In 1979 the Shuttle's resident psychic adviser Mandy Miami was looking for a new British designer to showcase at the New York nite spot she was managing-the Mudd Club. She chose an up and coming young couple David and Elizabeth Emanuel for her British Invasion Fashion Show that scored the Emanuels a front page story in the prestige Woman's Wear Daily.
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| The Emanuel wedding dress |
In 1981 Princess Diana wed HRH Prince Charles in a now famous Emanuel wedding dress, watched on live TV by billions of people around the world.
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| Miranda Kerr in Collette Dinnigan |
On Tuesday evening the Shuttle attended the opening of Collette Dinnigan's new Woollahra boutique. The news had just broken of the engagement of Kate Middleton and Prince William. Collette is one of Kate's favourite designers and Kate is a regular at her London store. Today Ms Dinnigan fielded phone calls from media outlets around the world asking for her advice on Kate's wedding dress.
In Vogue UK she is running at odds 16/1 along with Alice Temperley another favourite, that the future Queen will wear one of her designs on her wedding day.
However the chances of Kate choosing a non-British wedding dress designer are pretty slim. The British media would rip her to shreds if she wore a foreign design-even a colonial one. But Collette does a nice line in beautiful Christening gowns for that inevitable Royal baby that will be with us in a year or so !
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Society maven Marie Sutton , the woman who managed to gazump the entire world by getting Princess Diana to attend the Victor Chang dinner in Sydney in 1995 as her last official charity function tells the Shuttle her phone began ringing at 5am this morning and hasn't stopped.
"They're calling from all over the world" she says "radio stations and newspapers in London and America. I even had a TV station in South Africa wanting to send a film crew to interview me".
"There's not much I can tell them" she says. " I've never met Kate and last spoke to William on the telephone 3 years ago".
In the meantime she is busy filling a table for the Black & White Committee charity lunch at the Four Seasons Hotel on the 30th November.
The special guest is John Rendall of 'Christian The Lion' fame. He's just returned from hosting a safari in Kenya and will be giving a talk at the lunch on life in an antique shop on the Kings Road, Chelsea with the lion cub he purchased at Harrods in the 1970s.
And there's a slide show. The pictures were recently exhibited at the prestige Saatchi Gallery in London.
To purchase tickets to the Black & White lunch contact them on (02) 9327 5698 or email susan.diver@rbs.org.au.
Ask to sit on Marie's table and she'll tell you all about Princess Diana !
For those who have forgotten about the Christian saga-here is the youtube video that went viral worldwide. Get the Kleenex out.....
