Red All Over

Jenny and I attended the Armani RED party in London in late September, during what is called Fashion Week. It had rained in the afternoon but cleared up nicely at night. In fact the weather was about as nice as you could wish for in London at that time of year.

The event is a charity event for Bono, the U2 lead singer who, often in partnership with Bill Gates (go figure that!), has been an outspoken champion of third world issues including AIDS, for which Time Magazine gave them “People of the Year” last year. They are absolute magnets at the World Economic Forum, for example, which I am sure surprises the women who spurned them in high school, not that there are many cheerleaders at Davos.

Of course Jenny and I felt honor-bound to wear Armani clothes. We like Armani. In fact one of my favorite suits is an Armani, but it is several years old.
Horrors!

Jenny felt we should upgrade. My administrative assistant felt we should upgrade. My concierge in London felt we should upgrade. My driver felt we should upgrade. Apparently so did everybody in London around this time, because the Armani store was swamped.

Of course, it was Fashion Week.

Usually I avoid major cities during their Fashion Weeks. I was reminded why.

A party invitation guaranteed VIP treatment at the stores. This made things more tolerable. We picked outfits that garnered the most effusive praise from the sales-model-robots without blowing my mind on wasteful spending. One nice thing is that there were no tags to remove.

(Hmm... as I write this, I guess I am now thinking I cannot remember the last time I had to remove a tag from clothing. So somebody must have been removing them before I get to them. But I can remember being annoyed in the past about it...)

Anyhow, we “arrived” at the party in my chauffered Audi, one of about which rated the visible disdain of the most junior valet in the presence of all the Maybachs, Rolls, and Bentleys afront Earl's Court (interestingly, some sponsor, maybe Audi itself, provided what appeared to be three or four dozen Audi A8 cars for the event). I have to say that you could not rent a Ferrari or Lamborghini in London around this time, not that I'd want to drive one around there. But I am certain the pockmarked young chap at the bottom of the valet totem pole who had to open my door would have preferred one.

I usually never attend events of this kind because I find them a waste of time. Shallow parties full of mostly shallow people is not my idea of fun. Even if there are deep thinkers in the crowd, there is no opportunity for a meaningful conversation. This is a “be seen” kind of event and I hate being seen. But I thought a few events like this would be interesting for Jenny: the RED initiative was announced at the World Economic Forum this year. I did not attend Davos but after hearing about it from a friend I mentioned it to Jenny. In fact, even Jenny did not enjoy this kind of event very much; in reality this was about bragging to her girlfriends. And that is a responsibility that a girl’s man has… to help her brag to her friends, right? As long as I get quid pro quo...

So I guess I should also place a thanks to American Express for getting me in. They've probably made enough on fees from me to buy me a boat, so two passes to these shindigs was letting them off cheap.

Speaking of shallow, the big news was that Giselle was the spokesperson for RED and Leo DiCaprio gave the opening. Are you as excited as I am about this? From a branding strategy the move might be sheer genius – to make third world issues sexy rather than smart. Indeed if that was the concept, Giselle and Leo were the ideal vehicles. They come across as people with a great body with a not-so-great brain. Make no mistake, not all models and actors are vacuous. But certainly some are. Or maybe I am merely jealous. Yeah, that must be it.

So we obtained nice clothes, or at least something we were told was nice, bought it under the RED system that donated some part of the proceeds to the charity, and did all the silly, stupid celebrity charity event stuff that one does. Including trying to figure out where to put all the giveaways.

The good news is that the paparazzi pay little attention to me when Real Stars are out. We had a few junior photographers snap some half-hearted shots at us, just in case we turned out to be somebody famous in an obscure Asian country, but mostly because digital film is cheap and maybe Jenny wasn’t wearing underwear. And I was mistaken for a waiter only twice.

Jenny's highlight was obtaining an autograph from Kevin Spacey and our exchanging about six words with the man. Oh, and Beyonce, whose music I have never really appreciated, had an excellent performance. Even I could tell. The event itself was very well run and I liked the space (they had cozy booths). Kudos to the event managers.

That night we were too tired for sex. Jenny just wanted a shower, foot massage and bath. I do not know how people have fun at these events. I think they always seem better in hindsight. But we left London happy with our ability to do the things that others expect rich young couples to do, whether we liked it or not.