I can remember when anything further downtown New York than Canal Street was risky and the whole area still looked like a 70s cop movie location; when the original loft-owners were more dash-than-cash, artistic types.
Peter YorkSloanes aren't cafe society or NYLON hedge-funders with million-pound bonuses, or London Eurotrash wearing upgraded style anglais. Ann Barr's and my original picture of them in 'The Official Sloane Ranger Handbook,' published in 1982, was of an upper-middle-class world, conservative and fairly homogeneous, united by old attitudes and institutions.
Peter YorkAll I'm saying is that Louis Vuitton and L'Oreal didn't invent branding at some point in the mid-Eighties. Big, reassuring names have been around a long time.
Peter YorkIn London - and forget those extra public pressures on politicians - the lovely old Sloane world of manor houses simply hasn't cut it since Big Bang in 1986, the point at which Mrs. Thatcher really started to achieve her ambition to make this country more like America - its ambition, economy, it's very tangible measures of success.
Peter York