Kate The Great

The hundreds who turned out for Kate Moss at Topshop last night blended in so artfully with the hordes of commuters trying to get home on the first day of London's Tube strike that there were probably thousands of people jamming Oxford Circus by the time Moss took to a temporary structure that elevated her over the throng. She could have been a 21st-century Evita greeting her adoring public. Just like Sra. Perón, there is something of the secular saint about Kate. Or fashion saint, at the very least. Her appearance marked the debut of her new collection for Topshop. On its first day in store, the pieces most glamorously redolent of Saint Kate (among them, a fringed jacket and a beaded dress, worn later in the evening by Sienna Miller ) were the ones that sold out first. They were also among the most expensive. No wonder Topshop's owner, Philip Green , was in such a good mood when he arrived at the Connaught for dinner after the store event, by which time Moss, ever the best advertisement for her own product, had changed from a pantsuit with a gold pinstripe into a fringed, beaded bolero over a column of silvery, bias-cut slink that would have done her old mate John Galliano proud.



As these things go, dinner really was nearest and dearest—family and old friends like Naomi Campbell , Fran Cutler, Jaime Winstone, Elizabeth Saltzman , André Balazs , Katy England , and Bobby Gillespie . The oldest might have been 76-year-old legend of the lens David Bailey , sat to one side of Moss, with Stella McCartney next to him. But on Moss' other side were the newer friends, the London girls who are the Spawn of Kate: Suki Waterhouse , Cara Delevingne … (Moss clearly feels protective. She and Delevingne were working on a shoot together when one of the grips offered to swap his top with Delevingne's. Fortunately, Mother Moss was there to weigh in as the firm voice of reason: "No, we won't be taking our top off and giving it to the grip.")



Most intriguing overheard: Pat McGrath wondering if she could get away with her signature headband rather than a hat when she goes to Buckingham Palace tomorrow to receive her MBE from the queen. Sarah Mower, who's already been there, done that, said she could. But "Pat in a Hat"? Surely that's the sort of picture Instagram was invented for.

—Tim Blanks