I am Jodie Harsh, and incase you haven’t realised, I use the medium of drag to express myself. Wigs, make-up, costume and high heels are vehicles for my creative expression, and have been for the past five years.
Drag is not something I thought I would fall into. I was raised not by fairy godmothers but in a stage school environment, and later did a degree in styling and Fashion journlism at London college of Fashion. Needless to say, I was always always going to end up doing something immensely creative. I don’t feel you could get any more creative than being a drag queen.
By day, I walk amoung you dressed-down. You wouldn’t look twice at me in the street. I wear jeans, converse trainers and a baseball cap. By night, you wouldn’t be able to stop yourself from staring at me. I wear my hair higher than Amy Winehouse, my rouge like a tart’s blush and my shoes stacked tall. And I love it.
The object I have chosen to show you is not particularly noteworthy. In fact, it’s an object that at least half the room posseses in their bathroom, if not more. It’s a razor. I use it to prepare my face for the transformation process – the application of make-up. Since under all this make-up I’m a boy, I need to remove that annoying, unnessary matter called facial hair. I hate beards and would never even kiss anyone how has one. I’ve seen a few in here tonight, so sorry boys, you’re out of luck.
Shaving is the catalyst of my transformation process.
Shaving is a chore. I don’t know a single man who enjoys it. I get through so many disposable razors. I should endorse Gillette Mach three rather than a makeup brand. Once my face is smooth and I’ve covered in after shave balm to prevent nicks and cuts, I need to leave my skin alone for an hour before I can apply my make-up. The foundation I use is a thick, oil based product that would irritate the open pores should I apply it immediately.
The make-up process is my therapy. It’s sixty minutes of solitude before I leave the house for a wild night out DJ’ing at a club or hosting a party. Locked in my room with no music and just a double espresso for company, I position a single spot light on my face and sit cross-legged on the floor in front of a mirror. After my foundation, I apply a bucket load of facepowder. This blots out the sweat when you’re working it on the dance floor.
I shave my eye brows off so that my face is a blank canvas on which to blend colours smoothely. Eye brows are drawn on an inch higher than where my natural ones should be. I look a bit like Edith Piaf before I caary on with the rest of my make-up. The base applied, I work on the contouring. Blusher gives me cheek bones I wasn’t born with, highlighter gives me a slender button of a nose. Next up is the colour – the bright eyes, the stained lips, the mask that slips on to create a charactature of the person I feel inside.
Finally, the hair. Yes, it is my hair. I bought it. My wig is the only hair I allow above my neckline.
You see, make-up is an art form and the greatest masquerede known to man. It takes a lot of time and effort, and takes almost as long to scrub off at the end of the night.. But the worst part of the ritual is the fucking shaving. For Christmas I’m asking santa for electrolosys.
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( 2.9 / 200 )I’ve watched the Brit awards on TV every year since I was a wee nipper. I distinctly remember Michael Jackson being flashed at by Jarvis Cocker during Earth Song due to the eccentric legend grotesquely depicting himself as Christ, and Madonna’s flowing platinum wig covering her face because the wind machine was too powerful during Bedtime Stories. The Brits is like the UK version of the Grammy’s and it’s one of the biggest dates in the showbiz calendar, and with me being a pop culture fanatic and music obsessive, how could I refuse a ticket to go? Needless to say, I had a blast. Here’s my no-holes-barred report from the evening.
7PM
The traffic around Earls Court is an absolute nightmare. Here’s my friend Henry and I looking impatient in the back of the car while we’re sitting stationary on Gloucester Road. Henry is the designer of the cult London fashion label House of Holland and we’re old friends. We were given a pair of tickets courtesy of St Tropez tan for a table on the main floor, near where all the performers and nominees were seated. When we finally made it into the main forecourt of the arena, we skipped the red carpet as we’d heard via texts from friends inside that the dinner had already started being served. I was ravenous – too hungry and stressed out to give quotes to journalists and pose for pictures outside. I bet that surprises you. But when I’m hungry, I’m not happy.
8pm
With dinner over and champagne well on the way to making everyone in the building drunk, Mika takes to the stage for an amazing performance, joined half-way through by the larger-than-life Beth Ditto for a duet of Standing in the way of Control, my favourite song of last year. There are two stages so that one can get set up for the next band while the other is in action. My highlight of the night was Rihanna singing with the Klaxons (the most random but brilliant collaboration ever) and, of course, Mark Ronson performing Valerie with my mate Amy. You might have heard of her. She’s got a great voice and bigger hair than me. I couldn’t tell you who won a single award as I was busy chatting away with everyone I was seated with. By the end of the show, when Paul McCartney was doing his medley, I was table hopping between Girls Aloud’s section and outside smoking fags with the T4 crew and ignoring the old geezer on stage. The Brits are all about getting drunk and table hopping, I discovered!
10pm
On to the first party of the night. We hit the Universal bash at The Hemple hotel in West London with Sophie Ellis-Bextor and her husband Richard Jones from The Feeling. They played a wicked set at Circus a few weeks back and have since become firm friends. The cocktails were flowing, and the security guards were really fit. I got locked in a toilet and couldn’t get out for ages. The randomness of the evening continued with Mika introducing me to Andrew Lloyd Weber before Tess Daley dragged Vernon Kaye away from me. He wasn’t even flirting!
1am
I’d heard on the grapevine that Mark Ronson had a secret party going on at the Notting Hill arts Club. I was there in a New York minute. It was nearing kick-out time by the time I arrived but we were allowed to stay for a lock-in. Rihanna rocked up for dance with Mark and I, and then sung happy birthday to me and the whole room joined in. Is that not the most exciting birthday present ever?! I kept shouting umbrella-ella-ella at her and I didn’t get the hint that it was starting to grate. Note to self – shut up Jodie.
4am – I had somehow ended up in Mark Ronson’s hotel suite with a big posse, but the night was definitely ending when my hang over actually already started kicking in. Feeling tired and emotional, it was time to hit my bed. What a night. Next year I want to the win Best New Female award.
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( 3 / 163 )London Fashion Week came and went in a bit of a tornado this week. Its a bi-annual calendar of events, shows, presentations and parties, all tailored to promote something that i feel very passionate about: clothes. I'm not too keen on the term 'fashion' as an adjective or noun. It, to me, signifies something that is worn and loved for six months before being discarded in place of the 'next big thing'. However, the fashion business is one of the biggest industries in the western world and its power cannot be denied or ignored.
I tend not to follow fashion as a rule. I'd like to think I have a personal style which I've tailored. And 'style' is something London does very well. Designers that break the mould and think outside the box grab my attention. Designers such as Basso and Brooke, Gareth Pugh, Vivienne Westwood, Jean Pierre Braganza....all of which showed their next-season's wears to teams of press, buyers, fashionistas and celebrities this week in London.
Partying is what I do best, and this week was no exception. In fact, I was out so much that I seem to have developed a bout of flu. I'm knocking back Lemsip shots as we speak.
Bucker threw a party to celebrate the launch of their new store in E2, which the Padingtons played at. Agyness Deyn's hot boyfriend showed his talents off. Yum. Fresh out of a stint in rehab and sweeping the floor at the Grammy's, Amy Winehouse joined me for a game of pool and a DJ set at Shoreditch House. The CD decks weren't working (stressss!!!!) but luckily the Wino had brought vinyl, so the beehive saved the day. She's looking tanned and she's put on weight. It was great to see her - it had been too long.
The Mulberry party ROCKED on Thursday. The tremendous Hot Chip performed live in the packed-out store on Bond Street. Their new album is dance perfection, as far as I'm concerned. Adelle, the singer everyone is tipping for the top, joined me for the evening. She's a true star - she's talented yet she keeps it real. She couldn't pronounce Christian Louboutin and it only added to her appeal. I can't wait to see her at the BRIT Awards on Wednesday.
Several other parties and shows ensued, and I spent the weekend recovering. I need an industrial strength pedicure and a six hour massage!! Enjoy the pics below, just a few highlights of the week.
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( 3 / 188 )A fresh new blog from me is a rare occurrence these days, partly due to my weekly column, but I just had to tell you about the most incredible experiences I've had in the past few weeks.
My Grandfather passed away a year ago, and left me some money to use on whatever I wished for. I could have bought myriad shoes or gotten very drunk very often, but I'm in a fortunate position in which I'm satisfied with the amount of material belongings I posses, and I doubt he'd approve of my dizzy nights out. Instead I bought an experience of a lifetime.
I left drizzly London behind with Jo, one of my closest friends, and flew to South Africa for pampering and animal encounters. January is always a quiet month in club / media land, and December is always exhausting, so I didn't feel guilty about checking into a spa hotel in Cape Town, getting massaged every morning and checking out the city's most delicious restaurants by night, with a helicopter tour of the city thrown in as an extra treat. That freaked me out somewhat, especially when there was a technical fault while we flew over the sea! We lived to tell the tale, and booked a table at the Cape Town Ritz for dinner that evening to celebrate our survival, as we'd heard there's a revolving restaurant at the top. We assumed dressing smartly was de rigueur there, so we went shopping for shoes, shirts and I even bought a Louis Vuitton cravat. As we pulled up to the hotel dressed to the nines, we were rather alarmed to find what was clearly not part of the Paris/ NYC/ London chain of luxury hotels, and what was clearly the ugly sister of the Holiday Inn in its place. After being greeted not by a top-hat toting doorman, but by an old lady mopping the lobby floor and shaking her fist at us for walking over her work, we dined among Americans in Hawaiian shirts and shorts and laughed until we were sick. Moments like that make the best memories. The food was average but it was the best night of our trip.
I have always been afraid of sharks, even when I'm paddling in Ibiza or Margate! I think I saw Jaws too often when I was younger. I have a theory that fears are there to be faced, so off we drove to an area a few hours outside Cape Town where the largest numbers of great white sharks in the world go to breed. I have no idea how I managed to go through with it, but I was zipped into a wetsuit, given breathing apparatus and jumped into a cage to be lowered under the ocean before I knew it. The shark that circled me for the duration of my dive was a female roughly the size of a car with a menacing stare and several rows of very sharp teeth. I actually felt quite safe in the confines of the cage, although my legs kept floating out through the gaps due to the buoyancy of my wetsuit. She didn't want to eat - or even bother - me, she was more interested in the fish heads that were being dangled on a line from the boat above to keep her in the area. It was a beautiful, euphoric experience. She had so much elegance. I forgot she was a killing machine. Sharks only attack humans by mistake, as we're not in their food chain. A surfboarder can look like a seal from below the water, but as soon as the shark takes a bite and realises that it's a human, it'll spit you back out, dead or alive.
A two-hour flight and one hour car transfer away from Cape Town is Pumba Game Reserve, the most luxury, exquisite and comfortable place I have ever stayed. The real wild in Africa is a thing of the past, besides Botswana and parts of the Serengeti. Everything else is enclosed in hundreds of huge (and I mean REALLY huge) game reserves surrounded by electric fences to keep endangered species in and ivory poachers out. Even Kruger National Park, which fences in millions of animals in a space the size of Wales, is big enough for the wilder beast to migrate within.
Pumba boasts a small hamlet of private thatched-roof bungalows with outdoor showers overlooking the bush, and four staff to every guest. In stark contrast to the cities of the western world, it seems most people are genuine and friendly. When you say thank you and they tell you 'it's a pleasure', they really mean it.
After the sun set on the first night we stayed there, I looked up at the sky to see Venus and Mars, and the cloud-like Milky Way and constellations such as Taurus and Hercules, literally TWINKLING, almost like fireworks. You can't experience that from Primrose Hill. You can even spot satellite dishes orbiting the atmosphere if you have a telescope to hand. The best things in life really are free.
Going on safari trips out into the bush are not like day trips to the zoo. The animals are wild – never handled and never fed. Pure nature. Because of this there are rules – if you encounter a heard of rhino or an elephant, don't stand in your vehicle, make too much noise or do anything to make them feel you are a threat. Much like the great white shark, we are not their prey. We are driving through their territory, and they deserve respect. At one point we encountered a pair of huge male lions basking in the sun. They clocked us, yawned, and got up to see what we were there for. At these safari destinations you're driven around in an open-topped 4x4. There are no glass windows. If lion wants to jump into vehicle, lion jumps into vehicle. Our ranger, Nerma, grew up in a tribe and has been around animals in the wild her whole life. She can tell if our presence is annoying the lions just by a glint in their eye. If it looks like one could switch and we risk being charged, she's already got her foot on reverse. Nothing has ever gone wrong on her safaris, and she's at one with the nature that surrounds her. Back to these lions – who happen to be brothers and can often be seen hanging out together. The king of the jungle decides to walk literally a meter away from my side, and I can feel its panting breath on my cheek. You can imagine how fast my heart is pounding. I stay still, avoid eye contact, and moments later he's moved back into the shade. I'm not a tasty antelope and I haven't pissed him off. An experience like that is completely humbling, and understandably quite emotional. Who needs drugs with something as amazing as that to make your head spin?
I feel very lucky, and my Granddad would have loved to have heard all about it. If you ever get the opportunity, get yourself to Africa. I've not come back a completely changed person, but it made me think about the great scheme of things.
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