Tomorrow (Saturday, October 18) George Osborne and Dr Nicholas Cullinan will welcome the great and the good to the British Museum for a party.

The 800-person jamboree and silent auction— t ickets at £2,000 apiece — is being billed as London’s answer to the Met Gala, the annual fundraiser for the New York Costume Institute in the USA and reigning champion of red-carpet events. Appearances from Naomi Campbell, Dame Kristin Scott Thomas and Sir Grayson Perry are confirmed. Whether the party has the same impact as the Met’s remains to be seen.

The ball comes at an interesting time for the capital, with London Fashion Week, Frieze and the BFI festival recently prompting the city’s leading voices to defend its merit as a cultural powerhouse. Laura Weir, chair of the British Fashion Council, an

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