Get a Life

by Vivienne Westwood

  We all know that money is debt. Governments pretend that this debt will be paid by the future taxpayer. Even if the future were secure there is no way the debt will ever be paid. The debt will increase because that is what our financial system is based on. Every baby in Britain today owes £20,000 from the minute it is born. Anyway, the status quo right now is that governments must be seen to manage the debts so that the rate of increase can be controlled.

  Hollande is doing the right thing in France by relaxing the austerity and perhaps borrowing money. By this he acknowledges the money is debt and the debt will never be paid. I believe it also acknowledges the need for human values. Nevertheless, he should stop talking about growth. Stability is what we need. I believe in Europe as a political federation because that’s about co-operation – and we need the European Court of Human Rights. I hope it stays together financially because in that way – if everybody helps everybody else – we will find a better financial system.

  Tried to do a bit more knitwear.

  SAT 9 JUNE JACQUETTA’S WEDDING

  Yoga. Then to my friend Jacquetta’s wedding. She’s a model and also works for the human rights charity, Reprieve. We went by train to Canterbury and then on to her parents’ home.

  I had never been to Canterbury before and we went inside the cathedral for a half hour. Those stones erected in the service of a principle and a way of life is beyond the depth of my understanding. Where are the books I should have read that would give me an insight into this world? It’s like I said: knowledge is insight. One day I may discover something which will make the connection – illuminate the life that this immense time capsule holds in suspension and without some other piece of information my imagination is powerless. I am primed for this flash of inspiration because now this stone phenomenon is part of my life. I would need to come again, stay longer, read Chaucer.

  Chilham is a little, perfectly pretty, really old village with an early Gothic church. The sun was out, the church was decorated full of flowers – lots of blue delphiniums and white daisies. I loved the service though I have to substitute my own metaphors for the idea of God. I enjoyed especially the singing – we do miss something these days; my childhood was full of singing. The bride was brimming with happiness in a lovely dress by Alice Temperley. After the service we walked over to Jacquetta’s family home, which is a Tudor mansion: Chilham Castle. The view looking down from here was unbelievable, a sea of blown-green grass and blue sky filled with ranks of fluffy clouds, framed at the back with the ridge of the North Downs and not a soul or a house in sight.

  Quite a few of the male guests were connected by their careers in hedge fund activity. Jacquetta’s husband works in this field but part of his work is directed towards philanthropy. Jacquetta is active in human rights. These are influential people; among the journalists, the editor of The Economist asked me what I thought about drones. These people are not the same as me or a campaigning journalist like George Monbiot. George and I try to form an overview of what would make a better world, whereas these people are more establishment, more content with the status quo and how it will pan out for the best. I really need to talk to one or two of them – good to talk to people who don’t agree with you to find out if either can influence the other: we need to find agreement to work towards a better world. These people are movers and shakers of the establishment.

  We missed the last train home. There we were, Andreas and I in the middle of nowhere in an empty station and the train didn’t come. We moved off and found a taxi. The driver, who was the other side of thirty, had never been to London. Andreas couldn’t imagine how he could avoid the urge of driving on to the motorway from Canterbury up to London. The driver had the time of his life – Tower Bridge, the Tower, Elephant and Castle! Wow!

  SUN 10 JUNE LA MER

  Reading – news articles, sleeping, eating. Evening: to Royal Festival Hall. Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, conductor Simon Rattle. Fauré, Ravel, Debussy. Last piece, La Mer. This is what is called ‘Impressionist’ music. It began with a series of notes drawn with the bow across the double basses. The sea was at once before us, grey in the first light and with each stroke the waves moved towards us, expanding until the sun caught them up. Divine when sometimes we represent one thing with another.

  MON 11 – TUES 12 JUNE KEEP YOUR TEETH

  On each day, I spent half a day going to the dentist. Advice on how to clean your teeth: keep your gums healthy by aiming your brush under the gum and use those little twizzly brushes to clean between the teeth and up into the gum. Try to visit a hygienist for cleaning twice a year – ask your dentist. This way you will keep your teeth. Wrote up the diary.

  Made three decisions re Gold Label.

  WEDS 13 – THURS 14 JUNE CHELTENHAM SCIENCE FESTIVAL

  I travelled with Cynthia to the Times Cheltenham Science Festival at the invitation of Jonathon Porritt and it was out of respect for his work that I accepted. Over the course of two days – there and in Bristol – I gave the same talk five times: twice for local BBC Radio stations, twice with live audiences, and lastly on the train in an interview for the Independent on Sunday. The theme of my talks was Get a Life: (1) for the next generation by preventing mass extinction due to climate change and (2) what about your life right now?

  I do get through to people: I focus on them and what they can do. The main point is that the twentieth century was an age of consuming, sucking things up – including opinions; the dogma was that we would all be better off if we left everything to technology and Big Business. The way out of this is culture not consumption: consumption you just suck up, whereas you have to invest in culture, engage in the world, past and present. My motto is, You get out what you put in. Through reading we understand the past and this knowledge is what gives a purpose in life and creates the individual. Also this individual strength will help you in any fight for the environment. The most important thing I want people to take away is my mantra: the main cause of climate change is our financial system; the way out of it is by concentrating on human values and the long term instead of the financial abstract quick fix.

  I think it is important to talk to people face to face. It’s the best chance to influence people and hope they act. Also live radio and TV is direct communication. But being interviewed for a newspaper is not direct; it’s up to the journalist and they may misrepresent you. I was tired during my interview and chatted to the young journalist who, at age twenty-five, had a very important job – she was going to Uganda on Sunday to research a story on family planning, ahead of a major London summit with the aim of getting quality family planning to 215 million women worldwide who want contraception but can’t get it. She told me that the highest cause of death in Africa for girls of 14–19 years is pregnancy because they are often immature and don’t have access to health care.

  However, though she had listened to my talk in Bristol as well as doing the interview, she missed my message and just came up with a standard profile. I had said to her, ‘Here’s a tip. Tell your editors: Give people a choice – sell just the Sunday newspaper without all that bumpf, all that sport and culture chit-chat (people don’t know what culture is any more: non-stop distraction). I would buy it!’ She said, ‘Oh no! That’s where they get the advertising revenue from.’

  THURS 14 JUNE THINKING OF AN AFRICAN GIRL

  On Thursday night, we went trom the train to our studio in Battersea to pick up Andreas and thence to a reception at St James’s Palace to meet Prince Charles and to celebrate ‘English Menswear’. Then on to the Festival Hall. András Schiff, one of the world’s greatest pianists, conducted the Philharmonic as well as playing the piano in Mozart’s famous piano concerto no. 21, and then conducted the Jupiter Symphony, Andreas’s favourite: it is total, it is the ‘all’ of music; nothing goes beyond it. It is galactic. András Schiff – this music is flesh and blood to him. A small man, every fibre was electrified. He was a conduit for the genius of little Mozart, who died aged thirty-five. The p
iece is pure bliss and joy but I was sad; for some reason I was thinking of an African girl, about seventeen, who died during a reality TV thing where an English nurse spent time in an African hospital. The pregnant girl had been advised by people at home to put certain leaves inside herself but, instead of aborting, she had killed the foetus and it was rotting inside her. She lay on a mattress in the hot hospital; she was a beautiful slender creature, short unkempt hair, wild-eyed and out of her mind, never speaking. The hospital had no drugs and no means of operating. After three days, they announced that she had given up her fight for life.

  SAT 16 – SUN 17 JUNE CORA’S BIRTHDAY TEA

  At home, thinking about Gold Label, reading, writing. Saturday evening: intimate dinner hosted by ID magazine. I very much like Terry Jones (editor-in-chief) and Trish, his wife. On Sunday, an invitation to my granddaughter Cora’s Fifteenth Birthday Tea. One of the things that Cora enjoys at school are discussions on philosophical, ethical and cultural questions. You have a choice to save either one great thinker or two people who don’t think; or discuss artists like Damien Hirst – he’s an artist because he says so. If you called yourself an artist would that make you one? No, because I’m not Damien Hirst.

  MON 18 JUNE IDEAS FOR GOLD LABEL

  This week I pinned down the ideas for the Gold Label, knitting, sitting with my assistant, Luca, so that he could draw the diagrams properly and send instructions to Italy. I will be able to get an idea of how well they will work out when I go to Italy on Friday for the menswear show because the finished men’s samples include the same yarns. While working on this, I took a square-foot sample of knitted stitches I liked which had a corner cut off it and placed it on top of a similar sample. I decided to make a dress from the first sample with cut-out holes patched with the other sample. I thought I might copy the placing of coloured patches on some of the beetles. (At this point, beetles are one of the inspirations for the collection.) I told this later to Andreas and he said we could apply this idea to these dresses – this will mean that these dresses will be all pulled around and ragged. I was really excited because this is a real key to the collection – it helps pull other ideas together in my mind.

  Finale at our Milan menswear show.

  TUES 19 JUNE THE STORY OF THE STONE

  Reading before going into work, I finished my book, The Story of the Stone by Cao Xueqin. An eighteenth-century Chinese classic, in five volumes, it has been my most important reading experience. It is as if I have lived two lives – my own and the life of the people in the book.

  The story is about Bao Yu and twelve Beautiful Girls, companions of his youth, and the love between him and Dai Yu, who is surely the most romantic heroine in fiction. It is a fictional tale of real people and real events but begins with a myth: when the goddess repaired the sky, one vast stone was left, unused and rejected. The stone had magical properties and the story of its life was written upon it. It shrank itself down to the size of a fan pendant and Bao Yu, our hero, was born with this magic jade in his mouth. He is the stone incarnate; his name means ‘Precious Jade’. As a pubescent youth, he visits the Land of Illusion in a dream where he is allowed to read the official registers – riddles which tell the fate of the Girls. On the archway leading to the Land of Illusion, Bao Yu reads: ‘Truth becomes fiction when the fiction’s true; real becomes not-real when the unreal’s real.’

  It is astonishing to understand the enormous wealth of this family whose ancestors were legendary for the service they performed for the Emperor; and to follow the circulation of this wealth as it is distributed to so many retainers, along with their families and friends in mutual support. The family purpose is to keep up and enjoy a grand protocol. And this protocol – their ceremonies and daily duties – is an outward show of family integrity, which is an unfailing testament to the importance of the Emperor in his role of maintaining stability and the perpetuation of heaven and earth. Each girl’s character is forced to shine so strongly under the pressure of her prescribed role in the scheme of things.

  The Emperor Hui Zong’s painting, Auspicious Cranes, from the year 1112.

  Bao Yu and his girlfriend relations live in the pavilions of the Imperial garden with their personal servants. The garden is wonderfully described; it is a place of poetry and refuge. It was built for the visit home for one night of Bao Yu’s elder sister, the Imperial Concubine. The things they say to each other; who they are! The structure of events is rooted in kharma; the rhythm, the voice which tells the story, recreates a world of people who are immediately intimately present to you. The things that happen are so unexpected, so real, so original – because the characters are alive.

  Collapse of the fortune looms and when it comes so soon it is seen to have been dependent on the events caused by human behaviour.

  WEDS 20 JUNE THE GAIA FOUNDATION AND GM SEEDS

  Liz and Edward, founders of the Gaia Foundation, invited Cynthia and me to dinner. We met at their film showing of Seeds of Freedom, and they realised that we needed to know more about their work and about seeds. The Gaia Foundation (www.gaiafoundation.org) works internationally to regenerate cultural and biological diversity and aims to restore a respectful relationship with the earth. They work with indigenous people to secure land, seed, water, food security and sovereignty so that they can better cope with climate change.

  They explained to us that GM seeds have been modified to be resistant to pesticide, their growth boosted by fertiliser. The seeds from these crops are not good for replanting because they have been force-fed; the farmer must always buy new seeds. That’s the first problem. Another is that the pesticides which coat the GM seeds destroy all other life and poison streams and groundwater. Superbugs come along. You lose biodiversity – crops that have developed resistance to changing conditions and are tough through experience. We learnt, too, that it is a myth that GM drought-resistant seeds could be developed, especially as this is not in the interest of the food corporations (like Monsanto). In fact, GM seeds have a negative effect on soil fertility and also the nutritional value of foods – the GM plants are not able to absorb the minerals we need to be healthy.

  Talking, we lost all track of time, until we realised it was 1 a.m.

  FRI 22 – MON 25 JUNE MILAN SHOW

  Andreas and I travelled to Milan. It was hot! Andreas was working on the show and I didn’t need to join him until late afternoon on the Saturday. They were still doing the casting and the fittings at the showroom. I chatted to the models and helped with styling some outfits and the running order and wrote the press release. Andreas was able to leave with me at 3 a.m., leaving our team to finish the organising and, as the show was not until 3 p.m. on the Sunday, we had a good sleep.

  The show was lovely. In the evening our friend Gian Mauro, who is a lawyer, gave us and our friends a big party in his apartment on the roof. On Monday we worked in the Milan showroom. It is crowded with our other lines and our staff from all over the world and we present and sell.

  We flew home by 7 p.m. but we were too shattered to go to see Pamela, who was in London. She was attending the thirtieth birthday party of Prince Azim of Brunei – and she gave him a present of thirty acres of rainforest from Cool Earth. Wouldn’t it be great if he gave us some more money?

  TUES 26 JUNE BUY LESS, CHOOSE WELL

  Iris (brilliant guest pattern maker) is staying at our house and Andreas is working with her. I do two big interviews which take all day – one for Bloomberg TV’s Eye2Eye, another for Kulturmontag on Austrian TV. People want to interview me because I’m a fashion designer (Bloomberg needed footage of me and our couture in Davies Street), though of course by now they are also interested in the mix: fashion designer/activist. In answer to the question, ‘Buy less, choose well, make it last, how does that reconcile?’ I tell them, ‘A healthy business is supposed to expand; I wish to grow in quality, not quantity – yet keeping prices down; my customers help me by choosing well. It would be nice if the Queen would set an example by wearing the sam
e thing over and over again.’

  FRI 29 JUNE SELFRIDGES SUPPORT THE EJF

  Finally managed to join in with the work on Gold Label with Iris and Andreas – fittings and discussion of fabrics. It is really starting to happen, really exciting. Worked on a print.

  Evening: Selfridge’s. Talked on their roof garden to some of their customers; following on from Selfridges having featured window displays to sell our T-shirts for the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF). The talk was on my usual subject of the connections between climate change and finance and politics and the need for true culture (my mantra). The focus was on the Family Tree (a blow-up of which had taken up all of one window) and the question ‘what can one person do?’ Start with informing yourself and become an Art Lover (get off the consumer treadmill).

  I was really delighted to see young celebrities there – and particularly young models. I want to keep in touch with them all through what I’m trying to do. I asked people to buy the Family Tree poster for £10 and if they could not afford that to give £5. We also included a Cool Earth brochure; all proceeds to go to Cool Earth. I think it’s a real token of commitment, a formal pledge to donate even £5, so I was really pleased. It signified to me that I had got through to people in my speech. And I don’t just give away the poster indiscriminately.

  SAT 30 JUNE JEMIMA KHAN’S PARTY

  Yoga. Then Andreas went to work with Iris (she stays in our house when she is in London). But because I was tired he told me to go and do my thing. I read in bed, had a sleep and joined him at work at 4 p.m.; they had done really good new things.

  At 5.30 p.m., we boarded a coach near Sloane Square to travel with other guests to Jemima Khan’s house-warming party in the countryside. I took the opportunity to ask one of my fellow travellers, Neil, a social media journalist working for the Wall Street Journal – owned by Murdoch – what was happening with Julian Assange’s reputation in social media. This man has no clue what is happening in the world. He told me Julian faced no danger from America; as to Obama’s regular Tuesday drone killings he replied, ‘What else can Obama do?’ and went on to enthuse about the schoolgirl who had photographed her school dinner and was all over the papers. That’s where it’s at. Neil makes me sick!