Life was very crowded in late October 2022.
I had managed to meet a tight deadline to finalize the catalog accompanying “India in Fashion,” an exhibition that I curated celebrating the lure that the country has had on Western designers from Charles Frederick Worth to Alexander McQueen, and the glorious explosion that it has seen in recent years from its own artisans and designers. (It was the culmination of a three-year project, which survived the COVID-19 pandemic and ultimately opened—in glittering style—at the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre in late March 2023.)
In other cultural asides, I was swept up in La Bohème at the Royal Opera House and relished my second foray into Only an Octave Apart at Wilton’s Music Hall with moving and hilarious performances by Justin Vivian Bond and Anthony Roth Costanzo and costume design by JW Anderson (in case you were wondering what the couple were doing in dresses resembling small cars). It was my second viewing of the performance and, being a sold-out show, the seats we were given were split between two in the front—which I gave to my guests, Mario Testino and his partner, Jan Olesen—and one in the back, where I sat in solitary, isolated splendor.
Memorably that same week, I was a guest of Kim Jones and Dior on a transporting tour to Sussex—in the shadow of the Bloomsbury set (Charleston, Virginia Woolf’s Monk’s House, and the marvelous Berwick Church)—and I ended the month with meetings at World of Interiors and putting the finishing touches on the forthcoming “India in Fashion” exhibition.
The morning of Saturday, October 22, began like so many other weekend mornings in London, with an early trip to Portobello Road, where I dithered over a rather exciting winter 1930 Lanvin gold lamé dress at Oliver Vintage. I would ultimately leave without the dress—although I vowed to return—because I was late for a haircut in South Kensington. I then had to go to Bloomsbury to discuss renovation work at my new apartment, so I didn’t have the time to return to Portobello Road that day. I was looking forward to a nostalgic dinner at China Tang with Testino later that evening—oh, and Monday I was leaving for Doha for a week of Qatar Creates festivities.
I wouldn’t make it to that dinner. Or the festive week.
A man named Lucas, who was doing some odd jobs for me, had suggested I look at the subflooring in the Bloomsbury apartment. I was crestfallen not to find the original material intact but rather a patchwork of plywood beneath. I remember having some slight, inexplicable unsteadiness as I wandered around. As I crossed the threshold to the pantry, I began to collapse. Lucas recalls my leaning against a wall and gently, elegantly lowering to the floor—in order to more closely inspect the flooring condition, he presumed. Lucas soon realized that I was unresponsive and exhibiting hallmark signs of stroke. My own memory of that moment is that I could hear and understand his questions and I presumed that he could hear my responses. The reality, I would later learn, was different: I was conscious but unable to make any noise or speak.
Lucas called emergency services, and neighbors and friends began to gather. My friend Gillian Mosely was in tears; Whatever for? I asked myself. In fact I asked this to the assembled crowd. My upstairs neighbor, Kim, was home, celebrating the birthday of a close friend. Knowing how vital speed is for stroke intervention, and concerned about potential delay in the ambulance’s arrival, Kim and this friend lifted me into a car and we set off for the nearest hospital, only a five-minute drive away—moments later, after receiving a call that the ambulance had arrived, they turned and delivered me home. Now I was rather confused, as Kim’s friend was all sweetness and light and quite dishy but I’d be damned if I’d met him before. He kept reassuring me that “all was going to be all right, Hamish.” Yes, said I, of course it is, and have we met?