Some schemes you just know are going to fail right from the start. The Chocolate Teapot Company, Paper Fireguard Enterprises, The Millennium Dome, are all good examples. Another one, recently floundered. This was the Fashion Cafe, Leicester Square.
It was a cafe run by the doyennes of the Modelling business, that is one or two of the most popular models, and was itself modelled on the (then) successful Planet Hollywood chain. Its main failure was to not realise that the current success of the world of modelling (an almost entirely press-created phenomenon) will never match the universal (excuse the pun) appeal of the movies.
The other thing that failed it was the supposed proprietors. In Planet Hollywood, the chain is supposedly run by Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwartzenegger and Sylvester Stalone. Now, we all know that the three of them do not run the chain. They invested some money to start it, allow their names to be used on the menus, and occasionally give up time to fly round the world and open (and maybe soon, close) new ones. Which is actually reassuring because, I doubt Arnold Schwartzenegger is the greatest accountant that ever lived. But, they are still the perceived heads, and we all know that all of them eat three healthy meals a day.
The public faces of the Fashion Cafe do not eat three meals a day. Or if they do, they don’t digest them. They are perceived as little more than coathangers for expensive, unwearable frocks. Which is an insult to coathangers, which in my wardrobe, perform a useful and practical function. Mostly for unwearable shirts. The public are going to respond better to, and with greater appetite for, an Arnie Schnitzel with Brucie Fries, than for a Moss Burger with salad leaf.
People go to Planet Hollywoods because they want to see memorabilia from classic films. The whip from Indiana Jones And The Sequel Of Doom, the hip flash that Oliver Reed took nips from between scenes in the Three Musketeers, stills from that Sharon Stone film where she kept her kit on. What could they have had at Planet Fashion? Some small muslin dishcloth worn by Claudia Schiffer on a catwalk in Milan? A jar containing the contents of Kate Moss’ stomach as ejected after an expensive meal with Whatsisface Armarni. Eva Herzegova’s test paper for GCSE Social Science. Naomi Campbell’s first draft for her book was conspicuous by its absence.
The bottom line is that the idea of putting Kate Moss in charge of a restaurant is a bit like putting Dracula in charge of a garlic factory. You wouldn’t buy garlic from that factory, because you know the proprietor’s heart wasn’t in it. (It was in a crucible in the centre of a pentagram, down in the basement.)
I for one am annoyed it shut down. I had a plan to go there one day, accompanied by a bevy of London’s most unkempt street-dwellers and treating the crowd to a nosh-up meal. Maybe even bought them a T-shirt each afterwards. Any complaints would have been answered by pointing out that grime were the new black; thick, yellow beards the new goatees; and urine the new Chanel.
With the closure of the restaurant, one wonders what the next venture will be for the girls with the lightest business heads in the business. The Fashion Pub, Whitechapel? The Fashion Video and Computer Game Store? London Fashion Week? No, that one’s so obviously bound to be a flop, who on Earth is going to try it? Why indeed.
Pete More is currently appearing in brown cords outside Millets, Dartford.
(c) Peter More. September 1999.