Vibe report: See on both sides like Chanel

Synthesising the dialectic at the Chanel after-party; festive autofiction from Manchester as a Christmas treat

A good friend and revered mystic tells me on a crowded train that everything is a spiral and I understand what he means implicitly. Trains are always delayed now and platforms frequently change last minute, so people run for their departing train too frequently when I travel. An old man pulls his wife by the hand while she stumbles and fails to keep up. The basic courtesy of allowing others to disembark first applies less and less – like dogs in clothes, this has kali yuga vibes. Standing in carriages is the norm for most, except myself and my companion, who always get seats. If a train was organised like a rationally organised Republic, or an immortal soul that has mastered its non-rational aspects, the philosophers would be seated, I guess.

When I lie down these days, there’s a subtle gradation in flecks of light behind my eyes, as some move one way and the others the opposite, like the fixed and moving stars.

I have never heard the word ‘Chanel’ so many times as I did during the first week of December. Not bad for a brand that has been “over as a cultural force since the ‘50s” according to Rachel, the best-dressed woman I know. It’s easy to be the talk of the town when you close an entire Mancunian street for your show and everyone is maybe on the guestlist for the after-party or maybe is not. My barista was quoted in the Manchester Evening News so I thought he might attend. I cancelled my pilates class to get ready and my instructor said she’d meet me there later. The party was as exclusive as Peste on a Friday night, which interestingly was closed for the pre-party the day before. Rumour had it that Sophia Coppola was filming there.  

It really turned out to be ‘just another fashion party’ as the handsome artist’s assistant said and everyone from town made it. We greeted each other with love and enthusiasm like old friends, as though we’d stormed the Bastille together or something. White Hotel Ben wore a hat like Napoléon’s, which was funny as his relatives were probably in the room. The richer you try to look the poorer you come off, so I went broke from the start, but even I was surprised at how poorly my vintage St Michael’s came off in a room full of the financial elite’s wives. My tailor’s brain priced up the outfits and I worked out they were around £12,000 each on average. When I asked people I didn’t know if they were having a good night, they simply answered ‘Yes’, warmly and firmly evaded further conversation. There’s a club and we’re not in it. But they were liberal with their cigarettes. The arrival of Chanel had cast doubt as to whether Yum Yum would remain the event of the year but the distinction in quality of chat confirmed Yum Yum’s prime position while Rakhi’s Bach violin recital at Peste — which turned into a lock-in and then an Oscar’s party and then a threesome — was a close second. A former male model I know had told me I was ridiculous to expect celebrities to be there. He’d been to YSL parties in LA which were only attended by ‘vaguely cool people’ and buyers; the celebrities usually had private rooms within the main venue. “Well, where else will they be?” I was hoping for star power. “What? Beside Victoria baths? In Manchester? On a Thursday?” His tone dampened my enthusiasm, which turned out to be for the best. As per, he was wrong and right. Somehow – after being on and off the list around sixteen times – we made it in on the B-list tier guestlist (08:00pm) not the C-list tier guestlist (10:00pm) and I saw many celebrities as I ate the free seabass ceviche and drank the champagne. I brushed past Sophia Coppola (beautiful; tiny), Kristen Stewart (evasive), Aitch (confident and good humoured) and Hugh Grant, who was my favourite, due to the fact he had a lovely warm aura and touched the small of my back. His wife had handler vibes but I could, admittedly, have misinterpreted them, as the whole place was a den of vipers.

“What, it turns out a room full of the 1% has noxious vibes?” Jeremy joked with me the day after, but I had been naïve enough to expect it would be mostly models and cool artistic people, not only the most desperate of the élite and everyone I know. As it was, it was essentially an extended Chanel advertisement to ensure Gerard Wertheimer remains Switzerland’s richest person (at a net worth of $44.8billion). No one danced except me and the other Ben when Primal Scream were on even though I realised that night that they are basically a perfect band for a party. I suspect the Mancunian cohort did not lower the house prices but rather provided some ‘authenticity’ and ‘credibility’ which proves cultural capital is as good as real money when it comes to getting through the door. By the time it closed we were basically the only ones left on the dancefloor with a handful of models. One of them who I had thought was Anok Yai until she spoke told me about last year’s party in Dakar but I was too drunk and bored to understand. I greedily asked a waiter for more champagne while a fat old fatcat extended his arm louchely toward the same waiter, which unfurled like a lily. The look his entourage gave me was more that of disgust, than pity. We keep it moving. We all drank the free £25-a-glass champagne like it was going to run out at midnight, because for us it was, although for some it never does. Although they all seem bored by that, while we were having fun. At midnight I was supposed to turn into a glass slipper but instead I ended up speaking French on someone’s pillow – c’est la vie. And ‘very Emily in Paris of me’, as my friend and fellow dancefloor vixen told me by text when they received my sunrise photo the next morning.

The next day my trepanned skull opened to all kinds of horrors which proves that received morality is correct in that ascetism leads to heaven and hedonism the opposite. I am used to being the observer but there I was not only observed but scrutinised and found wanting. We are all conscious awareness but as individuation emerges before Being the implications that your thoughts can affect my life freaks me out when I’m not grounded. That the subject and object are one is a yes and a no; even in the sphere of nous, subject and object correspond perfectly, and are inseparable, but they remain subject and object. Beyond that, the source of revelation cannot be revealed; the ground of knowledge cannot be known. That the ‘eyes of the fashion world’ turned toward Manchester during a period of expanded conscious awareness is no coincidence but still should be received more as wry joke to be taken with humility. To navigate a path toward knowledge with self-aggrandisement may result in one becoming a force of nature, according to Patanjali, and with that the immortal soul loses its chance at comprehending the Absolute from the position of the particular — the human condition — where it has a unique advantage. As far as I know now, only from the micro can you comprehend the macro. The best astrologer I know — she has a gift for interpretation — told me that dark forces can only hurt you if you believe they can and I believe her. Nevertheless, I was a nervous wreck when I received a text from a fellow attendee all in Han characters with a police emoji the next day. My teacher friend patiently sat with me in The Arab Hall at Leighton House until I returned to earth with wings singed by the illusory exclusivity, free champagne and the subsequent ego trip. If the best things can happen to me maybe the worst can, too. But some ideas are not worth entertaining in the divine play. Running water and Izmirli turquoise calmed me down. This instance corresponds with my anthroposophist friend’s theory that the mind is not as effective as natural minerals at curing maladies. He believes that holistic remedies made from natural minerals activate the soul's healing powers because they have had prolonged exposure to non-human vital forces and souls of nature: time, water, earth, air and fire. These non-human souls imbue minerals with holistic properties that can treat human illnesses by activating dormant soul powers in a way conscious thoughts alone cannot.

That weekend marked the start of Hannukah and I went to a party at a Synagogue in Stoke Newington which was miles better than the Chanel one as everyone was friendly, we all sang songs together and ate plenty of fried foods to celebrate the eight miraculous days the menorah burnt without any oil to light it. Plus, there were kids and old people there. Jeremy and I also talked philosophy, with him explaining that a condition of infinite possibility also implicates the existence of nothing. “The opposites are not illusion, neither is unity illusion. The opposites are opposed to one another, but they are not opposed to unity.” Being, nothing and becoming are interdependent; every unity is triadic. A spiral contains time, space and motion (thus representing the activity of Being, Life and Intellect).

Some people there believed in God and some people didn’t but only Jeremy answered “Yes… and no” when asked, which is typical. The next day Rachel and I were talking about faith at Jeremy’s birthday meal and as I was describing how shakti or the Holy Spirit is a cosmic energy which penetrates all — the animate as well as the inanimate — a glass on our table smashed seemingly apropos of nothing as a priest walked by, in a restaurant that seated no more than twenty. Rachel was a bit freaked out but I told her not to worry, this kind of thing happens all the time and the pattern cannot always be interpreted, nor should it be, sometimes it can only be observed, as the pattern is increasingly complex, the pattern of the relations between you and me, the dead and the living, between all of us and Nature, Fate and Time, and its relation to the Real.