The Proust Questionnaire

How better to let readers get to know me than by filling out the Proust Questionnaire?

For those who don’t know, the Proust Questionnaire is a permanent fixture on the back page of every issue of Vanity Fair and each month features a different ‘person of interest’. Everyone from Karl Lagerfeld to Tina Fey has filled out the questionnaire and you can even fill it out yourself on the VF website, then find out which previous contributors gave answers similar to your own.

Apparently I’m 96% Eleanor Lambert and 77% Joan Didion, which sounds about right to me.

So, here goes.

What is your idea of perfect happiness?

- Being totally engrossed in a book or magazine.

What is your greatest fear?

- Never achieving anything worthwhile.

Which historical figure do you most identify with?

- Madame de Pompadour.

Portrait of the Marquise de Pompadour #2 - Francois Boucher (1756)

What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?

- I'm very easily distracted.

What is the trait you most deplore in others?

- Disloyalty and ignorance.

Which living person do you most despise?

- James Cordon and the blonde one from the Inbetweeners. 

What is your greatest extravagance?

- Smoking.

What is your favourite journey?

- I love take-off when on a plane. I always push myself back into the seat to exaggerate the speed/annoy bad flyers .

 

What do you dislike most about your appearance?

- My hair. Much like Miley Cyrus, it can't be tamed and I want to cut it.

Which words or phrases do you most overuse?

- "Totally", "vibe" and "aesthetic".

What is your greatest regret?

- Being an arse.

Who or what is the greatest love of your life?

- This jumper.

Balenciaga by Nicolas Ghesquiere A/W12

 When and where were you happiest?

- I dunno, I’m pretty happy most of the time.

Which talent would you most like to have?

- I'd love to play the Violin or speak Japanese fluently.

What do you consider your greatest achievement?

- Being a strong, independent, woman who don't need no man.

If you were to die and come back as a person or thing, what do you think it would be?

- Spongebob.

What is your most treasured possession?

- My ever-expanding magazine collection.

What do you regard as the lowest depths of misery?

- Failure.

Where would you like to live?

- London, Paris or Tokyo. 

What is your favourite occupation?

- Reading magazines, watching movies and listening to music.

What is your most marked characteristic?

- My sunny disposition or my "spaciness".

What do you most value in your friends?

- Loyalty, intelligence and a sense of humour.

Who are your favourite writers?

- Nabokov, Tolstoy and Woolf.

Who is your favourite hero of fiction?

- Orlando from Woolf’s novel of the same name (Oh, Tilda).

Who are your heroes in real life?

- Nicolas Ghesquiere, Cindy Sherman and Pedro Almodovar.

What is it that you most dislike?

- Buses.

How would you like to die?

- Are you threatening me?

What is your motto?

- Can pretending to flip my hair be a motto?

So there you have it. Who knew Joan Didion was a Spongebob fan?

Okay, so the answers I gave on the interactive quiz were slightly different, but not too far off.

Anyway, it’s totally fun to do and I imagine I’ll look back on these answers one day and think “what an arse”.

Don’t worry. Now that the formalities are out of the way I’ll actually get to writing about fashion and stuff. Hopefully.

G’BYE.