Wylde For Liquor: Nightjar
Couture Cocktails by Keith Barker-Main
A seasonal rite, the launch of Nightjar’s latest list is to cocktail connoisseurs what the Paris couture shows are to minted mavens perched on gilt salon chairs with spindly legs (that’s the chairs and the designer-hungry, size zero dames, to be clear).
As baroquely accessorised as the late Anna Piaggi in her pomp, the fantastical dressed-up drinks at Edmund Weil and Rosie Stimpson’s award-winning Old Street dive deluxe will bring minimalists out in hives.
Propping up the bar, we ogle and giggle by turn as barman Antonio Pescatori puts together rinse after rococo rinse on a theme of "ancient herbalist and tribal traditions of old"; crazy confections that are products of an imagination as fertile and as febrile as Galliano on top form.
At ready-to-wear prices - less than the cost of a button chez Balmain - Nightjar delivers drama and entertainment in a collection more stylish than owt Olivier Rousteing has recently sent out.
