Fashioniseateries

Fashionistas rejoice! Buoyed by the success of a Vogue Café, GQ Bar and Tatler Club in Moscow - a dump formerly so starved of fashion outlets, its grateful bling-crazy citizens' sartorial choices make Katie Price look like Grace Kelly by comparison -  publishers, Condé Nast, are reportedly looking at a global roll out for their licensed concept. Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t there once a Vogue Cafe where now stands Itsu, in the same Hanover Square building as the publisher’s London HQ?  No matter, fashion exists on a diet of regurgitated trends, so bring it on again, boys!. To the marketing wallahs at Condé N, it seems restaurants are ‘a natural way to extend our brand’: this, despite my supposition that the spaghetti-thin noodles featured in their titles' pages exist on a diet of Evian, Marlboro Lights and gossip and that US Vogue’s pencil-like bobbed boss, Anna Wintour, would surely never resort to anything as common as eating out in public. Over a decade after New York and London’s Fashion Cafés sank like soufflés, despite the best efforts of Naomi, Claudia and Elle, the world has become one vast style-obsessed global village. The label-loving diners of Luton, Lanark and Llanelli are surely clamouring to shell out on fashionable suppers of three steamed edamame beans and half an egg-white omelette. As for those GQ bars, ‘honey, crème de menthe? With your complexion?’ Divine! Let’s hope the profits amount to more than a big fat size zero.