My style signifier is a corduroy suit. I like keeping up with the latest style; when I was younger I loved looking like Elvis Presley, or James Dean, or a cowboy. I only bought a ranch in Arizona because I wanted to wear the gear. Then I was a Hells Angel – had the whole kit. But corduroy suits have been a constant. I quite like the shabby look – one of my favourites is Brooks Brothers, off eBay. And I always wear my Russian wedding rings. Two are from H Samuel, one is from Mexico. They’re junk.
The last thing I bought and loved was a most extraordinary carpet in a local shop in the countryside. It’s a fake 18th-century design, probably made in the ’20s in Portugal or somewhere, in these wonderful colours. I call it Proust’s skin colour, a sort of mauve-grey-green. In the four corners are four vast swans thrashing about. What I’ll do with it, I don’t know. It doesn’t fit in my house. But it was only 700 quid, and I couldn’t resist.
The place that means a lot to me is Turkey. I’m not really mad about the east. I love chinoiserie but I don’t really like Chinese architecture, and I’ve never wanted to go to Japan. For me, aesthetic taste sort of ends at the Bosphorus – a slight mixture of east and west. I find Turkey the most extraordinarily uplifting place to be in. There’s always something new and different.
And the best souvenir I’ve brought home is from the Louvre gift shop in Paris. I was in there buying postcards, I suppose, and there was this pile of white plaster books with a light inside. It’s the best thing ever. I also love ashtrays from restaurants. I got a pair of bronze shell ashtrays the first time I was ever in Istanbul from a restaurant called Urcan. I often pinch them. You’re supposed to: it’s an ad.
I sometimes listen to podcasts, but often I turn them on and think, “Oh God, this is getting boring.” I did Bella Freud’s podcast recently. That was fun. Bella, with that very calm voice, asking you rather naughty things. But it sounds like I’d taken too much cocaine. I’m shouting. Did you notice?
The most stylish person I’ve ever seen in my life was Cole Porter. He was old and in pain by the time I knew him, and he was sort of lonely and unhappy, yet still very bright and glittering. I adored him. Two men would bring him into the room and sit him on the sofa, then they’d perfect the crease in his trousers and make sure his shoes were at the right angle. Then he’d turn and say, “Do you want a Martini?” He was the ultimate – and his music is style personified.
The biggest interior decorating cliché is bookcases either side of the fireplace. So boring. Oriental rugs, yuck. Shutters. And I hate chandeliers in the middle of rooms – I always put them in the four corners of a big room because if they’re in the centre you feel ludicrous with this thing hanging over you.
The best gift I’ve given recently was a pair of 1810 porcelain shell-shaped ink wells, but the shells are made to look like feathers standing on gilded bases. They are ravishing. I got them from a man called Adam Calvert Bentley, who has a cave of beautiful rare antiques in Battersea. I think you have to give more expensive presents as you get older. It’s no good saying, “I’ve brought you a joke.” It’s all right when you’re 12. But come on.
And the best gift I’ve received is a Valentine’s card from Jilly Cooper. It’s a card of a dog, of course. It has a sweet message inside but I spent hours deciphering it: Jilly has the worst handwriting.
I can’t resist an old flea market. Usually they’re filled with ghastly things like hearts made of wickerwork with “love” written on them. Very Meghan. But there’s quite a good one in Chipping Norton where I find things. I never haggle. If I say “Nicky Haslam”, they say, “Of course”, and give a discount.
I laugh at the antics of a black Pekinese puppy. Zephyr was my first and I’ve had about 10 or 15 since then, all beginning with Z, but Zephyr keeps coming back when I run out of ideas. They’re the most unaggressive dogs, they love everybody. I think the only point of dogs is to make you laugh. That’s why I loathe Labradors. Worse: whippets. They don’t exude any kind of fondness.
In my fridge you’ll always find Lipton iced tea. I live on it. Kraft cheese slices – I worship cheese slices. Bonne Maman violet fig yoghurt; anything violet, I’m up for, and anything fig, so it’s made for me. My Co-op has the strawberry and rhubarb Bonne Maman but it’s not the same. Raspberries. Roquefort. Gherkins. Capers. Frozen peas! I love a dish of peas in the evening.
The best way to spend £20 is on a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. The new Marlboro Touch are wonderful. When I was at Vogue, I smoked Pall Malls, and the jeweller Johnny [Jean] Schlumberger made me a case for them. Do you remember that ad “Come to Marlboro country”? I used to have those cigarettes called Eve, and say, “Come to Eve country.”
Do I believe in life after death? I don’t see much reason to be persuaded either way. I do believe in ghosts – I’ve seen one. I was in Venice, in the Gritti hotel, at about four in the afternoon. I was with a friend and suddenly we both said, “There’s a man walking through the room.” He was sort of 18th-century-looking, head turned away but a sharp silhouette. We got up, looked out of the window where he had walked, and there were the remains of a bridge to the next palazzo.
If I were a ghost, I’d haunt Elsie de Wolfe, the decorator. I’ve always worshipped her. She was a genius in creating what we really think of as decor. I own her visitors’ book from her Versailles villa with every single fucking name from 1900 to 1939: statesmen, musicians, Consuelo Vanderbilt, grandees, writers… And the visitors’ book from her house in Hollywood, which has every single movie star from Marlene Dietrich to Bette Davis! Page after page, drawings by Dalí and John Huston, comments: “I love you more than anybody, Louis B Mayer.” Sinatra, everybody is in this book. If I lost them I’d go mad.
I absolutely live in Primark. I buy everything there: underwear, shirts, jeans, sweaters. I once found an apricot chiffon dress that was an absolute copy of Chloé’s new collection – £18. I bought it for a friend who hadn’t got a dress to wear for a party and she looked amazing.
An indulgence I’d never forgo is six squares of Cadbury Bournville dark chocolate, right before going to sleep. People say, “This is the best chocolate I’ve ever had,” about some ghastly bar with bits of nuts. Forget it. Bournville. Every night. I snap four squares off and I think, “That’ll be enough.” And then I think, “Oh, just two more.”
The most memorable party I’ve ever been to was the one the Queen gave after Charles and Diana’s wedding at Claridge’s. Kings, queens, film stars, Douglas Fairbanks; it was an extraordinary sight to see. They’d rigged up a big screen playing the wedding, and all these people like Mrs Reagan were pointing: “Oh, there I am!” and “What is she wearing?” The Lester Lanin band played – only the Queen would get proper American dance music – and she started the dancing with Prince Philip. I danced with the Infanta of Spain. It was wonderful.
An object I’d never part with used to be a letter from Nancy Lancaster, the famous decorator, congratulating me on a room. But Barry Humphries came for a drink once and brought me one of his privately printed, limited-edition collections of his favourite poems. He wrote in it: “To Nicky, with love and admiration.” The poems are all ones I don’t know; they’re ravishingly beautiful.
The best ringtone for a phone is a barking dog, because if it goes off during a memorial service, people don’t turn around.
The song guaranteed to make everybody dance is “Mame” from the musical Mame. “Da da da da, bah da da daaaa” – everybody gets up and dances. But nobody is a good dancer these days. When I lived in St Tropez in the 1950s there was a hurdy-gurdy organ on the top of a hill that played these wonderful tunes that had different steps. You had to learn them before you were allowed on the floor and you had to dance barefoot. After two nights your feet were like bacon, but it was such fun. I knew a lot of dancers in Europe – I remember dancing with Margot Fonteyn. Absolutely hopeless. No sense of rhythm whatsoever.
The artist whose work I would collect if I could is the Swiss artist Jean-Étienne Liotard. He was a wonderful painter but it’s his beautiful drawings that I love most. Andy Warhol was a wonderful draughtsman too, which people don’t understand. He gave me some, and of course I sold them, silly me. When you’re broke, what do you do? Sell your Andy Warhols.
The key to singing well is to keep phlegm in your throat. Lubricates it. Smoking helps too: all opera singers smoke. Callas smoked like a train. I’ve just recorded a CD of myself singing Cole Porter-type songs and I’m only prepared to give it away because a man who lives near me in the country, Michael Haas, who is the world’s expert on recorded music of the 19th and 20th century, sent it back saying, “Your voice is perfection – and you can reach top C, which very few singers can.” One song I left out was “(I Wonder Why) You’re Just in Love” by Irving Berlin from Call Me Madam. It’s one of the greatest songs ever written.
I love anything fake. In my flat I’ve got two plastic bird scarers, spray-painted white, and people always ask, “Where did you get those porcelain birds?”
I can’t bear having white hair. I’m naturally mouse, and the choreographer Freddie Ashton once told me, “Stay mouse, dear, all the great beauties are mouse.” And it’s true, all the great beauties were mouse.
In an alternate life I would have been the first Mrs Elvis Presley. When he first hit, you couldn’t believe it, the beauty of the man.
A favourite book I’ve read recently is Precipice by Robert Harris, about this affair between Prime Minister Asquith and Venetia Stanley. Venetia Stanley’s daughter and her daughter are great friends of mine, so I was fascinated. He writes so vividly without pushing it. He just gets the picture right into your mind.
My latest grooming discovery is Liha Beauty’s Idan face and body oil. It’s made of tuberose. You can put it anywhere – I put it on my face if I remember. Best smell ever. Liha Beauty Idan Oil, £42
My barber of choice is called Michael and he’s in the barber shop in Kenway Road, round the corner from where I live in London. Fifteen quid, half an hour, perfection. Peter, the old man who runs the shop, is obsessed with Marilyn Monroe, so I’m always finding odd pictures for him to add to his booth. I met Marilyn once. I was working at Vogue and she had to give picture approval on some photographs, so I went to her hotel. She opened the door looking so awful: dirty tracksuit, hair over her face, no make-up. She was so sweet and polite, yet wrecked. She put her finger through the pictures she didn’t like and ticked the ones she did. She died three weeks later.
I’ve suddenly rediscovered red bell peppers. Flora, my darling assistant, gives her children sliced red peppers for lunch. Never thought about it before, but it’s the most delicious thing in the whole world. What else? Hadda Brooks, a 1940s singer with a wonderful voice who has been totally forgotten. That ghastly Ella Fitzgerald took over – she’s too perfect, nothing’s ever wrong, I can’t bear her. With Callas, your heart is in your mouth: can she make it? But Ella swoons.
The thing I couldn’t do without I’m afraid, is Flora. She’s worked with me for 35 years and she looks after me like I’ve never been looked after by anybody. She’s unrufflable.
The best recipe for a dinner party as Diana Cooper once said, is too much to drink and a chocolate pudding. It’s absolutely true; it’s all people remember. I do the best chocolate marquise in the world. You know the Sachertorte in Vienna? Well, I had a wonderful chef in Arizona called Star, who made this Sachertorte and said, “But why don’t we leave out the cake part and just have two layers of chocolate with the jam in the middle?” We did, and it was the best ever.
I never intended to collect pomegranates but for some reason people seem to give them to me. The first one I bought, because I loved it as an object, is an 18th-century Persian one made of metal with inscribed writing. I buy them in Turkey in junk shops. Some people think I want velvet ones – eurgh. I won’t have a bit of material, it’s got to be hard. Now I have about 12.
My drink of choice if I don’t mind getting a bit drunk, is a Gibson Martini with onions and onion juice. You have to have that gin called White Satin, which is very hard to get. And tiny pearl onions, about four. And not in the Martini glass, in a tumbler.
My favourite hotel is Jasper Conran’s Villa Mabrouka in Tangier. It is sublime. I went last year, and it rained nonstop for eight days and even that didn’t stop me thinking the hotel was divine. One evening I went back to my room to fetch something during dinner and two women were on the bed ironing the sheets. That doesn’t happen much. Most new hotels are awful – you can’t tell if you’re at Cheltenham Race Course, Terminal Four at Heathrow or in a hotel.
The best piece of advice I ever received was “take the dare”. It’s Gertrude Stein, I believe. She said, one must dare to be happy. And Diana Cooper who said, “Say yes, you can always leave.” She, like me, wasn’t afraid of balls. Diana loved adventure, she loved driving up people’s driveways. And her trick was to say, “Is this Lord so-and-so’s house?” They’re so flattered you think they’re a lord, they say, “No, but do come in.”