A friend of Sacha Distel

Date with the installation artist that I met at Bistroteque after a trendy Hackney art show. We went to Nobu and spent more on mojitos and maki than Jo and I do on a month's rent, listened to The Rolling Stones on his iPod at a seedy member's club in Soho where Damien Hirst pays for his drinks in doodles, and took horrendous shots of butterscotch and liquorice vodka at Ghetto following iced coffee off Greek Street.

We met early at Green Park station, me in t-shirt as a dress, gold chain circlet and four-inch Oxfords, him in white jeans, grey tee, cowboy boots, and a weasel skull on a chain as a necklace. He is part Chinese (from his former Olympian father) and wears his hair long, black and glossy like an Injun chief. We spent most of the night talking about anthropology and primitive religion, and at one point he admitted that he was bummed because his parents had sold their summer home in Edinburgh to be converted into a hotel. I can relate.

Party pixx

Sick week that I can't even do justice to. So much has happened, and it makes coming to London worthwhile. It's been difficult arriving with only Joanna in my address book, but I've managed to make friends and make my way around the city.

I wound up at a Vice party at the Proud Galleries in Camden - a converted stable with rough stone floors and the ghost of hay bales in the air - with some guys who work for their bar, the Old Blue Last, in East London. They recognized me from some of Scott's pictures (lol) at The End and we're talking about doing a night there in a few months.

On Saturday, I worked the door at a warehouse party (...) in Elephant & Castle for extra cash and drink tickets and hung out with some sweet photographers and our Canadian 'family' in between guestlist and the handmade fresh fruit cocktails.

We met up last week for the surreal late night video installation at Tate Britain. Watching silhouttes of camels climbing the frames of some of the world's most famous oil paintings while light and sound shows overwhelm entire gallery halls as we drink glasses of champagne in our t-shirt dresses and high-saturation tights made a memorable evening with a group of girls who came highly recommended by our friends back home.

Aside from that, I've been spending more and more time in East London and I feel really happy there. The people are fresh and creative and ambitious and young, everyone in slims and flannels and vintage shoes.

The night before the Midnight Juggernauts show, I went to Hoxton Kitchen to meet up with the Jew and ended up at an after-hours with the DJs talking about bloggable music instead. They actually play the sort of music I want to hear (albeit with stacks of vinyl and a turntablist's timing - aka beat matching, period) and there are a ton of shows coming up that I can't wait to check out.

For example, next month is the Stag & Dagger festival in Shoreditch, a kind of club crawl where you get a wristband that lets you in to about twenty venues around the area for a year's worth of shows in one night. The line up is retarded: A Trak, Atlas Sound, Bumblebeez, Das Pop, Diplo, DJ Falcon, Drums of Death, Hot Chip, Little Boots, Lost in Paris, Muscles and SebastiAn just start the list. I can't even imagine how the night will play out!

Black on black

I had the afternoon off so I met up with the model scout from the masquerade under the giant bronze Freddie Mercury at the Dominon Theatre. The last time I saw him, he was drinking a triple-thick strawberry milkshake in Oxford Circus to prepare for the night of orange juice and vodka table service at Maddox and Movida. While everyone else is making themselves look important, we'll lurk in a corner talking about art and other people's outfits. He wears a leather jacket, an alias and a diamond in his tooth and I have the best time when I'm out with him.

Today we stopped by Hannah Marshall's A/W 2008 preview in Soho for some free drinks, a passing canape and a gift bag filled with USB-port accessories and Vitamin Water.





Black is the new black, it seems, a few brass knuckles paired with a leather-accented lace dress and some inappropriate shoes. I appreciate anyone who justifies my lust for black dresses and irreverant accessories. The crow feather headdresses are unbelievable and I think Robert Louis Stevenson will be my ultimate inspiration for autumn.

Following Soho, we hopped to some boutique openings, an underground record store and an art show in Hackney. I wasn't really feeling the large-scale guitar frets in the middle of enlarged b/w prints of houses but I had a great time at the Bistroteque afterparty. I spent the evening with the model scout, a hairstylist for V magazine and an installation artist with whom I spent an hour discussing modern mythology under the bar's oversized chandeliers and sombre colour scheme.

I ended the night at a party in Old Street at a designer's showroom with the model scout and a gang of Alexander McQueens, the most awe-inspiring and intimidating type of women in London. They dress in skintight structural black with bondage boots and spiky airs, and while some bottles of red wine and Edith Piaf will loosen them up, their burgundy-red lips and blunt black bangs keep me riveted from afar.