés Velencoso’s niece, Mandy McLaren, was there, and so was Benedict Cumberbatch.
The evening ended on a surprisingly upbeat note. In that post-brutalism, post-divorce punk, post-guerrilla journalism, post-everything moment when there is still something fundamentally fashionish in being different, there still comes a time for sadness. But there is also a love that tips and it is always beautiful.