‘I have all these clothes at home… I thought to myself, “Don’t be selfish”,' says Joanna
When you meet Joanna Lumley, it’s disconcerting. She’s so Patsy, the Absolutely Fabulous comic creation surely up there with Inspector Clouseau, Sybil Fawlty and Bridget Jones, and yet at the same time so not.
She arrives at the auction house in South London where her wardrobe – including her Ab Fab outfits – is about to go on sale, all long legs, thigh boots and poncho, and when she smiles hello she almost does that Patsy grimace: bared teeth accompanied by a wild snort.
The enthusiasm is the same, the striding about, the air-kissing of everyone in the room. But of course Joanna Lumley is not Patsy. She tells me she only really becomes the character when her hair is up in that trademark beehive.
‘That’s all my own hair, you know,’ she says. ‘I’ve got good working hair. Backcombed, of course. Jennifer Saunders called it Mr Whippy. I never used a wig or a hairpiece.’ I tell her the key to the character is that she remains just this side of reality, that I know people who have worked in fashion for too long who are just like Patsy, syphoning up dregs from all the near empty wine glasses in a restaurant as they leave, nothing to live for but the next Chanel show.
‘It was Jennifer [Saunders] as Eddy who wore all the extreme stuff, putting on lots of different looks at the same time,’ says Joanna. ‘The Lacroix, the oversize hip-hop medallions, the denim boiler suits: the key was that Jen always wore something either two sizes too big, or too small. Patsy dressed exactly as a fashion editor would: the perfect Chanel jacket no one else has got. She dressed immaculately most of the time, in lovely neutrals – she always looked elegant. The mistake people make when they dress up as her is that they make her quite tarty, which she wasn’t. I was Jennifer’s foil, always plain and simple.’
Joanna is selling 16 lots, including some from Absolutely Fabulous, worn across the series from 1995 to 2011, the films Trail of the Pink Panther and Curse of the Pink Panther (1982 and 1983), and The New Avengers TV series (late 70s). There are also items from her personal wardrobe, such as the Pucci dress she wore to celebrate her opening night in La Bête on Broadway in 2010, and the ivory and gold lace Tatters dress she wore to collect her Bafta Special Award for The New Avengers in 2000, all to raise money for the Prince’s Trust.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/you/article-2219050/Joanna-Lumley-Its-charity-schweedie.html?ito=feeds-newsxml
No comments:
Post a Comment