Sunday lunchtime: one minute it’s New York - then it’s Stirling, via Glasgow, for the next stop on the fashion carousel.  Model Kirsty Hume at Stirling Castle  I ride from the airport with a cabbie who knows next to nothing about fashion, but everything about Glasgow’s transport system.  The Radisson Hotel, where I’m headed for an overnight stay, apparently has a really tricky position in the city, difficult for dropping off because it’s right next to a bus-stop and a set of traffic lights. We spend a hilarious five minutes envisaging an ejector seat system for passengers with the cabbie slowing down long enough to toss his passenger out through the sunroof or shove him out the door (“might tear that designer label clothing, tho” he says with a cackle) and then eject the luggage on his second turn around the block.  The hotel is right between Glasgow’s Central Station and The Waterloo pub, which my driver informs me is a notorious hang-out for gays. ‘One night I was going past and they had Whitney Houston’s I Wanna Dance With Somebody” blaring out and they were all dancing with each other. I couldn’t help looking and then they all started waving at me. ‘Boys, I thought, at least close the doors.’  My room is pleasant, there’s an Internet connection and I see there’s also a swimming pool. I’m glad I bought my costume. I have ten minutes to change into my gladrags and then it’s off to Stirling Castle, courtesy of Bentley, which means I’m driven in an amazing silver Bentley, made as they all are, in Crewe. Apparently it has a top speed of around 200m.p.h. but I can’t imagine where you’d put it to the test with all the speed cameras these days. Perhaps sheiks in the Middle-East thunder through the desert at top whack?  It’s intriguing to be heading for Stirling. My grandmother was born nearby in a little hamlet called Blair Logie. She emigrated to New Zealand - where I was born - when she was in her twenties but she went back to Scotland once every year and right up until her death in her nineties referred to it as ‘the home country’.  I suspect Stirling Castle has not seen such finery fluttering over the flagstones since the courts of James 1 or Mary Queen of Scots.  Taffeta rustles, diamante and real rocks sparkle and silks and satins shimmer in the light of flaming torches as Scotland’s best-dressed gather for last night’s (Sunday) first-ever Scottish Fashion Award. There is tartan aplenty - mainly in the men’s kilts. One exception is Tara Gibson, the PR for the Scottish compan Lochcarron. She is wearing a spectacular full-length dress in gilt nail head-studded blue plaid, tethered with a gold ball necklace.  There is even a red tartan carpet for VIPs, who include Jack McConnell the First Minister for Scotland, the Stirling Lord Provost, Keith O’Brien and the cast of the soap ‘River City,’ which is regarded as the ‘EastEnders of the North.’  The founder of the event, Tessa Hartmann, glamorous in black and white Valentino, has organized the awards so Scotland can lay claim to its own distinct fashion identity.  “How often do we see a fashion photograph in a magazine, a model on the catwalk or a dress in a designer boutique and not realize that the photographer, the model or the designer is actually Scottish?” she queries.  It’s a good point. I had not realized, for example, that the designer behind Escada is a Scot, Brian Rennie, originally from Dundee, or that Sonia Rykiel’s creative director is another Scot, April Crichton. Others in fashion’s tartan army include Joe McKenna, one of the most influential stylists in the world, Jonathan Saunders, the print wizard, and the internationally renowned photographer, Albert Watson, who first met his wife of 45 years, Elizabeth, when they were six-year-olds at the Rudolph Steiner kindergarten in Edinburgh. All are there.  The event, sponsored by Edinburgh jewelers, Hamilton & Inches, is a heady mix of glamour, glitz, gossip - and pink champagne.  Kirsty Hume, who is married to Donovan’s son, the actor, Donovan Leitch, and is wearing a flowing black and cream Alice Temperley dress, wins Scottish Model of the Year title. Christopher Kane, the precocious talent whose shocking pink and black bondage-lingerie collection bought Central Saint Martins MA show to a stunning climax at London Fashion Week in February - and who now works for Donatella Versace -is awarded Scottish Young Designer of the Year. Top retailer goes to USC, Jennifer Lang receives the cashmere prize and Joe McKenna the Communicator of the Year trophy. Lulu, in a McQueen tailcoat over jeans, is named Scottish Icon of the Year.  Style had always been important in her house, she says. As a little girl she remembered how her mother divided people into two camps - those with ‘bags of style’ and those with ‘nae style’.  Albert Watson, who will present a major collection of his landscapes, portraits, celebrity shots and fashion spreads at the forthcoming Edinburgh Festival, is appointed to the Scottish Fashion Awards Hall of Fame. And top honour of the night, Scottish Designer of the Year, is given to Jonathan Saunders, who is given his trophy - and promptly accidentally breaks it.  Former Miss Scotland Lois Weatherup, wearing a dress by Jonathan Saunders  I was privileged to be part of the judging panel which also included Alexandra Shulman, the editor of British Vogue; Jean-Marc Loubier of LVMH Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy, the French luxury group; Alastair Johnston of IMG, the world’s leading model agency; and the irrepressible New York ‘queen of the night life’, Amy Sacco.  Amy, whose nightclub, Bungalow 8, is New York’s hottest spot for the party crowd, is hoping to open a London branch later this year.  Following the awards, there’s a black-tie dinner in the castle’s Great Hall with haggis, neaps and tatties to start and Scottish salmon.  Everyone agrees it’s a great event and MUST be repeated next year. There’s an auction and an after-party hosted by Amy Sacco after the dinner but I have an hour journey back to Glasgow and a 6.15 am wake-up call.  This morning, it’s a rapid slide from the world of the best-dressed to that of the worst-dressed. I slip on my swimsuit and the rather chic white seersucker robe the hotel provides and head down to the pool. To my amazement, I’m not allowed in as, according to the counter-clerks from L.A.Fitness who run the place, I’m not “wearing clothes”.  No-one, apparently, is allowed into the gym unless they are wearing clothes. But I don’t want to use the gym, I just want to swim a few lengths in the pool.  “I’m sorry, it’s our rules. The hotel should have told you,” says the girl. Pointless to point out my swimming costume is a rather natty blue and white polka dot number designed by Comme des Garcons’ Rei Kawakubo for Speedo.  Perhaps my outfit for the Scottish Fashion Awards would gain me entry? But I’m afraid there isn’t time to go back upstairs and change back into my Agent Provocateur corset, Alexander McQueen frock-coat and long, tartan skirt by Jurgi Persoons, just to be able to enter the swimming pool.
Hilary Alexander leaves behind the Anglomania exhibition in New York to indulge in some authentic Scottish partying at Stirling Castle.