Tinsel & Tripe

Does austerity need glamour to survive, or is it the other way round, asks Lin Sampson

2012 arrived wearing a wimple of austerity. Clutching at its tattered coat tails was opulence. The two are inseparable.

Have you noticed that as we are all beaten into the arena of "don't spend", and luxuries are recalled as evil talismans, there's a lot of crackerjack spending around?

Here are Winston Churchill's words at Queen Elizabeth II's wedding after World War 2. "Let us think of this as a flash of colour on the long, hard road we have to travel."

The tradition is not new. In 1558, when Elizabeth I came to the throne, England was bankrupt. Against this background she used glamour to increase national confidence in the nation.

More recently, it was expense be damned for the royal marriage between Kate Middleton and Prince William. The satin gazar wedding dress with hand-cut lace had 58 covered buttons. Those working on it had to wash their hands every 30 minutes and use a new needle every three hours to avoid marking the silk.

This summer Cape Town joined the party splurge. Guests from abroad rolled out of the Lear jets like dolls, newly botoxed and freshly coiffed, packaged in silk and jewels.

Serial party-giver Preston Haskell bought the plot next door to his house in Fresnaye to accommodate a party that since last year had grown and grown like Topsy.

Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, frequently in Cape Town for parties, threw a R63-million party on the Caribbean island of St Barts, which made a nice break from his current involvement at the Old Bailey in a case that reveals the greed and skullduggery of the super rich.

In Mangaung at the ANC centenary bash, delegates partied in the face of crime, fiscal decay and endemic obesity. There were nine kings present, allowing the faint hope of some glamour in the shape of ermine robes and jewel-encrusted crowns.

Sadly, apart from the sacrificial slaughtering of the bull with its intense medieval pageantry and glorious tripe for the menu (animal rightists need not write in), it didn't do justice to the R100-million that was spent.

The whole atmosphere flickered but did not sparkle (to borrow a phrase about Labour leader Ed Miliband), with its low-rent B&B atmosphere and a lot of overweight people in bright yellow T-shirts.

Journalist Mandy Rossouw tweeted from the event: "The cavalcade comes past. Seems like you only get an ANC sticker for a Merc, Beemer or SUV with leather seats."

I carry in my wallet a postcard of the Armada portrait of Elizabeth I, a triumphal jewelled visage with clusters of diamonds and sapphires intertwined with ropes of seed pearls, scattered with enamelled bows decorated with smudgy pink tourmaline.

Elizabeth understood the value of looking rich despite the emptiness of the palace purse.

Julius Malema, who received what was called on the radio "a standing ovulation", always knew the value of appearances. In his misguided way, he was trying, with his grandiosity of dress, to engender a sense of what life could provide for the less fortunate.

Lacking an Elizabethan palace courtier to guide him, and going instead for vulgar swagger watches and badly fitting designer jackets, his rough peasant face emerged incongruously from these pricey threads. But his followers admired him for his on-trend message.

King Mswati III of Swaziland, who lives in a tsunami of extravagance, woke up late to the fact that a shod nation is less likely to riot and recently gave away 40000 pairs of sneakers.

Certainly, silly extravagances are on the hoof. Christmas decorations have never been so robust. A friend bought 20 diamond encrusted skulls (à la Damien Hirst) at R4000 each to decorate her Christmas table.

Teetering heels have returned, always a sign of recession according to shoe manufacturers, and local car dealers experienced an unexpected surge of cars selling for more than a million.

In recently posted figures, Rolls Royce said it sold 3538 cars last year, a 31% increase compared to 2010. In Europe, people spent millions on Christmas decorations, lighting up the façades of their houses to look like planetariums; even people living on sink estates ponied up dole money to have fairy lights around the door.

When many are so poor that putting fingers down the backs of chairs to find enough lose change to buy milk in the morning is a regular habit, why is it that the hoi polloi require richly branded role models? It seems that in our rag-and-bone-shop poverty, our bargain basement sojourns and Gumtree browsing, we somehow require the lush spending of the rich and powerful.

Their example lets us hope for a better future.