JAN MOIR: Tragic, yes, but she was only famous because of Mick

By Jan Moir

PUBLISHED: 21:04 EST, 20 March 2014 | UPDATED: 06:34 EST, 22 March 2014


A fashion designer called L’Wren Scott died this week, of apparent suicide. The 49-year-old hanged herself in her New York apartment, using a scarf of her own design.

She left no suicide note behind and close friends are astonished by her death. Her boyfriend of 13 years was devastated.

It seems that Scott had given no indication of unhappiness. To outsiders she appeared to live a gilded, luxurious and happy life, although it later emerged that her fashion business was heavily in debt.

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Mick Jagger, 70, and L'Wren Scott, 49, pictured together in 2010, were a couple for 13 years

Mick Jagger, 70, and L'Wren Scott, 49, pictured together in 2010, were a couple for 13 years

I recount all this because millions of people, including  the vast majority of the UK population at the very least, had absolutely no idea who L’Wren Scott was.

Her beautiful Modigliani face was not familiar to the masses. Her name did not ring carillons of bells. Her designs could only be afforded or accessed by the rich, or the rich and famous.

The only reason people have heard of her now, in death if not in life, is the fact that Scott’s boyfriend happened to be Sir Mick Jagger. And most will have certainly heard of him.

Jagger has been one of the most famous men on the planet for decades, while Scott’s name was little known outside exclusive fashion and media circles.

To be blunt, that is why her death made front-page news across the world and topped radio and television reports.

It was her relationship with the Rolling Stone that made her tragic passing so furiously newsworthy, not the fact that she made red carpet dresses for Nicole Kidman.

In most reports she was described as a fashion designer first, Jagger’s girlfriend second — and who could have a problem with that? Sometimes it was the other way around which, while a trifle tactless, was still neither untrue nor insulting. 

Designer L'Wren Scott, pictured with Mick Jagger and his daughters Jade Jagger and Georgia Jagger, was found dead in her New York apartment this week

Designer L'Wren Scott, pictured with Mick Jagger and his daughters Jade Jagger and Georgia Jagger, was found dead in her New York apartment this week

In the brusque shorthand of the news bulletin, it effectively depicted who she was and what she did. Yes, hers is a tragic story but at the risk of offending sensitive types, I can’t join in the pious chorus of condemnation on the way Scott’s death has been reported.

Shrill voices on both sides of the Atlantic have claimed that referring to Scott in terms of her relationship with Jagger was both foolish and demeaning.

Sports broadcaster Clare Balding and her partner, the radio presenter Alice Arnold, were both so appalled they were shouting at the radio: ‘She is a person in her own right.’ Some have even insisted that describing L’Wren Scott as ‘Mick Jagger’s girlfriend’ has set the cause of feminism back by 100 years.

If anything is going to do that, it is using the wrong example to fight the right principle.

This is about fame and perception, not sexism and prejudice. It is pathetic to try to turn L’Wren Scott’s death into another conspiracy or dastardly plot against women. Save it for when it really matters, sisters.

In the quicksand of celebrity, both men and women alike can get swallowed up in their partner’s eminence.

Dawn French’s husband. The Speaker’s wife. Amy Winehouse’s boyfriend. Jacqui Smith’s husband. Clare Balding’s wife. Mrs Colin Firth. Mrs Nick Clegg. Meryl Streep’s partner. I could go on.

Scott may have been a name in fashion circles, and she certainly cultivated important industry people, but no one outside a pampered enclave of self-important fashion luvvies had ever heard of her.

The designer was reportedly found hanged inside her eight floor apartment in Manhattan by her assistant

The designer was reportedly found hanged inside her eight floor apartment in Manhattan by her assistant

She made very expensive and stunning clothes for an elite. Her day dresses cost £1,600 each. Luxury and exclusivity were the absolute essence of her world. The nearest she got to the High Street was a capsule collaboration with Banana Republic last year.

The thing is, she only became famous — and then only moderately so — after she became Jagger’s girlfriend. Even then, she was far more famous than she was successful.

Fashion insiders report a special frisson of excitement and interest when Jagger turned up at her shows — so she wasn’t above capitalising on their relationship herself.

In her world, she was a well-known designer, a former model, a stylist who worked behind the scenes — but she was not in the same league as, say, Donatella Versace or Donna Karan.

In her life, Scott was a moon to Jagger’s sun, eclipsed on one level by his monstrous fame.

Yet I think that, in reality, it was this rather seedy man who glowed in her reflected glamour and sense of style, not the other way around. In more ways than one, it was she who made him look good.

Police do not suspect foul play but the official cause of death will come after the medical examiner issues their report

Police do not suspect foul play but the official cause of death will come after the medical examiner issues their report

Scott herself said many times that she feared being known as a girlfriend; a mere Jagger adjutant rather than a designer in her own right.

While I have sympathy with those misgivings, I suspect the life of astounding privilege they shared together provided both compensation and succour.

The truth is that if you are a marginally notable personage who spent more than a decade in a relationship with one of the most famous icons of the 20th century, then your obituary and the headlines accompanying it are going to reflect that.

Surely the truth is more important than the scalded feelings of a few peeved she-fems who are always desperate to whirl their cudgels at the latest perceived media hurts?

They would be doing everyone a favour if they decided to seek a cheap feminist cause elsewhere. And while we are at it, what did Sir Denis Thatcher do for a living? The vague answer ‘businessman’ will not suffice.

Don’t know, ladies? My point exactly.

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Kylie's curious sexercise in self-doubt

Kylie Minogue and her backing dancers don white leotards in the video to her new single Sexercise

Kylie Minogue and her backing dancers don white leotards in the video to her new single Sexercise

Bad enough that Beyoncé has shelved her athletic, wholesome dance routines for something that is borderline pornographic — but not Kylie, too? Our wee Kylie?

am afraid so. In a video for her new single, Sexercise — there’s a clue in that title — Kylie Minogue and her gal-pals don white leotards to get all hot and bothered together in a dimly lit gym. And I don’t mean by a bracing workout on the cross-trainer. 

Sexercise features the now mandatory section of light and arty chick-on-chick frottage. Later, Kylie and Co all climb aboard giant exercise balls to sing a chorus that goes: ‘Bounce, bounce, bounce.’

Even as I type these words, I can sense that men everywhere have stopped what they are doing and approached — no, galloped towards — their computers to type the words ‘Kylie Sexercise’ into the search box. And I suspect they won’t be disappointed.

In the meantime, in an interview this week, Kylie has opened up about her insecurities, claiming she can’t bear to look at herself in the mirror. (Yes, Kylie, you looked very shy and insecure thrashing around on top of that vaulting horse in the gym, I must say.) 

She has got to stop this. Not the sauciness — the self-doubt. She looks wonderful. She has always looked wonderful. In a live show in London this week, she even wore an outfit made of scarlet rubber (right). Proving that, along with Mr Blobby and Giant Haystacks, she is one of the few people over 40 who can look good in red latex.

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Loved Line Of Duty - but I'm still not sure whodunit

Oooh, after all that fuss and excitement, the last episode of BBC2’s Line Of Duty police corruption series was a bit of a disappointment. It felt rushed.

What the heck was going on? Why was Dot Cotton running away with Men Behaving Badly’s walking stick? What happened to the cat? And who did order the murder? I’m still not sure.

The use of flashbacks in the last half hour seemed like a cop-out, if you will pardon the expression, and hinted at an inability to resolve the story threads satisfactorily.

Still, not the fault of writer Jed Mercurio and the excellent cast, gritty and gloriously downbeat till the very end. It was just too much for six thrilling episodes. Spread over nine or more, Line Of Duty would have been superb. Still, roll on series three.

PS. Out in the real world, three, high-profile, long-running crimes are still to be solved — and it is heartening to know that the police haven’t given up on them. Five years after Claudia Lawrence’s death, her father has spoken about his anguish, and police are still on the track of her killer.

They’re also still hunting Madeleine McCann’s abductor, seven years after she disappeared in Portugal.

It has been 18 years since night-clubber Melanie Hall disappeared in the city of Bath, but police are still working on that case, too.

So long as murderers and abductors cannot sleep easy in their beds, their efforts are not in vain.
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David Beckham’s had a Brazilian. I know what you are thinking, but it’s not that — although I wouldn’t put it past him.

No, Becks has been shipped out to the Brazilian rainforest on a top-secret camping expedition to make a documentary for the BBC.

David Beckham has recently returned from a trip to Brazil

David Beckham has recently returned from a trip to Brazil

Camping as in under canvas, not camping as in simply being David Beckham.

He’s finding out all about the Amazon, innit. Revelations from the sporting icon include the following; ‘It’s wet. It’s green. It’s slippy.’

And that’s just his tent...
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Is posing without make-up for charity the new posing without clothes  for charity? The answer seems to be yes.

For just when we have had enough nude charity calendars to see us through to the next millennium, a strange take-a-selfie-without-make-up campaign has had huge traction online.

Originally thousands of women were taking pictures of their nude faces and posting them online — but very few people were donating money to the breast cancer charity.

r £1 million in donations, that has now changed, but I still feel the trend is rather vain. Perhaps more to do with giving insecure women a reason to show off, rather than giving. A narcissistic opportunity to seek the validation of strangers?

I suppose that might be a fair exchange for a donation, but where do cancer charities go from here?
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My ex-neighbour Dame Vivienne Westwood — we once lived in the same block of flats in Clapham, South London — reveals that she does not shower or bathe every day. 

‘I just wash my bits and rush out in the morning and, more often than not, get in the bath after my husband Andreas.’ Which makes me wonder.

You can take the girl out of Clapham, but will she always be a bit Common?

And while saving water might make Viv feel virtuous, what about the people who have to stand next to her? Thank goodness I moved away.
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Revealing quote of the week from Joanna Lumley in the Radio Times, when asked if she was going to emulate ‘that nice Joan Collins’.

‘Joan is not nice,’ she snapped. Is it my imagination, or was there just a Cro-Magnon-period tectonic shift in showbiz she-pal relations?

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"but no one outside a pampered enclave of self-important fashion luvvies had ever heard of her" I think you will find that half tinsel town not only knew of her but were clients and / or friends. She seemed to have more of a future than her "boyfriend" though her business acumen seemed to have been badly off course.

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Yes Ella, but had you heard of her before she became the girlfriend of Mick Jagger. That's the point.

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Why on earth did you think writing this was acceptable and appropriate?

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Strange article from the paper that constantly rams z-listers and talent-free zones down our throats on a daily basis. What shop is Chantelle Houghton coming out of today?

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A rather vindictive article; as my late Mother would say: do not speak ill of the dead for they cannot defend themselves.

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To be honest,I'd never heard of L'Wren Scott until she started dating Jagger and then she was all over the place as a "designer" to the stars. Very sad that she felt hopeless and ended her life, she is at peace now so please let her rest peacefully.

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Bitchy article

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MEOW! What difference does it make if some people only identified her with Mick! Clearly many know of her work as a fashion designer too. It doesn't change the fact that she became hopeless enough, sad enough, and desperate enough to take her own life....and her friends and family are mourning her loss. This is one of the most catty and insensitive articles yet. If you don't have anything nice to say,especially about such a sad situation, best to say nothing at all.

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Jan Moir - other than writing spiteful headlines what are you actually famous for? Mean twisted journalism again!!!

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She had the ambition and pride to be more than girlfriend of. And with a fashion house less than 8 years old it is unfair to compare her level of renown to Donna Karan or Donnatella Versace who have been in the business for more than 30 years. I would certainly describe her as niche and specialising as do a number of other designers Jan Moir has never heard of either. L'Wren dressed the red carpet which is not something those actresses submitted to because she was Mick Jagger's girlfriend. Trust me. She had to work to be seen in her own right. Jan Moir punishes her for having a famous boyfriend who, yes, probably enabled her to do the fashion house as many a wealthy backer has done for other designers.

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