Olivia Allen dutifully chronicles the parties she did and did not manage to attend last week.
Saturday morning.
I have 102 unread messages from the group chat and a DM from the Phyllida Barlow Estate. A hazy recollection of listening to Fame Is A Gun from a laptop speaker while waxing lyrical about my love of London comes back to me in bursts. As the pedestrians descend on the circus at Regent’s Park, I rest easy in the knowledge that I’ve already content-farmed my way through the week and don’t need to head back for a semi-ironic snap of the Deutsche Bank Wealth Management lounge. While navigating central London without my usual 52 pairs of sunglasses, reports reach me of Madonna putting in a surprise appearance in The Tent. I consider looping back, but sorry Madge, this material girl has had enough! For the highs, the lows, the gossip – journey on, dear reader. Let’s start at the beginning:
Tuesday,
or Frieze Eve as literally no one calls it. I’m traipsing to Mayfair in my trench-foot-inducing ballet shoes when I get swarmed by a run club. I ponder whether, if I cared less about online validation, I too might be running in neon athleisure rather than chain-smoking outside the new Sadie Coles space. After half a pack of cigarettes with esteemed industry colleagues Sofia Hallstrom and Flash Art’s Michela Ceruti, we make tracks past Hauser & Wirth – a sea of sinister European collectors shielding Leonardo DiCaprio from our beady stares.
The first stop of the night is Clarissa, presented by émergent magazine in collaboration with Soft Commodity – words which mean nothing to anyone who resides outside of E2 but draw the usual crowd of art-world hotties and East London It girls. I pounce on Violet Conroy and Gray Wielebinski to practice my Frieze Week small talk, considering that if I’d paid more attention in those BFA lectures, I might have something more erudite to say than quizzing everyone on their “vibes of the week.”
Departing the Instagram Greatest Hits reunion, I’m scooped up by my Strobell Lall PR family and swept to Soho Mews House for what Fergus Wiltshire describes as “horribly democratising” bowl food. Determined not to repeat the mistakes of my younger and more vulnerable self (e.g., blacking out on the first night of Frieze), I stick to chugging Diet Cokes and scarf down a tiny portion of fish and chips before we hot-foot it to Trisha’s for Plaster’s kick-off event. Unfortunately, we have to wait more than two minutes to get in and are being divas – when in Rome! – so skip the function in favour of Bar Italia, where everyone laughs at me for having a winterberry tea at the bar.
There is talk of going to the Rick Owens party at Ladbroke Hall, but after realising it’s essentially in Acton, I decide that if I’ve seen one deer-antler centrepiece, I’ve seen ’em all, and settle for scouting around for Harry Styles at the White Cube party instead. Unsurprisingly, the party is light on floppy-haired heartthrobs and heavy on people who were personally victimised by Inigo Philbrick, so I decide to call it a night.
Wednesday morning,
I receive multiple “Happy Frieze” WhatsApps while deciding which piece of Issey Miyake to wear (kill me). By lunchtime, the booth bitches have got to work and the IG stories are flooding in in abundance – frequent appearances include Toby Cato’s Harlesden High Street collages, the back of Raven Smith’s head, and rumours of a Raf Simons sighting. I breeze past Nicole Wermer’s fun and fluffy sculptures and see Laurie Barron talking shop. I decide to leave him to it, instead diverting straight to the smoking area where I am plucked from obscurity by Nancy Dewe Matthews, who’s commandeered a prime location with Michael Kurtz, Alexander Leissel and Jennifer Kibazo. We make some slightly brain-dead but self-aware chat about the state of things before scouting for free champagne at the Ginny on Frederick booth. Joined by Ruby Dickson and Lore Alender, we scoop up stragglers like an ever-growing cloud of black matter before deciding: enough air kisses – it’s time to hit the pub.
Once in situ, Helen Neven orders unsalted, unroasted almonds for the table. Okay, Yolanda! I begin regaling André de Kock with tales of woeful nights at The Groucho Club, but I am a woman in demand tonight and have to pivot to the Saatchi Yates x God Save The Scene dinner (the Labubu Dubai Chocolatification of Frieze Week continues), not before being papped by chronicler-of-the-scene Alexei Izmaylov with a gaggle of gallerinas in tow. In Mayfair, I make it past the all-seeing Marina Abramović installation and into the hallowed back room of HQ. The dinner is a meeting of minds between Edie Jones, Elizabeth Dimitroff and Livvy Bryant, whom I befriended last year after we bonded over both having dead dads and being called Olivia. The crowd is composed of the usual suspects you’ll find at any art-world afters, the literary quota elevated by Jane Dabate, my favourite American, who is sadly soon to be deported to Miami for a stint at Scarface cosplay.
I drink too much natty wine and vape incessantly at the table before spending the rest of the evening gossiping in the Brandy-Melville-sized smoking area with Victoria Comstock-Kershaw, Bella Bonner Evans and Tom Hutts. The evening concludes in some kind of Gregorian chant led by London Fields witch-in-residence Isabella Greenwood, before talk of hitting Prada Mode is quashed and we head westward to the Hollywood Superstar Review party at the Notting Hill Arts Club. I make a few desperate calls to Westminster’s answer to Addison Rae, Lydia Eliza Trail, who appears a vision in an aqua Hervé Léger bandage dress to draw us into the inner sanctum. It all gets a bit blurry at this point, but memories of conversing across the dancefloor with Tess McMillan and Hunter Boyd resurface the next morning as I’m nursing my soleless (Vinted) Céline boots – the first casualty of Frieze Week.
Thursday evening
and there are another five million events on the agenda. However, I am feeling the effects of a not-so-sober October and decide that even scene reporters need a night off to ossify. Horizontal on the sofa and feeling the phantom-limb effects of being without my beloved chihuahua, I receive FOMO-inducing reports from the Incubator party at Reference Point, where Angelica Jopling and Bella Mackintosh have constructed a tiny tent for visitors to crawl through in a soul-soothing “return to mother” moment. I see a few low-lit snaps of Gathering’s chic soirée at Space Talk and am tempted to douse myself in another layer of Chanel Chance and hit the road – but at this point, the reluctance to scour my inbox for QR codes outweighs my desire to rub shoulders with a European zaddy, so I stay put.
Friday morning
and TGIF, babies! After twenty-four hours of health and wellness, I’ve got a pep in my step and I’m ready to undo the good work with a trip to Soho’s maligned mecca: The Groucho Club. First on my agenda for the evening is a fly-by to the ICA for the Toe Rag launch party. Unfortunately, I spend too long listening to Britney Spears and miss latex-clad party princess Sophie Barshall, but am assured the event “was popping.” Due to my lack of time-keeping, I also have to scrap the second trip of the week to Sadie Coles Multiverse and abandon the chance to see Caroline Polacheck in favour of legging it to Tottenham Court Road as fast as my sensible heels will take me.
Once inside the “massively oversubscribed” Clarissa after-party, I hang out with the same people I’ve been hanging out with all week, numbers bolstered by Linnea Skoglös, Oskar Oprey, Isabel Davies, Tom Willis, Woodsy Bransfield, Miss Diamond and queen of street style Emma Alvin. Talk percolates about the lack of debauchery this year, with one curator lamenting, “It’s been the least scandalous Frieze yet,” another wistfully and somewhat tragically adding, “Maybe we’re growing up.” At this, I decide to take matters into my own hands and start ordering overpriced martinis with reckless abandon. The night unravels into the usual looping back and forth to the smoking area, conversations becoming increasingly loud, repetitive, and incoherent. Which brings us to
Saturday morning.
I’m half-coaxed into going to Jago Rackham’s Gout Core presentation in collaboration with Jouissance Perfume, but decide a mountain of sculpted butter and a spit-roasted pheasant might send me over the edge. Dribs and drabs of celeb spotting are fed to me by anyone contractually obligated to still be in The Tent (my heart goes out to them). Swigging a Diet Coke, my thoughts are with the PR gremlins already en route to Paris. It’d take a mountain of steak tartare to reignite my interest in contemporary art right now. Maybe next year I’ll get a firsthand glimpse of Mick Jagger skulking around the GAIL’s salads or Rihanna shopping for the new nursery, but until then, there’s a Daylesford Organic bone broth with my name on it. Bisous babes xx.
