Later, I had three hours to spare, so went to the Met and looked at Chinese vases and Buddhist sculptures. You feel affection for the Met because everything about humans that we know of is housed in one building. In London our vast buildings with their enormous collections specialise. With the Met you feel that if you came once a week for a year you would know everything in it, then you could keep going back and know it all better. And in London we don’t have a collection of Chinese painting. Their bookshop is also the best art bookshop in the world.
WEDS 8 MAY THE CENTURY CLUB
Morning – arrived home from New York. Evening to the Century Club for a panel discussion, Q&A and a video link to Julian Assange. The focus of the event was support for Bradley Manning. Human rights campaigner, Peter Tatchell, spoke. As you know, Peter is active in gay rights and gays are building support for Brad. Also on the panel was journalist Andy Worthington, author of The Guantanamo Files. I was particularly interested that he helped get 25,000 people on to the streets of Lewisham to protest the closure of the local hospital as I’m interested in protesting the evictions of people from their homes in Clapham, where I live, so the council (Lambeth) can sell the houses as part of their economic squeeze (short-term madness, storing up trouble for the future).
THURS 9 MAY TAI MISSONI
Tai Missoni died. A big romance, a lovely family, a good business with knits loved throughout the world. They lost their son, Vittorio, in January. Rosita, you have all always been so nice. Bless you all.
TUES 14 MAY NUCLEAR ENERGY AND LEDERHOSEN
Olivier from the French magazine Purple popped in for half an hour to interview me. He is passionately against nuclear energy. I don’t know what to think – it is supposed to be the cleanest in comparison to fossil fuels; the greatest killer is carbon but there is a great body of anecdotal evidence for death from nuclear. The hope lies in solar and fusion. Dams cause untold destruction, which isn’t great; we need efficient national grids.
Olivier left for New York with a travel bag not much bigger than a washbag. He doesn’t need clothes, just underwear, because he’s always in black leather – like Joe Rush. When Joe washes his shirt he’s bare-chested under his leather jacket. And me – in this usually cold and changing weather chaos I wear every day my lederhosen.
Henri Rousseau – Surprised! at the National Gallery. You have to see it in real life..
A view of my back garden. Andreas said, ‘I want to show you, it’s the same as Rousseau.’ It was the same – the thriving manifold abundance.
WEDS 15 MAY RANKIN AND ANDY GOTTS
Photo by Rankin for Marie Claire interview. This is for a green issue so that’s why I agreed. I don’t do interviews on just fashion.
Rankin’s studio is very busy – of course it’s the headquarters of his fashion magazine Hunger (he also set up Dazed and Confused with Jefferson Hack). Lovely breakfast, then lovely lunch; lots – help yourself. I was worried it would get wasted. No, it’s never wasted, they cook for fifty people each day.
Then on for another photo, by Andy Gotts (same outfit means I only have to prepare once). Andy’s doing a book on fashion people and pop stars with the proceeds going to Elton John’s charity. In the quiet of a suite in the St James Hotel there is just him; it’s comfortable, no fuss and he uses the same lighting. Hence his popularity: ‘People don’t like having their photos taken, I make it simple.’ It was a pleasure to have him take my photo. He offered his service to me for any charity work.
I had time to walk over to the National Gallery for an hour. I had a cup of tea then looked at Henri Rousseau. You have to see Rousseau in real life (and don’t forget to look at the frame). There is nowhere a more thriving representation of nature. I bought a good little book on him. Then got the bus home.
THURS 16 MAY JAMES HANSEN AT THE LSE
I went to LSE in the early evening to hear James Hansen, the most respected scientist in the world. He told his story. He was the fifth of seven children of itinerant farmers – good business in the 1950s – before going to university and then to NASA.
By applying his studies of Venus to earth he discovered the dangerous rate of global warming in relation to CO2 emissions. In the 1970s he spoke out and was attacked by the scientific and political authorities. He wasn’t good at dealing with this so he stepped back from debate and continued his work. But when Sophie, his grandchild, was born he stepped back into the public arena: he said, one day when the world was destroyed his grandchildren would ask, ‘Why didn’t grandfather try to do something?’
He showed photos of the monarch butterfly which migrates from one mountain top in Mexico to his home in California, where they flock to the milkweed bushes his family plants for them; he made the point that if earth gets hotter they will have to plant higher up his home mountain until they reach the top.
James’s idea is to price carbon. It’s a very simple idea: fossil fuel companies would pay a pollution tax at source before fuel enters the market. This tax would be passed on to the customer, who would realise the effect, e.g. when a gallon of petrol cost $1 more. However, all the tax collected would be paid direct to the citizen. Each US citizen would receive $3,000 per annum paid into their bank account in monthly instalments; children would receive $1,500 so a family with two kids would receive $9,000. People who had no car (or a green car) would make a profit. The tax would increase each year. This scheme would put money into circulation and stimulate the green economy. Governments are interested. James was on his way to testify to the EU. He had another idea: to prosecute the US government.
James Hansen being handcuffed.
One of the questions James was asked was, ‘How do we get more people engaged in activism?’ He didn’t know, he said: ‘Bill McKibben got 35,000 people on the streets recently in Washington to protest the pipeline from the tar sands. It wasn’t enough.’ James was among the people arrested.
WEDS 22 MAY GERGIEV AT THE BARBICAN
Concert at the Barbican to mark Gergiev’s 60th birthday. It blew me away as usual. Gergiev is artistic director of the St Petersburg Mariinsky Theatre, home of the legendary Kirov ballet. Among his worldwide activities he is Principal Conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra (home, the Barbican). Russia has already rewarded him with a new concert hall and now a new Mariinsky opera house. I hear he is a pal of Putin – he must be – and although I have very much enjoyed meeting him once or twice I haven’t broached the topic of politics; but I would like to – so I will if I get the chance. Barbican concert tickets start at £10. Great value, great acoustics, no tricks – just people power and centuries of skill.
FRI 24 MAY A TULIP NAMED FOR ME
A special treat to mark the honour of having a tulip named after me: tea at the Dutch Embassy. I was asked to invite thirty guests and Tizer was clever – why didn’t I invite our couture customers, those who were around? And our pattern cutters and sewers.
The ambassador’s speech touched me. She felt that I appreciated the importance to culture of Dutch painting and spoke of this often and that my fight for the environment, along with true human values is shared by the best that is Dutch. Ligthart Bloembollen, the man who invented my tulip, presented me with a bunch. It takes twenty-five years to create a new one. The tulips are a fiery, burnt orange with yellow lights inside and purple lights outside; their petals are framed with a tough little fringe. I love them.
I spoke on the importance of culture. If people only bought beautiful things that would be Climate Revolution. I enjoyed meeting and being with everyone, and pianist Nelly Akopian-Tamarina – who looked so chic in our dress of black Cluny lace framed with a navy Cluny lace which also bordered its diagonal cut – played a little piece of Chopin. Yes, I am a fan of seventeenth-century Dutch painting. There is no progress in art and this is the place to start if you wish to love art. Its small format and original and intimate subject matter is intended to hang in houses with smaller rooms. Starting from here you can go forward and back in time to know painting but
if you start at, say, the Impressionists, you might go on in time, to Picasso, but after that there are only birthday cards. You might get stuck there and never discover the past.
The Vivienne Westwood tulip, which blooms around my birthday in April.
SAT 25 – SUN 26 MAY TO MEGAN’S IN KENT
We drove to the country with our friend Robert. He has a workshop in the Kent Weald, which he thinks is the most luscious country landscape in Britain. He used to be a tree surgeon and can build anything – furniture, wood sculpture and sets for our catwalk shows: he built a forest on the third floor in Harrods. Robert told us we could stay with Megan who rents a lodge in the deer park of an estate belonging to a family descended from the Nevills (it must be the family who fought in the War of the Roses). We travelled down with Rema, who lives in Hastings. I know her father, Craig. There was a period when my children were very young that I did not work but lived on Malcolm’s student grant and my precious family allowance. I was studying to go to university but my plans changed when I borrowed £100 from my mother and Malcolm and opened Let it Rock in the back half of a shop which is now World’s End. For a few years, our diet was macrobiotic and I bought brown rice etc from Craig’s shop in the Portobello Road – there were very few wholefood shops then. Craig headed the Soil Association for many years.
May is the crown of the year and because nature is late this year we were in perfect time: everything in leaf and in blossom, bursting, steaming and swaying into the big blue sky. Highlights: a visit to the cottage of the mothman, whose private collection of moths is an important one. He is a third generation of moth specialists and instead of collecting them he traps moths, records them and sets them free. He was an important spy during World War II. He is descended from Nelson.
Megan happens to be a friend of Julian Assange and among her guests for dinner were some of the activists for Bradley whom I’d met, including Emma from Century Club and her young daughter, who live nearby. She had made a delicious Thai curry – I had it again at breakfast.
Sunday: late morning visit to the house of the Nevills’ estate and its gorgeous garden: a stunning old cedar and a giant oak standing squat on a mound heaving up its too many arms like a basket till its fingers scratched the sky. And the lawn leading down to a view of May in all its green glory, rolling in a ring of hills, while Andreas and I entered the warmth of grass paths walled by bushes of every kind, many in flower, especially the fiery azaleas.
JUNE 2013
SAT 1 JUNE BRADLEY MANNING DEMONSTRATION
I went to the Bradley Manning demonstration. You remember our plan to ask NGOs to go on each other’s demonstrations because everything is connected under the banner of Climate Revolution. Well, we phoned around and emailed but I didn’t see anyone I knew from among the NGOs. Our company did very well – there were thirty-four of us – but there were only 300–400 people altogether. I was shocked. I thought there would be at least a couple of thousand.
It was a fantastic event with great speakers and singers. Wonderful people. We really care about Bradley Manning and we care about the poor people who were shot down by soldiers who treat killing people as a game. The most important thing we learnt is the case the prosecution intend to push for: Bradley has admitted leaking information on war crimes; he will not be allowed to submit his motives or claim that no one has been harmed or bring witnesses to prove it. People say the court will give him twenty years. But the prosecution wants more than that; they say if a whistle-blower gives information to any media outlet and the outlet publishes then that information is in the public domain and the public includes terrorists, therefore the whistle-blower has helped the enemy. This is a capital offence and they will ask for life imprisonment without parole.
After the demonstration some of us went to a café where we discussed reasons why we in the privileged part of the world don’t get out on the streets like we used to. Some cite the anti-Iraq demonstration when two million people (official figure one million) massed in Hyde Park – but the British government ignored them and declared war on Iraq straightaway, so now people think demonstrations aren’t effective. For sure it matters how directly you are affected, for example during the Vietnam War, which led to the hippie movement. There was conscription in the US; it could be you or your son that got killed. I heard that today there is only one American politician who has a soldier son.
SAT 15 JUNE YOKO ONO’S MELTDOWN
I did an interview with Julian Assange as part of Yoko Ono’s Meltdown Festival at the Southbank. I asked him: The petitions people sign on the internet (Avaaz, etc.), how important are they? It’s easy for people to click on a button but how committed are they? These petitions can be effective. How important are they in comparison to public demonstrations?
I asked Julian to speak from his own experience and he said that when Time magazine conducted a readers’ poll for ‘Person of the Year 2010’, he won twice as many votes as the person who came second. But Time rejected the vote and decided on one of the other candidates as winner. In their ‘Person of the Year’ poll in 2012 the Guardian heavily promoted the case of Malala Yousafzai, the girl who was shot by the Taliban, but Bradley Manning won overwhelmingly. The Guardian published the result discreetly. The point Julian was making is that there is mass support for people and for policies which the official media ignores and that social media is a more accurate consensus – ‘Body Politic’, he calls it – of opinion. Due to WikiLeaks and other online outlets, people can now see the difference between the official media and the truth of what really happens.
This new Body Politic already gives power to the people (perhaps it gave power to the witnesses who refused to be intimidated by prosecutors of Bradley Manning) and it must affect our rulers. The necessary thing is to work out a structure for this new Body Politic (a cabinet of respected people we could vote for, a new government that could be truly democratic). The internet offers us a new franchise, a true body politic. So public demonstrations are a driver and a back-up of people’s real opinion on the internet. It is the aim of Climate Revolution to build that public assembly.
Julian next made me aware of a tremendously important fact. My way to explain it is: when President Eisenhower warned politicians to beware the ‘military-industrial complex’ he saw that the economy was being driven by the vast profits which tied these two interests so intricately together. However, the politicians backed it completely. The resulting ‘political–military-industrial’ complex became so enmeshed that no-one could have separated it out. It has a life of its own and it is now growing like a cancer: more tax is being allocated to it and away from social needs (health, education, etc.).
Now we come to the importance of the whistle-blower Edward Snowden. We heard about his leaks this week and this information is probably the most important that has ever been leaked – because it affects everybody. It makes clear that to our rulers the public is the enemy. The privacy of all people has now been invaded. This is bad for society; people will self-censor and be scared to speak freely, express themselves or criticise in case they are discriminated against.
What about Orwell’s 1984 – ‘Big Brother is watching you’? That book is about power for the sake of power. Is this the logic of our rulers? Is this our world?
SUN 23 JUNE OUR MAN SHOW IN MILAN
I carry a scrap of paper around in my purse. It is my advance diary for the month – just a list of appointments and events. Then every two or three weeks I refer back to it, and pull out the main events for this diary. Now I report less on a daily basis and concentrate more on the big issues and ideas – tell you what I’m thinking. Regarding my daily life and work you know how it goes and how we are constantly building a collection. On Thursday the 20th we shot our publicity campaign with photographer Jack Pearson and on Sunday the 23rd we did our MAN catwalk show in Milan.
Our MAN show was inspired by India and Bradley Manning. I don’t have direct experience of India. I have only my romantic impressions. So our
inspiration came from museums and photos: Hindu gods and dancing and colour and flowers and spices and tigers and the jungle and the Ganges; temples and saris worn by the most elegant women, beauty and grace.
We knew we had to have colour but we began with whites – white that shines in the sun and white that looks dusty; cream and black with texture and pattern and mixed with indigo. Then checks and prints, then some colour and colour degrade. I think the overall colour effect belongs in the light of the sun. A few motifs from Persia or Morocco crept in. There was a feeling of being in an oriental garden.
Our Bradley Manning TRUTH T-shirt – part of the MAN Spring/Summer 2014 collection that we launched in Milan.
Does sunshine disguise poverty to the English outsider? In a recent essay Noam Chomsky summed up what’s happening in the world: the rich are racing as fast as they can to destroy the world, the poor are fighting to stop them. India is the most extreme example of this. The government is selling the country’s mineral rights to corporations and consortiums (these huge profits by the corporations can pay for corruption). When the land is ruined the people have nowhere to go. I have been reading Arundhati Roy’s book, about how Maoist organisations fight the evictions – and when people have nowhere to go except the forest, or squat on the pavements of cities, they are considered Maoists. The police are allowed to kill anyone if they call them a Marxist. The government is purposely creating war. Why? Because they want the people off the land. Why? Because most of the minerals the government is selling are still in the ground.
Why is Bradley Manning featured in a collection about India (no turbans but military berets)? Well, I always hijack my collections to talk politics and Bradley is there because everything is connected. The depredation in India is caused by the global political financial war machine (political-military-industrial complex). Bradley stood in the path of this great juggernaut. He told the truth by exposing war crimes and releasing documents which revealed that the purpose of our wars is total plunder.
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