The Lady Magazine

14 September 2018

Dear Readers, Win: Tickets to see Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo This week our cover star is the irrepressibly radiant Georgia Toffolo, known to her close friends, family and thousands of fans as Toff. She really is one of life’s little sunbeams and whenever she does remember to come to work here at Bedford Street (officially she is our editorial assistant), the place is even jollier than normal. However, her tardiness is all forgiven because she has been busy writing her upbeat, often insightful, self-effacing, part memoir, part self-help book: The World According to Toff. It’s worth reading it just for the clever way she divides personality types into drains or radiators – those who are draining and those who radiate. Simple but often quite true. Someone who did radiate was Princess Marina, who, as James Crawford-Smith explains, set the bar for Royal sartorial standards from the moment she glided down the aisle at Westminster Abbey in 1934. Around the same time she was making her glamorous rise, the late, great, art historian Kenneth Clark was commissioning the Bloomsbury artists Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant to produce a collection of portraits of famous women painted onto Wedgwood china. Liz Hodgkinson’s gripping tale reveals what happened to them when they suddenly disappeared from public view, only to be discovered 85 years later – and it reads like an Agatha Christie. Most of us are unlikely to be capable of making such a grand investment any time soon, but certainly we shouldn’t hold back from treating ourselves to one of this season’s must-have wrap dresses. As well as being extremely stylish, they are also very forgiving for those of us who don’t intend to give up puddings any time soon… what a relief! Until next week. Best wishes, Sam Taylor, Editor