The Fashionable Truth has just landed in the chill dawn of London’s autumn. Tonight at the glorious Claridge’s and then to Paris for the Bordeaux train and M. Arnault’s Cheval Blanc harvest festival dinner. A wonderful prelude to next week’s challenging China Strategy workshop in St. James’s. “Fashion is not life, it is what we acquire to better enjoy our life. And the more life we have the less fashion we need. But style? That’s oxygen.” Now sitting back in perfect upholstery in my suite with exquisite coffee. The rising sun is dusting off the beautiful buildings of Mayfair and the porter has carted my creased clothes away to be given a Claridge’s transformation. With champagne on ice and an ormolu clock marking the early morning hours on a grey marble mantelpiece the day feels like the first notes of a Schubert string quartet, something like the D956. Quiet but profound, slight but moving. It’s just music, but it’s sublime, it’s just a room but it’s transcendent, it’s just a morning but it’s forever.