For six decades now, Nicky Haslam—often called “the best-connected man in Britain”—has found himself bang in the center of everything. This is something that’s made thumpingly clear to me as I sit with him outside Clarke’s restaurant in Notting Hill. The restaurant is closed, but Nicky knows the owner and she has put a table out for him.
The moment comes during an excited tangent about Jeremy King’s plans to reopen La Caprice. Out of nowhere a fight breaks out on the sidewalk, just a few feet away from us. “Come here and say that to my fucking face, you prick!” screams a dog walker to a cyclist over some unseen lapse in etiquette. As things begin to heat up, Haslam’s phone starts to ring. It is, of all people, Bryan Ferry. “Ooh, Bryan,” coos Haslam, calm as anything, “there’s gonna be a dogfight!”
Haslam is 84 and, despite requiring the aid of a stick to help him get about, is still immaculately put together. Today he’s in a corduroy suit and a Levi’s shirt, his white hair streaked at the front with a wide black swoop that he applied himself with eyelash dye. “Eylure, it’s called,” he says of his favored brand. “It’s the only good one.”
This is only the most recent of looks in an entire lifetime of them. According to his old friend David Bailey, Haslam “invented the 60s” by being the first person in London to dress in an even vaguely “swinging” manner. Then, at the turn of the century, he switched things up again, by getting himself a facelift and dying all his hair black, apparently in an attempt to look more like Liam Gallagher, of the band Oasis. “I also remember knowing that I was the first person ever to wear punk clothes, in Arizona in the 60s,” he says, so we should probably add that to the list, too.
Perhaps the thing that makes Nicky Haslam a true Londoner, however, is the fact that he isn’t necessarily here all the time. A lot of his week is spent in the Cotswolds, in a pavilion on an estate belonging to “some beloved friends” (Lord and Lady Bamford, owners of Daylesford Organic). “I come here when I need to, for a party or a meeting or an exhibition or something,” he says. “But that could change, now that London’s revving up so much.”
What’s the cause of the revving?, I ask. Are we still bouncing back from lockdown? “We’ve forgotten lockdown,” he huffs, in the form of an instruction. “We don’t talk about it. It’s very common to talk about lockdown.”
“I was the first person ever to wear punk clothes.”
Which brings me neatly to Nicky Haslam’s third act. Although he’s been an art director, a newspaper columnist, and an interior designer to the stars—he has just launched a new furniture range, the Autobiographical Collection, with Colette van den Thillart—he is now arguably best known for his tea towels. Once a year, Haslam makes a long list of everything he happens to find common and prints it onto tea towels, which he sells for $34 ($46 if you want yours signed).
Over the years, “Things Nicky Haslam Finds Common” have included awards ceremonies, the Henley Regatta, loud laughter, and loving your parents. His latest towel has just gone on sale. Our chat takes place before the official unveiling, but he reads me the list from his phone anyway. One of the items deemed common this year—needing house keys—almost makes me fall off my chair laughing. “Jeremy Clarkson suggested that one,” he whispers with glee.
Haslam wouldn’t consider himself nostalgic. “As Gertrude Stein said, ‘One must be modern,’” he declares. But lately he has found his mind wandering back. “I see London changing so much. There are things that were so, so wonderful about it that have disappeared.”
His earliest memories are of barrage balloons floating above the Blitz-ravaged London skyline, and he talks lovingly of all the things that he misses about the city. “You could get a cab for the morning for five pounds in the 50s,” he reminisces, “and I miss the ease with which you could do anything. You now have to book everything. You have to book to see exhibitions. This ridiculous Chanel show at the V&A is booked up until February. It’s ridiculous. You should be able to walk into these things.”
The thought clearly stays with him, because the next day he writes me an e-mail. It reads: “Don’t have nostalgia per se, but in some way life THEN was carefree, now it’s careful. All imposed by THEM.” And if that happens to sound slightly conspiratorial, it shouldn’t be a surprise. Haslam cheerfully and openly describes himself as a conspiracy theorist. “Not on the level of rigging the election,” he’s careful to point out, “but romantic ones. I believe in aliens, totally.”
If modern London is an irritant, at least it isn’t modern New York. “Unlivable,” he sniffs. “New York in the 60s was paradise, but now everyone’s sleeping rough on the street. It’s dangerous.” What’s the source of the city’s decline? “I think it’s just the general anger of America,” he notes forlornly.
There was a time—a period of around five decades—when Nicky Haslam would be invited to every party in town, regardless of who was throwing it. However, although he’s planning to attend the World of Interiors party at the Serpentine after our interview, his life now seems to be more about the parties that he misses. “I didn’t go to Mick Jagger’s party. I didn’t go to Jerry Hall’s party.”
Not that this is a slight. “Mick’s a very old friend,” he says. “I like the very young and the very old, but I don’t often keep up with old friends. They’re such bores, always complaining that they can’t get the bus to go the right way up Regent’s Street.”
And with that, Nicky Haslam pops on a pair of mirrored aviators, grabs his walking stick, and, as a show of defiance to all those who haven’t been able to keep up with him over the years, hops on a bus and disappears into the city.
Stuart Heritage is a Kent, U.K.–based Writer at Large at AIR MAIL and the author of Bedtime Stories for Worried Liberals