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She also told the truth about the mirrors: There are none, unless you count one little makeup stand that I spied shoved halfway under the bath. Ability to rough it is integral to her style. It brought to mind the words of her friends. Set designer Patrick Kinmonth said, laughing, "Oh, Amanda! She loves mud and cement as much as she does the finest couture dress!" Vogue editor-at-large André Leon Talley exclaimed, "In Paris we see this glossy veneer of the Chanel muse, but behind that is just a deeply practical Englishwoman, living in the hinterlands, who can go out in the yard and feed the chickens, groom her own horses, feed her brood, and get her hands dirty." Lucy Ferry testified, "She has a love of extremes. I think she's happiest being in a very stylized romantic situation, and then casting that off to tramp on the moors to catch a wild yearling to break in." And Lagerfeld declared, "She is not a fluffy romantic. She has so many horses, children, and all that—and to build up a house, you have to be tough. She's the iron fist in the velvet glove."
The Chanel muse is now rustling up bacon sandwiches on her Aga, talking about Tallulah and Jasset, who are away at boarding school, and her boyfriend, Neil Gittins, a farmer ten years younger than she. "Met hunting. Picked me up, courted me! It's very important to have something you agree about. My thing is both horses and clotheshorses. Neil's very happy with that. I think he just wishes I would wear Chanel suits more—all the time! He says, 'Why don't you wear them?' But I say, 'If you knew the work that has gone into those clothes—I am not going to sit down in a field in it and ruin it with grass stains!' There's a time and a place. I can't do that to my shoes, either."
A passing American fashion editor who stayed at Amanda's marital home, Glyn Cywarch, in Wales, once shrieked to find she'd neatly cold-stored her Fendi gray mink in the domestic freezer alongside the pheasants from a shoot. That's the kind of thing that gets her a reputation for English eccentricity. From the British perspective, though, this would count as a resourceful idea, with a dash of the upper-class virtue of economy thrown in. Don't gallop off with the notion of Amanda as a typical English lady, however—her style fits no category. Most parsimonious Englishwomen would look on her choice of a Chanel couture gossamer-fragile black silk chiffon beaded asymmetric dress as an inexcusable extravagance; Amanda, conversely, selected it for its utility. "You can wear it with a T-shirt and white trousers underneath. It's so useful!"
A week later, we scene-shift to Paris, on a mission to inspect more of her clothes and find out, once and for all, what she does for a living. Part of her value to Karl Lagerfeld is as an intellectual sparring partner, who can as easily differentiate between Bal de Rose dix-neuvième siècle pink and Pop Art pink as summon deep resources of literary and cultural reference. "We work on the phone, in faxes, letters, in Paris, not in Paris," he says. "It's something we cannot explain, because we do not work like other people. We work our way. Improvise. I like the idea of working with somebody who is not there 24 hours in the routine, somebody who can talk with detachment."
In her room at the Ritz, Amanda throws her three wardrobes open for inspection. First, though, she's removed the couture jacket, stuffed it with tissue paper, hung it up, and pulled on a sweater in a twinkling. And here are her treasures: an ivory satin Vionnet gown, a red-and-gold-embroidered Chinese coat, her grandmother's black velvet full-length dressing gown (relined in white silk by the Ritz), a navy blue Chanel ready-to-wear bias-cut skirt with a trailing fishtail, a gray wool Norman Norell fifties bolero jacket, a fuchsia grosgrain swashbuckling John Galliano coat lined in yellow. There are pieces picked up in the eighties: "This is the morning coat I used to wear to Harpers & Queen with a hat and a two-foot veil. Very useful now." There are the newest little somethings: a gauzy Rick Owens jacket, a scoop-back AF Vandevorst top, a superskinny Hedi Slimane man's tux, altered and fitted by him. Then there are the pieces she's customized, like a Galliano black velvet gown with the sleeves and front cut out. Or the ones that have multiple uses, like the tiny delicate lace camisole bought by Karl for her at a vintage store, which she might wear over a blouse or tied as a cummerbund as the mood strikes. Essentially, though, it's tiny jackets, long skirts and dresses, long coats. And it's all mostly evening. "I wear evening in the day all the time!"
Then, of course, there are her Chanel couture, dating back to a long black coat made for winter 1997, the first season she was hired by Karl. That arrival was a watershed experience, both professionally and sartorially, after twelve years at John Galliano. "It was a high-speed grand prix compared to working with John, which was a small setup. Decisions were quick and slick and fast." She marveled at the workmanship and then the effect of it on the body. "Chanel is very simply constructed—apparently but not internally. But it's very easy to wear, and that was quite sexy. It gave me a lot more freedom—it wasn't about corsets and lacing and layers; suddenly there was a speed to dressing. And the clothes really don't date, maybe because of the rightness of line and proportion. It isn't about a trend; it's about a body."
As she gestures, it's obvious that to move on to questions about gyms and workouts would be redundant—one look at the steely sinews in her arms, her instinctive ramrod posture proves Amanda takes riding to the point of athleticism. The discipline informs her elegance, gives her body youthful suppleness. When I get around to asking about her attitude to her age, the reply of a pragmatic British sportswoman comes back. "It's great being 40. I was more tired in my 30s, because of working and having children and so on. I feel like I have more vision, and I'm easier with people. I think 50 will be the same. My only worry is, aged 60, 70, 80—will I be able to do the competition still?" She has hopes for how she will look later on. "There is that thing that when women get older, they cut off their hair, but I'm going to wear mine up in ornate coils, like my grandmother did. And hopefully my face will get better, my nose get bigger and bonier."
Right now, she has a fine face, feline green eyes, high cheekbones, skin slightly weather-beaten. "I think with beauty, never overplay your hand," she says, laughing. "I do eyes, not lips. The one thing I use is lots of black eyeliner. Eve Lom skin care, which is just very sensible." No fancy hairdressers for her, either. Her signature black hair is dyed at Toni&Guy in the local Shropshire town. When it comes to dressing her age, she admits to a couple of adjustments. "There are things I wouldn't inflict on others now. I wouldn't wear a mini, and I'm not one to be wearing hardly any clothes. I'm not going to wear a scrap of ball gown and a red hat in the snow, as I did."
And how does she feel about being up there in the Best Dressed Hall of Fame? The green eyes glint. "Oh, it's very, very flattering. Also very encouraging. I think it means, keep on dressing!"
he is quite the cutie! 
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