THURS 9 AUG NAOMI’S OLYMPICS PARTY
Evening. Naomi Campbell hosted a party at Cipriani’s in Mayfair to mark the Olympics. Naomi’s in great shape. Tall and slim in black, with black, fine, straight hair falling over her shoulders and down to her waist. She is happy and we liked her man – he seems a serious person. Yes, lots of our friends were there, Kate especially and Sarah Ferguson. She is doing work in the Congo – Sarah’s very capable, always doing charity work. We must see if her activities there tie in with Cool Earth. At the party, we watched Usain Bolt win the 200m. I had seen him win the 100m at Iris’s. Cool! I also watched some of the opening ceremony at home where Andreas has his TV at the top of the house. What I really liked about Danny Boyle was his inclusiveness – we’re all ordinary people, including the Queen, and we all share what it means to be British. Thanks, Danny, for the comfort. We’d better wake up to reality, get rid of our complacency and confront climate change – or die.
FRI 10 AUG STEPHEN EMMOTT’S 28 BILLION
Andreas got up early to go to Vienna as we’re opening a shop there. Then he will join the men of his family in Turkey to go sailing around the Greek islands on his uncle’s boat.
I went with Peter Olive to the Royal Court to see Stephen Emmott present Ten Billion. He began by saying that the forecast figure of ten billion people at some point in this century was really twenty-eight billion if we reproduce at the present rate. Stephen Emmott is Professor of Computational Science at Cambridge. I have never been in the presence of a more attractive human – warm, intelligent, intense, kind (the word ‘kind’ comes from the same root as ‘kin’ and it means to care for someone as much as you do for your family).
He said that the stage decor was a replica of his office; of course, he wasn’t an actor. On two screens various graphics appeared to back up his points. Two maps of the world showed dotted lines moving thick as a blizzard over the whole surface constantly, 24 hours, representing aeroplanes (I didn’t know it was so bad; it’s increasing all the time), and the same thing with streaks representing shipping and cars. We are constantly moving stuff (my business does).
Stephen Emmott presenting 10 Billion.
Two things he mentioned were important to me because they pointed to immediate action: the absolute necessity of preserving the rainforest and that the only possible energy solution right now is nuclear. (Although, whatever your opinon on nuclear, it seems late to introduce it – and solar may turn out to be a quicker solution).
Governments are doing nothing (we know they’re just helping corporations to wreck the planet and don’t help people at all). Emmott drew the parallel between now and 65 million years ago when the dinosaurs vanished. He talked of a time when the earth would be mostly uninhabitable, how the habitable parts would have to defend themselves from climate migrants. He mentioned that recently, when he attends top meetings about climate change, he notices that the military are always present. He asked a younger colleague if there was one thing he could do what would it be. ‘Teach my son to use a gun.’
SAT 11 AUG CRAZY WORLD – CRAZY ENVIRONMENT
Wrote up Friday’s diary. Yoga. Sleep. By bicycle to a friend’s party, a secret space near London Bridge where we had a fire and a barbecque (I ate vegetarian barbecque – delicious). She is leaving to live in Brazil so that her family can help look after her two children. Yet she and her husband will be travelling here often because they both work here. Crazy world – crazy environment!
SUN 12 AUG THE WORLD’S PROBLEMS ARE MY PROBLEMS
Did nothing except some desultory reading. So downhearted apropos the overwhelming extent of the wrecking of Gaia as set out by the unflinching assessment at Friday’s theatre. Stephen Emmott didn’t mention the NGOs who really are doing things, but we have to find out ways for the public to know and to face the problem when the whole plutocracy/bureaucracy conspires to deceive us. I worry what I can do in my company. I’ve begun to do it re Q v. Q. At 5 p.m. I made a good salad and cooked some corn on the cob and decided I don’t need depression to help me with the world’s problems. But I’ve always thought the world’s problems are my problems. We might have a chance if only more people knew. I still think ‘Climate Revolution’ is the way forward. Identify the enemy: the two big ones – the fossil fuel industry and agribusiness.
MON 13 AUG THE COURTAULD AND CLASSIC LITERATURE
I wrote up the diary at home. Reading stuff to inform myself and writing it up takes a lot of time but it is all part of my campaign to Stop Climate Change and it’s very useful to collect my ideas together so that I know what I’m talking about when I get the opportunity in interviews. Culture is connected so I write about that, too, and include bits of my daily life to show when I’m busy or relaxing. Fashion is a big part of my life. But the real reason for the diary is to get my ideas across so that more people will join the ‘Climate Revolution’.
At 1.30 p.m. I rode my bike to the Courtauld Gallery to see an exhibition of some of the drawings from the great masters that they hold in their collection. (Before 2 p.m. on Mondays it is free.) At 5 p.m. I met my friend, Giselle, and our mutual friend, Peter Olive, in a café in Westbourne Grove. We ate a horrible salad. (People usually make horrible salads – they should be simple – I’ll tell you how to do it one day.) Then we went to Giselle’s house, nearby. If I had more time, I would see more of Giselle. I’d go round and talk to her improving my French; she’s French, very interesting, and she loves fashion. We talked and drank. She had just read Dostoevsky’s The Idiot. These classics in literature. You get a lot out of them when you re-read them when you’re older (more experience, therefore more to think about). Books are always focused in their time – windows on the world seen from different points in time. Virginia Woolf said the success of a masterwork is the ‘immense persuasion of a mind that has completely mastered its perspective’.
TUES 14 AUG TOUCHED BY HUMAN HANDS
Had to answer some questions for Suzie Menkes. She’s interested in the bags we design which are made in Africa from recycled materials under the auspices of the UN’s scheme, Work not Charity. She does ask good questions. She asked me, ‘Do you think that objects that have been touchßed by human hands are elements of luxury today?’. I thought of a pre-industrial time when everything was made by hand. And going back as far as the classical Greeks or the tribes which moved across Asia when only skilled craftsmen made beautiful things. It’s not true that everyone made their own things; even in the earliest times, stone hand axes were made by specialists and traded.
WEDS 15 AUG ANDREAS AT SEA
My Andreas phones me and tells me that the four boys and Skipper Nedge have so much wind and they are sailing at a great speed – all working the boat and not many boats out there. They’re OK because the boat, the Vesta, is big. Our friend, Alex, is at the helm as much as possible, getting soaked in the thrill of the boat ploughing the waves. At anchor in the Greek islands, Andreas stops and cooks and is constantly over the side swimming. I went on the Vesta four years ago in the Turkish islands. I was unlucky; we had no wind. But I love the idea of sailing between the islands like the ancient Greeks.
Alex, Teddy, Andreas and Robert at sea, wearing the crew T-shirts we designed.
THURS 16 – SUN 19 AUG LUCY’S WEDDING, STAYING AT JOE’S
The reason I didn’t go with Andreas on the boat was because on Saturday my niece, Lucy, is getting married in Devon, where her mother (my sister) lives. So we are staying with my son, Joe, who has a farm near the sea in Cornwall. He loves to be in the country and his girlfriend, Faye, is getting really involved with the garden. I travelled down with Ben, Peter Olive and our friend Krishna.
Lots of rain on Friday, so I stayed in bed reading Sinbad the Sailor and Ma’aruf the Cobbler from The Arabian Nights. These fairy tales are imaginative derivatives of myths which originated in primitive ritual. Joe’s house is full of books and I like just to browse through whatever takes my fancy, books I don’t have. I also read half of the myth of Gilgames
h; this is Sumerian (present-day Iraq), an epic more than a fairy tale, and has a different exotic identity to the Arab tales.
We went for a walk round the wood when the rain cleared. At home, Joe cooked – quick, very good. He’s so capable, looks after you: drinks, music, films, discussion, affection, fun. Starting from when he was a little boy of three, he looked after me as if he were my husband, went shopping, fixed the telephone, bought a mixer, lent me money. Kate Moss says he’s an alpha male. It could have something to do with his father telling him the milkman was his dad, then disappearing for days when he felt like it – so little Joe assumed the responsibility.
My brother, Gordon, joined us … but this is all becoming enough chat for one week so I’ll be quick: wedding, reception at my sister’s house, lots of children and an electric-blue giant dragonfly flying over the garden pond. I gave Lucy a red dress with silver and gold lurex. She looked stunning. Her friend said, ‘When will you wear it?’ But she will wear it, I know her, she’s very dazzling and outgoing. Gordon gave everyone in the family a video he had made of our mother a year before she died. She told us the story we had heard most often – how she met my father.
With my sons Ben (left) and Joe in Cornwall.
Cynthia phoned on Saturday night to prepare a message of support for Julian Assange for her to deliver in London on my behalf. I wrote: ‘Through WikiLeaks, Julian Assange continues to expose the lies and distortions of the authorities. His fight is our fight. It is a fight for freedom – freedom of information. We are Julian Assange, I am Julian Assange.’
TUES 21 AUG DANTE’S INFERNO AND GORE VIDAL
At home reading. While I was at Joe’s, I began to read Dante’s Inferno. I got as far as the Entrance to Hell – a dark room where hundreds of people run constantly round and round stung by wasps and horrid insects. These were people who in life had never committed themselves to anything, not to God nor to the Devil; they had never engaged with the world or learnt or changed. Therefore neither Heaven nor Hell wanted them. Do you think such people are also the gossips? They live off other people, do nothing, just get their buzz from causing trouble and confusion. They never have an opinion but just choose the worst opinions of other people. Why don’t they want to be honest and do some good? The thing is, it makes them feel important. Half the journalists are like this and the other half are good – what I call ‘serious people’. Would you send the stirrers to Hell – or leave them in the foyer?
An event I want to say something about is the death of Gore Vidal, the author, at the end of July. He was a hero of mine and I met him a long time ago. A German magazine had asked me if they could record an interview between me and a person of my choice. We first met at a photo shoot during which he told me (out of the corner of his mouth, as we sat side by side) all the London socialites he knew and, as I knew none of them, he had no interest in me. Then we met for lunch and the recorded conversation. I wanted to talk about politics. Vidal was related to the Kennedys and had worked as an advisor to JFK. One morning Kennedy was fuming about the military in the Pentagon being a law unto themselves. Gore Vidal said, ‘But you’re the President, you can tell them what to do.’ JFK: ‘It would take ten years to sort that lot out.’ GV: ‘I see, meanwhile you have to get re-elected.’ JFK: grins.
However, GV began to talk about religion. He said monotheism was the greatest evil in the world. I thought it was because he was American that he said this and that it’s not such a big deal for the English. He said that anybody in America could invent a religious cult and it was tax exempt, that’s why these churches are so rich, e.g. Scientology. He was right, but I didn’t grasp the depth of what he said so he was really bored with me. I realised when I thought about it afterwards that the idea of a sky god who is the one and only true god is a terrible dogma that forms the whole ethic of our society – it is why the US is always right and why they need an enemy to be their devil. It is the most horrible, disgusting ethic in the world. (By contrast, polytheism is about biodiversity. Each god represents different qualities.)
Came to work to check with Cynthia where we are in our campaign. We went out and talked over coffee. I went home quite early (still on holiday) and plucked some nettles in the park which I put in a soup with some beans and tomatoes we grow on our balcony at work. Now I’ve started to read a book on finance, The New Depression by Richard Duncan, my brother Gordon lent me. Economics is childishly simple.
At around one in the morning Andreas came home.
THURS 23 AUG THE ECONOMIST
The reason I was reading Richard Duncan’s book is because today I am meeting John Micklethwait, editor-in-chief of The Economist. I went with Jacquetta Wheeler. She had seated me next to him at her wedding dinner. I hoped to be able to convince him that climate crisis and economic crisis are the cause and effect of each other; they are like serpents who eat each other’s tails. The only way out of this double crisis is: What’s good for the planet is good for the economy.
I did not convince him. He said, ‘How did climate change cause the US housing crunch?’
To him, like the rest, economics is a science and it’s just a matter of adjusting to the equation. Tweaking. But he’s right, this particular financial crisis does not seem directly linked to climate change. I went away. It will be a long answer.
It’s clear that the Rotten Financial System (Rot $) caused the crunch; based on debt, it is designed to create poverty. Banks make money from interest, they don’t want the principle back because then they make more money. They created mortgages for people who couldn’t afford it and thereby created an investment bubble which burst. People lost their homes. Investors sell-on ‘assets’ like ‘passing the parcel’ – the one holding the parcel when the music stops loses. Fracking and the Alberta tar sands are investment bubbles which result in bankruptcies – and poison which is never paid for, and climate change.
Economics since industrial times has been based on fossil fuels, which are finite. We still have plenty of oil to extract cheaply and easily (easy oil) in e.g Saudi Arabia.
At this point it is necessary to explain that we can only use an estimated 20 per cent of fossil fuels. At that point we must either stop or fry; if we use more, we will have runaway climate change and temperatures will be out of control, leading to the extinction of life on earth. Yet investor portfolios include all known sources of oil, including oil which is difficult and mega-expensive to extract (e.g fracked oil and gas) and even oil we don’t have the technology to extract. Their calculations are unreal. Meanwhile the extraction of difficult oil causes terrible accidents and pollution: it is driven by investors. Not needed.
This is why Saudi Arabia is selling its easy oil cheap because there isn’t much time left for them to cash in – and this means that difficult oil can’t compete. The British government still supports fracking by pledging taxpayers money to subsidise it.
How did climate change cause the housing crunch?
Answer: By ignoring climate change, not factoring it into the equation, we have crazy bankers and investors who perpetrate the wrecking of the planet. Also, whereas, drought, floods, migrants are more obviously seen to cause the financial crisis, so do all people made homeless and poor.
TUES 28 – FRI 31 AUG PINNING DOWN THE FABRICS
Iris has arrived and from today I will concentrate on fashion – the shows are starting to line up in front of me. Back from holiday, our pattern cutters have been finishing perfectly their samples and patterns; Iris and Andreas have been working with them. On Wednesday we had a major Gold Label fitting lasting all day and we found ways to make crucial improvements. We now have a good idea of the fabrics we will allocate to the designs in toile form and we have managed to test out some in the correct fabrics.
On Thursday, we began pinning down the fabrics so that we can send the remaining prototypes and all information to Italy. Rosita is here so that she can follow these last stages, then when she goes back to Italy on Tuesday she will have everything she needs
for an efficient operation making the sample collection (each design is made in more than one fabric choice). Rosita travels between here and Italy by train. She stays at our house, as does Iris.
SEPTEMBER 2012
SAT 1 – SUN 2 SEPT WEEKEND WORK
Iris left early Saturday morning and I was reading from 7 a.m. to noon. Then I joined Andreas at work to finish the charts. Andreas is amazing; he has worked on the shoe collection and has already organised the tights and other accessories to coordinate the collection. I, meanwhile, did some graphics and the invitation for the Red Label collection – coming soon.
MON 3 SEPT INDIAN SUMMER
Yesterday was cold but today was suddenly Indian Summer, so called because this late-summer phenomenon happens in North America – Indian Country – and while I mention Native Americans let me say ‘Thank you, dear Pamela’ for sending an email from her friend, Jon, about his work to provide clean water to the Americans of Pine Ridge, Leonard’s reservation. Jon has an NGO supplying practical hands-on solutions for clean water crises; he also works in Haiti. One of his solutions is a bucket and plastic pipe and chemicals costing $50 which supplies clean water to 100 people for a year. I was also delighted to receive a reply to my letter from Leonard Peltier.
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