Everything is immersive now. Theatre. Art. Film. The sea. And now bands, for this week saw a lucky few, incredibly chic people entering into a total immersion in Duran Duran world. It was an event to launch their new fragrances with Xerjoff NeoRio and Black Moonlight, but really this was a fans’ dream come true, a step back into 80s Birmingham and the famed Rum Runner, where Duran Duran first took to the stage.
The invitation was was to attend Lost City, and came with a visa issued by ‘lost citizenship bureau’, alongside a flyer to the Rum Runner. The invite said we were asked to attend ‘glam’, in red and black, and to remain silent upon arrival. The London Standard managed none of these, bar attending. That was enough.
A man on the door in a fedora and rouge lipstick let us into the Rum Runner doorway. I sensed he recognised a kindred spirit in me, someone with elan, a certain eroticised glacial cool, a rakish intellectual daring. “Oh just get in,” were his welcoming words. Was that a tut my way? Couldn’t have been.
Down a metal staircase I went with my group - all supermodels - a cold hard light shining up from below like the Deneuve/Bowie vampire film The Hunger. I was hungry. Not for blood, for canapes. I hadn’t eaten. But I digress. We entered our first room proper of lost city.
And there was sat Simon Le Bon.
I found myself turning into a cartoon, rubbing my eyes and pinching myself. Simon Le Bon remained. Yes it was really Simon Le Bon, sat at a dressing table and scribbling words onto pieces of paper.
I was sat beside him. He didn’t look at me, being heavily in character as the scribe of lost city. But we breathed the same air for a few seconds in silent kinship which felt like an intimate moment he wouldn’t forget in a hurry. Perhaps I was projecting.
Next we entered a room with none other than John Taylor sprawled on a bed strumming his bass, with two new supermodels cavorting semi-naked around him. It felt like an intrusion. But that was just the start.
I was moved too far into the room by the crush of the group and became locked in an awkward dance with the male model. I was surprised and embarrassed by the audience participation but swivelled my hips gamely. Turned out, he was just trying to get past me to, yknow, cavort with the other performer. I nodded to Taylor and left. One of us was way more louche than the other.
Back up some stairs and the pounding sound of Girls on Film. Here was Nick Rhodes!
Doing a photoshoot with all the visitors passing through. Unbelievably cool people struck poses ahead of me. When it was my turn, I stood in front of Nick and posed like an 80s footballer in a Panini sticker album. At least I had the right era. He asked me to do something which I didn’t catch. I added an extra inch to my smile, which probably wasn’t what he wanted, but mercifully I was moved on by more supermodels.
Next we were ushered before some double doors behind which bass thudded. A cyberpunk woman held our attention, proclaimed “Welcome to Paradise!” and flung open the doors.
And here it was, the nightclub from your dreams. And from almost any film in the 80s, from The Terminator to Desperately Seeking Susan, where the lighting is harsh and strobing, the hair is high and angular, and the cheekbones are harsh, strobing, high and angular all at once.
The cast from the rooms cavorted on the dancefloor, the actual band among them, and it really was a breathless sensation of stepping back into a much cooler era.
The band took to the stage for a bow - sadly, not a set, my one gripe - and then departed to dance some more. A few cocktails later and it was easy to feel like not just a throwback to a lost era but the start of a whole new exciting one.
Nick Rhodes explained the band’s move into perfumes by saying, “Well, we are in the business of heightening people's senses - particularly with sound and vision, both at our concerts, and with video. I think artists have an innate desire to communicate, to connect with people and, in our case, to make people feel good. There's enough misery in the world, so if we can find a way to bring people a little happiness, even if it's for a short period of time, it's worthwhile.
We've approached this very much as if we had been perfumers instead of musicians. We just applied ourselves to the creation of a perfume in the same way that we would apply ourselves to the creation of a new song, or in putting together a live show. We’re thinking, how can we make this the most enticing, exciting product? How can we make people feel good through the experience of what we're trying to create?”
The perfume handed to me on the way was called Black Moonlight and I’m currently showering in it. Nick Rhodes said, “Black Moonlight is dark, mysterious and enticing. It's a little bit like that beautiful velvet corridor as you're entering a nightclub. The anticipation of what's going to be beyond it. Then it opens out into this intoxicating, glamorous scent.”
Which is pretty much how the evening went. Can we do it all again please? This time I’ll dress better, boys...
