Tuesday I arrive outside Chelsea football ground at 7.25 and call the agency. Two young women, Tia and the other I never manage to get her name, step out into the morning sunshine. The louche, energetic, smiling young women immediately jump on the scooters and start messing around, allowing me to photograph them. I can’t help wondering how such young women can afford to stay in such an expensive flat. They are a happy pair, so I ask them if the flat is theirs, or if they rent it. They laugh at the thought and tell me how it belongs to the agency. All the houses and flats we collect the women from belong to the agencies.
We’re off! Tearing through the sunshine and traffic to Brick Lane and outside the exhibition hall we were at yesterday. Our precious cargo leaps off our bikes giggling and asking enthusiastically if we’re going to be driving them for the whole of fashion week. It was the most fun they’ve had so far. They’re amazed at how quickly they can sneak through the traffic and think the Dragster is particularly cool. Although the 125 twin is faster. The 180 has to work hard to keep up with the 125 when we’re riding solo, that bike is stupidly quick and it gives me another idea, which I’ll write about in another article, because I love the thought of welding two of those engines together to build a four cylinder 250!
Papparazzi surround the exhibition hall and they ignore our two models, as they fight their way through the throng of photographers. I’m called away to some high end shoe shop in Kingsland Road and am there in three minutes. The agency are thrilled at the speed of our deliveries…..so far. The bijou, scrubbed brick, shop is crammed with photographers, outnumbering the shoes by about twenty to one. I’ve never seen so few shoes in a shoe shop.Being sprinkled with spring rain, I collect Mariana from an alley at the side of the slick shop, as instructed. She looks concerned at the sky and I tell her not to worry, as I lift the seat and pull out wet weather clothing. I had picked up some see through plastic capes.
Mariane needs to go back to the venue in Brick Lane I’ve just come from. At the first set of lights she asks, timidly, if I can slow down. It’s at that moment I realise that I have been a bit over-excited and not everyone wants a roller coaster ride to work, like Tia. She’s quite tense and it occurs to me that she just doesn’t like bikes, so the journey is very, very sedate one. We’re still there within five minutes though. She jumps off, hands me her helmet, cape, thanks me and manoeuvres her way through the photographers. The photographers meander over to the bike and ask what it is and whether it’s fast. The agency call and I swallow a little guilt with a gulp as they ask me to slow down with the girls on the back, especially as I’m to collect Jasmine Guiness this afternoon. The woman’s voice lowers, as she tells me they’ve got her to agree to be photographed quickly on the bike when I collect her from the Natural History Museum. They tell me that she is a very hot model, these are the pictures that I’ve done this for and that I mustn’t upset her, or be late. I dash around the East end with Tia drop her off at the shoe shop with practically no shoes, in Kingsland Road and Kate Elson again, flying from one venue to another. One venue is a solitary Victorian house surrounded by the rubble of every building that once stood around it.
Tia needs to go to Chelsea and I’m asked to go to a house by Chelsea football ground, after dropping her off near the tube. I call the agency to tell them that I’m at the large Victorian house. They call me back, telling me to open the door and let myself in, as they can’t rouse any of the women there. Reluctantly, I anxiously amble through the steel gate, down the long path through the slightly dishevelled garden and carefully stick head in through the open, blue front door. “Hello” I yell in as non-threatening voice as I can muster. “Hello”. Nothing, so I scream, in an unintentionally high, loud, girly pitch, “Hello!” There’s a groan from upstairs. What if I find a blood streaked wall and a young woman’s body, or two of them with streaks of blood criss-crossing up the walls. Run! I should run! There’s another groan that almost sounds like a “Hello”, but might have been mistaken, maybe it was a gargle of someone bleeding to death through their cut throat. I let out another unintentionally girly “Hello.” A discernible reply comes down, instructing me to come up. Come up? She confirms to come up. Maybe it’s a honey trap and men are being murdered in Chelsea houses to feed Fashion Week. I ask, “Really?” She calls, a little clearer this time to definitely come up. Do I have to? I gingerly walk in, there’s living rooms to my left and right, large ones. I try not to look, but glimpse a floor covered with about a dozen sleeping bags in each room and no furniture. Some of the sleeping bags have people in them and others have been discarded for the glamour of the runway. I repeat, “Hello”. She yells to come up, so I continue past numerous rooms on three different floors, this is an enormous house. Every room looks like the morning after a party in a tee total student house, with not a bottle or can in sight. On the third floor stands a young American model with an enormous bag stuffed full of clothes. She asks if I can carry it down for her, so I explain that we can’t get it on the scooter, it’s just too big and heavy.
She calls the agency and explains, so they tell her that they’ll call her back. We stand on the landing, I really don’t want to be in this house, it feels wrong. The young American tells me how she’s been flown into the UK by the agency in the hope of work. They told her that if she’s not here, she can’t get the work. The agency will charge her for taxis, lodging, the flights, but they’ll take it out of her earnings. My phone rings and I’m told to leave her, she’ll get a taxi and to get to the city, pick up another model and get lunch so I’m not late for Jasmine Guiness.
I escape the house of my discomfort and race back to the Brick Lane exhibition hall for one quick journey, taking Tia from there to the shoe shop with very few shoes. At least my scooter not only looks like a two wheeled Ferrari, it has the horse power to match. Fancy having a shoe shop with not many shoes! Time for coffee and lunch as I slowly cruise down Shoreditch High Street, heads turning, staring at my insect-like machine. It rides so well, I keep forgetting that it looks so damn good. Just like a tailored suit. Through my steamy, rain soaked visor, surrounded by peaky cranes, I just point the Dragster and it noses it’s way to the croissant shop at Moorgate with little input, as if it knows where I want to go.
I finish eating and drinking at one and have to get to the Natural History Museum nice and early to get that picture of Jasmine Guiness and then get her to a railway arch by Liverpool Street Station. Easy- railway arch at Liverpool Street Station, I can find that. I’m half an hour early after a lazy ride from Moorgate on roads that have just about dried out. I call the agency and she comes out, stares at the scooter, looks at me and wonders if she really has to get on that thing. I tell her not to worry, that we’ll get there before two thirty when she’s due, and ask if I can just get a couple of shots of her on the scooter before we go? She melts a little, her stunning blue eyes widening as she smiles and agrees. Three more days of this and I’m going to be David Bailey! After about five minutes it’s quite obvious that I don’t know how to use my Nikon in the same way as the professional snappers she works with and she looks anxious. “Don’t worry, we’ll be there in twenty-five minutes easily,” I assure her. She gingerly puts on the crash helmet, complaining that it might ruin her hair for the show. The hair I can do nothing about, but getting her through the traffic and to the railway arch on time- I can do that.
We pick our way through heavy traffic and the heavens open and hurl down large gobs of rain. Luckily, suspecting it may rain, I gave Jasmine a plastic cape to wear. But the cape doesn’t protect her trainers or her trousers from getting absolutely soaked from the spray. I can feel her misery emanating from behind me and wish I could take all of the water that hits her, but nature just doesn’t work that way. So much for blasting through London traffic on the coolest scooter in the world with a top supermodel on the back in the blazing sunshine. I used to ride motorcycles all year round, through snow, rain, hail- anything. But as I’ve got older, I just can’t be bothered and any motorcycle is hard work to ride through miserable rain in London. I have to say, that the Dragster is one of the best behaved scooters I’ve ever ridden in any weather and so is the Formula 125 twin.
We arrive at the crossroads of Shoreditch High Street and Bethnal Green Road, by a small scrap of wasteland with crumbling railway arches, over which trains rumble in and out of Liverpool Street Station. I pull up at the lights and stare at the bit of land, looking for an entrance. Jasmine asks me what we’re doing here and tells me it doesn’t look like Brick Lane and then sighs at her sodden state. I call the agency and, as the sun comes out and glares cheekily at me off the shiny drenched road surface, they tell me that she needs to be at the exhibition hall in Brick Lane. Then we need to go to the railway arch. No problem, plenty of time. We set off over the steaming, glossy roads and get to the exhibition hall twenty minutes early. She rushes in past the photographers, some of whom recognise her and beg her for a photo, but she skips by them. I call the agency, tell her she’s in and the woman tells me to wait a moment. She comes back, speaking clearly, slowly and tells me that we will only have five minutes to get to the next venue and I have to get her there really quickly, the two shows nearly overlap. I assure them she’ll be there double-quick and not to worry.
After about half an hour there’s a thunderous booming sound of heavy bass from inside the exhibition hall. Then cheering, whistling and then clapping. After five minutes, Jasmine comes out, holding a black wig on her head with the palm of her hand. The heavens open again, I hand her the cape, which she slips on. I hand her the crash helmet, she says it’ll wreck her wig, but pulls it on anyway. We pile through the cascading rain, left at the top of Brick Lane and we’re at the crossroads, by the railway arches.The lights go green and we turn left onto Shoreditch High Street, crawling along, searching for an entrance to the confounded railway arches we can see behind the fence. There’s a tiny slip road, we turn down it and there are large signs telling us about the giant car wash. We get to the end of the slip road, by the car wash, but we can’t see any sign of a venue. I ask if she’s been to this place before and she tells me she had, but it’s not here. I ask at the car wash and they tell me there’s nothing past them. I call the agency and they tell me it’s down this slip road, I explain there’s nothing past the car wash, just wasteland. She asks someone in the office and they say it’s just there somewhere. We try turning back onto Shoreditch High Street to see if there’s another slip road, but there isn’t one. Jasmine’s getting upset, we’re late, my phone rings. It’s the agency wanting to know where we are. I explain that we can’t find it so we’ve gone ahead to find another slip road. She tells me it’s somewhere near where we were. We go back to the car wash at the end of the slip road, I stop and look around, the scooter engine vibrating below us and a large Mercedes speeds past us. i don’t even put my helmet on, I follow the Mercedes. It shoots past the end of the car wash to what looks like a dead end, but carries on into the darkness. I speed up and follow the car to a dark, almost invisible ramp, like in a multi storey car park. We travel up it, onto an upper level wide open waste land. Jasmine yells, “This is it”. There’s some crumbling old building on the upper level, with trains rumbling past out of Liverpool Street Station. We go to the far corner, she jumps off, hands me the helmet and cape and runs into the crumbling building.
I call the agency and am told to pick up Kate Elson from Brick Lane. I pick her up and take her to Battersea Park. At the numerous traffic lights we talk about the day and I ask how Fashion Week works for the models. With interludes of flying from one red light to the next ahead of everything else on the road, and with pedestrians and drivers all staring at the swooping curves of the Dragster, she tells me. This agency owns a massive property portfolio and flies models in from all over the world. They charge the models for accommodation, taxis, plane tickets, but pay them all up front and take the costs from the models’ wages. They own properties all over the world where there are big bucks fashion weeks, Tokyo, New York, Paris and during Fashion Weeks they make a fortune, as well as their commissions as well. This was back in 1999, so their property portfolio must be worth a fortune now.
I drop Kate off at Battersea Park and call the agency. They tell me that they won’t need us any more, but thank me for the work we’ve done. I got the pictures needed any way, which I’ve shared with you and never got used any way. I was going to get every women’s magazine editor, get them to ride a Dragster to work for thirty days and write about how it changed their life and give them the pictures of the models. However, once agreed, in his wisdom, the boss of Italjet UK didn’t want to pay for a days training and wet weather clothing for the editors, so the project was shelved, I own the photos and I thought I’d share it with you good folk. A big thank you to the agency and to the models who were kind enough to allow me to photograph them.
As for the scooter, already the Gilera Runner has become a classic and the Italjet Dragster is similar in cost, but far more rare and a much better bike when it comes to styling and handling. However, they were appallingly slung together by the factory and suffered with a shoddy build quality. Yet it is still a total classic and a wonderful investment to own one of these rare beasts, whether stock or customised. It’s one of the most beautiful scooters in the world.
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[…] I drop Kate off at Battersea Park and call the agency. They tell me that they won’t need us any more, but thank me for the work we’ve done. I got the pictures needed any way, which I’ve shared with you and never got used any way. I was going to get every women’s magazine editor, get them to ride a Dragster to work for thirty days and write about how it changed their life and give them the pictures of the models. However, once agreed, in his wisdom, the boss of Italjet UK didn’t want to pay for a days training and wet weather clothing for the editors, so the project was shelved, I own the photos and I thought I’d share it with you good folk. A big thank you to the agency and to the models who were kind enough to allow me to photograph them. If you would like to see more photos of the models on these stunning scooters, then go to the blog on my site at The Motorcycle Broker Here. […]