“Time flies, you can’t they fly too fast” my grandfather used to say, confusing us all till we stopped to think. Of course you can’t actually ‘time’ flies, that’s a ridiculous idea but my goodness time does fly by fast.
Today is Domino’s 16th birthday. I’m sure we all share the same sense of disbelief when our baby is suddenly the adult “Mum, you can’t put your fingers in the air when you dance” “Mum, do you think it’s appropriate for you to be wearing that?” “Mum, TikTok is not for posting about pheasants in the garden.”
On the one hand, lying in that hospital bed sixteen years ago, cradling my girl, as her four brothers crawled all over me to get a better look at this new species, seems a moment ago, but it’s also a lifetime ago. So many chapters of my life have unfolded since Domino arrived.
She grew up watching me build, launch, run and loose a small-big business or rather a big-small business. She watched me drop to my knees in despair when the business closed and she watched me slowly, slowly stand back up again as I tentatively began to collaborate with new design partners.
She was also the one who I called from the Polish Ukrainian border, sobbing with grief from the atrocities we had witnessed during those first few weeks of the Russian invasion “It’s going to be OK, Mama” she told me on the crackly phone.
These past two weeks have also flown by. FLOWN BY. There was a Pop up in Connecticut to introduce my long boots for Penelope Chilvers. Having spent 6 years in the direct sales business I appreciate the exhaustion and excitement of setting up and taking down a show, of standing in front of a group of savvy shoppers and sharing your story with them. Luckily for me all of my collaborations are with companies that care, really care, about the important stuff, so its always exciting and rarely exhausting.
I went into New York to speak at the Ukrainian Institute of America, with my son Amory, about our experiences working with Global Empowerment Mission. Its hard trying to explain how it is to sleep in a bomb shelter, and to meet young women standing in front of their homes flattened by missiles, holding dead babies in their arms, or to describe the feeling of war permeating everything.
Fear, death, deprivation, abandonment, injustice feel very far away when you are speaking from a library, in a remarkable building in the heart of a safe city.
Amory and I looked at each other at the end and wondered if we had conveyed at all the message that we can’t give up now. Ukraine is holding the front line of democracy.
From New York I landed in London and headed straight to the Lanesborough to launch my new bedding collection, explaining to a gathered group of press and journalists that the collection was made using the highest premium cotton, sourced from the finest weavers and made to last a lifetime.
(Casually holding a glass of champagne over these luxury linens whilst very jet lagged was perhaps not the smartest move).
My Mum came up to London to join me and we popped into Charbonnel et Walker (founded in 1875, no less) before heading home to Oxfordshire where the next day I laid up a table with my Christmas linens from Pomegranate. And hosted an Instagram Live, supported yet again by my Mum, who took us on a tour of the Rex Whistler panels in her dining room….posted here below