MON 26 NOV – SAT 1 DEC MICHAEL HANEKE
Back to London inspired by the commitment of Cool Earth and the Ashaninka people to save the precious rainforest for us all. It’s their forest and they’ll fight for it. Andreas says, ‘I feel very privileged to have met the people of the Ashaninka, people whose values are different from our own. I think in ten years’ time it will be different.’ I, too, am glad.
I stayed home for two days, jet-lagged. Couldn’t do anything. Certainly you must suffer to travel. On Thursday and Friday I went to work but did not manage to work much on the collection. Too many daily bits and pieces to catch up with.
I go to the cinema only about once a year but the films of Michael Haneke have made a big impression on Andreas and on Friday we went to see his latest, Amour. It is about an old couple and the end of life and it impressed on my memory step by step. The selection of detail and which bits of a lifetime’s experience and impressions to use; by using the external to show the internal. Economy: everything included, nothing not needed. Acting truthful, not sentimental.
The film and yoga brought me back to life and by Saturday I’m my old cheery self.
DECEMBER 2012
SUN 2 DEC AN ARAB FEELING IN THE NEW COLLECTION
Iris, our visiting angel pattern cutter, arrived for the week. Not only does Iris create new patterns from our newly dreamed-up cutting principles but she’s very important at the fittings with us, helping us to bring to a finish the toiles of our other pattern cutters. So this is a week when we really concentrate on the collection.
There is something rather Arab in the collection at the moment. This happened because of two things: I was interested in the theme of fighting, because of the Climate Revolution, and I am looking at fashion in the illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages. The Crusaders brought these Arab fashion influences back. The soldiers in the illuminations are supposed to be Romans but the monks imagined something more Arab. I don’t say that I have adopted any specific details, only that the collection has an Arab feeling. Although the Climate Revolution is a non-violent revolution – an evolution – which we hope to win, there looms the horror of a hot world of violence, death and destruction if we don’t. By the way, the Crusaders were the aggressors (yobs), not the Muslims.
I like our current collections to have a mix of new cuts, standard cuts, historical cuts and simple envelopes or cloths thrown on in a theatrical way.
TUES 4 DEC MY NEW DRESS AND GEORGE SOROS
I am wearing a long dress like an apron for special occasions at the moment. I wear it on top of a T-shirt which says ‘Climate Revolution’ on the back. The dress is in a ravishing green silk satin shot with rainbow stripes which shine through from the back of the green. It has a matching cloak and my green feather headdress from the rainforest matches it perfectly.
I wore it to a dinner in support of the Fortune Forum Summit’s Real Aid Campaign, founded by Renu Mehta to raise $100 billion to combat global poverty, disease and climate change. This is an incredible amount of money. The star speaker was billionaire philanthropist George Soros. Ken Roth, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch, presented a short film showing their work. They have been colleagues for many years, since the time when Roth asked Soros for $50 million so they could hire more investigators; they had one investigator trying to monitor abuses in three countries, and wished to have one per country where violations take place. Soros gave them a $100-million ten-year grant.
Wearing the dress again (and a feather tiara from Peru – a present from Ana of the Ashaninka) at New Year’s eve, with Pamela Anderson and Andreas (in his kilt).
Roth then interviewed Soros. He spoke of the ‘Open Society’ according to Karl Popper, whose philosophy has influenced him enormously. The open society is the opposite of an autocratic state. As I listened, I got the idea that it is a truly democratic and just society, involving free speech and flexibility through discussion so that change can happen.
My own thoughts on this are that democracy can’t be mob rule. Mob rule bursts out through prejudice and ignorance and takes the law into its own hands; it never brings progress; it causes a backlash – conservative forces become more clever at controlling opinion. (This happened after the French Revolution but the great thing was that through the activity and ideas of the French salons, culture flourished, keeping conservative forces at bay until World War I, when conservatism finally won.) Now what if the vested interests of the status quo (rule by psychopaths), using the media and advertising (consumption being a part of the advertising) manipulates the public to resort to their base instincts? Isn’t this a controlled mob rule? Prejudice and ignorance kept simmering. Gareth Peirce makes the point in Dispatches from the Dark Side: the law is a reflection of the just sentiment of the people. When people are emotionally manipulated they are also intellectually blocked. The authorities get away with their state-sponsored crimes.
George Soros grew up in Nazi-occupied Hungary. That’s where he learned about risk. Sometimes it is safer to take a risk than not to. He has been placing his money where it will promote the freedom of the open society. Renu, the organiser and our hostess, who was sitting between me and Soros, is a very clever woman at putting people together and making things happen. She turned to him and asked him what he thought, ‘Vivienne says our financial system is the cause of climate change and that in turn has helped cause the financial crisis.’ I know him to be conservative on this point so I was delighted to hear him say, ‘Hurricane Sandy in the US was caused by climate change.’
Hooray for Michael Bloomberg, the New York mayor, who published this connection in press conferences and through his extensive media holdings (Bloomberg TV, Businessweek and various digital platforms). This has made a hole in the dyke of denial. I think it is one of the significant acts of the year.
WEDS 5 DEC BRONZE AT THE ROYAL ACADEMY
On Wednesday, we met with the Lush team – Tamsin Omond, Hilary Jones and the company’s co-founder, Mo Constantine – to plan the New Year Climate Revolution campaign for the windows of Lush shops. We’re planning more events for 2013.
The next day to Nopi restaurant with Cynthia to meet Michael Stein, Julia Groves and Matt Mellen of the Trillion Fund. We are helping. I had to be at the Barbican by 7 p.m., so after lunch I stayed in the West End and rushed along to Bronze, the exhibition at the Royal Academy. Stunning! Life-changing! The presentation was genius – one marvel after another – and every effort was made to show them in the round. And the bronze itself! The strength of bronze allows the sculpture to live in its space without support; bronze technique provides the potential to master size and detail; and the range of finish from hard shine to crusted patina bears witness to a metamorphosis from its hot liquid flux. You remember I had never looked at Indian Buddhas and Hindu gods. There were beautiful examples of both. It was interesting that when the Chinese became interested in bronze they made utensils for offerings to ancestors and ceremonial bells and not figure sculpture – because they did not worship gods. (There were eventually sculptures – Hindu and Buddhist – because China was tolerant of religion.)
Early Ming dynasty bronze of Kapala-Hevajra and Nairatmya, 1403–24.
Among the highlights for me were Donatello’s Putto with Tambourine, which I know well as it belongs to the Gemaldegalerie in Berlin where I used to teach. Whenever I see him, he fills me with awe and gladness; he’s the essence of the human spirit. Also a Chinese early Ming dynasty Buddha and his consort: the fullness of him with his multiple heads, arms and legs and the gaze that locks them together. I have never before experienced such sexual transmission of feelings from a work of art. And Matisse’s Backs. In his painting, Matisse so often wiped the paint away and overpainted: a labour of simplification to get at the truth; every decision, every stroke of the brush has to be uncompromising, spontaneous. In the case of his bronzes we can think of the brush as an arrow, released by the imagination and guided by the hand. In his four ‘Backs’ all are true.
&n
bsp; In the evening, I opened the Barbican’s new Cinemas 2 & 3 on Beech Street (across from the Barbican Centre) and also took part in the Barbican’s ‘Seven Deadly Sins’ series of films. I was asked to choose a film on Gluttony after which there was a Q&A and late dinner for a group of guests. The film, La Grande Bouffe (Blow Out), from the 1970s, is about four friends (gourmands) who meet for the weekend in a private house owned by one of them and cook and eat themselves to death. It was their way of escape from pressures conforming to the false values of their age. High class call girls were called in to help with the death/food/sex orgy. There was so much meat being delivered that a kind of school mistress who accepted a duty to help them achieve their end told the delivery man to hang the carcasses in the trees.
FRI 14 DEC THE CHANGELING
This week I did the usual things – fittings, working out knitwear, four interviews, one photo shoot, and talking to Cynthia plotting the Climate Revolution. Lorna came to talk to me and film a bit about Leonard. I think she might be able to do something for him through the film because of the influential people she’s meeting.
I went to two classical music concerts and one play – Middleton’s The Changeling at the Young Vic. This was shit because a clever production meant you couldn’t hear the words – the audience on four sides so actors talked with their backs to you. A great actor must always be fully in touch with the audience. The main actor, Zubin Varla, was an exception; he somehow used his head and body to reverberate his voice full circle. There was also writing Christmas cards, which often included mini letters – keeping in touch with all my friends.
TUES 25 DEC CHRISTMAS READING
Christmas with family and friends. I was reading the Bronze exhibition catalogue and re-reading Gareth Peirce’s book, which has helped shape my thoughts on the way the US and Britain control public opinion. America keeps its legal activity in the open or, put more accurately, it attempts to legalise its illegal activities. At the moment it has created a new legal regime which nevertheless is illegal according to previous principles of justice. For example, it is illegal to declare war on an idea (no state, no enemy – it’s like you have declared war on the whole world), and it is one reason why the US is so keen to use force on the people it designates ‘Terrorists’. Trying to make illegality legal is carried to the extreme (e.g. terrorists are not given legal POW status because they don’t have a uniform!), which, therefore, permits inhuman treatment and denies the prisoner access to law. The US attorney general has redefined a number of practices for which no immunity exists under domestic or international law: waterboarding, sleep deprivation, forced standing and the like.
As for America’s Freedom of Information Act, judge for yourself. There are still 150,000 documents pertaining to Leonard Peltier withheld under claims of national security (it would expose the government’s dirty work). The US government went to enormous lengths to frame Leonard. They don’t have to frame people anymore. If they have illegal laws, they can just kidnap them.
Britain avoids transparency, except that we, like the US, have a Freedom of Information (FoI) act, which our governments obviously regret because they are now trying to get rid of it. Gareth speaks of a small window ‘opened by chance through accidents of litigation in which government communiques were required to be disclosed.’ They show that Britain’s method is to ignore legal obstacles and lie, e.g. a draft for an official statement on the conditions of Britons in Guantanamo – ‘Officials confirmed that the three detainees are being treated humanely and according to international norms. Our team was able to verify that this was the case’ – drafted before any UK visit to Guantanamo had taken place. The message coming loud and clear from Blair was that there was no need for legal or moral restraint. David Blunkett, the then UK Home Secretary, recorded, ‘The longer they stay in Cuba/Afghanistan the better.’
It is now known that the UK tipped off the US as to Arabs who would make suitable ‘terrorists’. One such person, Shaker Aamer, was kidnapped and subjected to appalling beatings in the unprotesting presence of a UK intelligence officer to get a confession out of him (false) that he was part of al-Qaeda and under the directive of Bin Laden. He is still in Guantanamo although he has been cleared for release by US authorities.
The people of the UK have not yet accepted the present government’s attempt to set up secret courts (shame on Ken Clarke for trying). They did not accept the previous government’s attempt to establish imprisonment for forty-two days without trial – it’s still twenty-eight days and higher than any other country. Shall we propose a petition to 38 Degrees? Can we campaign for the release of Shaker Aamer?
2013
JANUARY 2013
TUES 1 JAN YVES SAINT LAURENT
Andreas and I went to work. If we are to get our Gold Label show by the end of February, I will have to concentrate on fashion only. Cynthia will have to deal with all the wonderful things that are coming to us and starting to happen around Climate Revolution.
Andreas and I work separately at first when we start a new collection but then we come together to start fixing things. I had suggested that he look to Yves Saint Laurent for inspiration and he is ever more astonished. As a child, Andreas had a deep attraction to fashion and when as a teenager he discovered Saint Laurent, the attraction was transformed into a passion. I don’t believe anyone has ever appreciated Saint Laurent as much. Andreas is an extremely visual person; he is a see-er – seeing, he understands. He is a perfectionist and by experience he knows in advance the effort each undertaking will cost. It looks easy but it is the most difficult thing in the world.
We are both getting a feeling for the collection. We seem each to have grasped something of the elegance and adventure of the fashion of the Middle Ages from our book of reproductions of illuminated manuscripts – these illuminations were of course the most profuse artistic expression of the time. We are excited but we have so far chosen only half the fabrics.
TUES 8 JAN MAN AT HARRODS DEPOT
Our yoga class has been on holiday and I was so glad to treat myself again. At 4 p.m. we went to the English pre-collection presentation of our MAN collection which will catwalk in Milan. It was sponsored by Harrods in their depot where their big green lorries were parked around an installation of Joe Rush’s Mutoid Waste Company stuff (my favourite, the horse, was there) and models posed. We were right next to the Ecuadorian Embassy (Julian wakes up at 4 a.m. when the Harrods depot grills roll up and the depot jumps into noisy life), so I was wearing my I am Julian Assange T-shirt.
I was interviewed about Climate Revolution and, of course, Julian. The young models did not know about Julian or WikiLeaks. I told them, ‘Get a Life! Engage with the world.’ And I gave them the two spare T-shirts I had with me; friends who wear them tell me they create a load of interest.
Our MAN pre-collection event at Harrods depot.
SUN 13 JAN MAN IN MILAN – AND PUNK
We had our MAN fashion show in Milan and in the evening, my friend Gian Mauro again hosted a party in his penthouse. I talked to some of the boys who had modelled and came along – Jimmy, Lawson, Duncan and Miles. I was so impressed. They really did know what was going on in the world.
They made me think again about punk. The Metropolitan Museum in New York will put on an exhibition about punk this year and people want my opinion. Since punk collapsed for me with the death of Sid Vicious and the break-up of the Sex Pistols, I have been contemptuous of the movement in general and in particular of its token rebels and career gurus who claim social significance for it. I think they’re all posers. I realised that it wasn’t enough, jumping around wearing safety pins and a ‘Destroy’ T-shirt. You need ideas to be subversive. That is why the movement folded: the punks didn’t have any because ideas don’t come on a plate – you have to get them yourself by becoming engaged with the world and its past.
After punk, Malcolm and I did our Pirate collection. The idea was ‘get off the island’ (insular mentality of England) and plunder the world
and its past for ideas. I see how our clothes, our fashion, represented our aspirations. We changed the look of the urban guerrilla with black bondage for the pirate, gold teeth, ringlets and historical dress.
Talking to my new friends in Milan – at the moment they take advantage of their good looks to model – through them I see now how effective the punk message had been. Punk planted an attitude: Don’t Trust Governments, Ever. The punk stance gave young people a political focus. It was a stand against the mismanagement of the world and the corruption of power and the destruction it causes. That’s what punk was for me. And that’s what anarchy meant to me – that people would have more control of their lives and more control of government. It is the same reason I write this diary.
By the way, my friends really care about what they wear in defiance of conformity.
WEDS 16 – WEDS 23 JAN THE ROSE, SNOW AND JUERGEN
Andreas and I went to the fifth birthday celebration and fundraising dinner for the Rose Theatre, held at the Hurlingham Club. Judi Dench’s costume from A Midsummer Night’s Dream was auctioned and we contributed a prize of two fashion show tickets.
I was sitting with other theatregoers, talking to journalist and author Mihir Bose, who made the following point (which he put so well that I asked him to email it to me): ‘The major problem for the environment is that the world has just one economic model. A consequence of the Western reshaping of the world using this model is that every family now wants to have a lifestyle similar to America, with two cars and innumerable gadgets. The rising middle classes of China and India also aspire to this. The planet’s resources cannot sustain such growth, but there are no viable alternative models.’
Get a Life Page 14