I also wrote an introduction, for our library, on Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. I read the book all in one go – it’s really best to read fiction like that. I gave myself a day or two holiday. I have seen friends, and lingered in the glorious weather a little – I picked some blackberries from Battersea Park and stewed them with some apples, still a little bit sour, that fell off a tree on our roof at work.
TUES 13 AUG THE WORLD NEEDS POETS
I went to meet the young poets who were taking part in YOUYOU Mentoring, a London-based not-for-profit scheme that aims to give young people the opportunity to work with high-profile/successful mentors in their chosen field. In today’s difficult job market, and with so many falling into the NEET category (Not in Education, Employment or Training), these opportunities are proving to be invaluable experiences for young people developing their craft and needing that ‘something extra’ on their CV. I was asked for a quote to publicise the project. I said: ‘I am pleased to be patron because the world needs poets.’
I talked to them about the importance of culture in the Climate Revolution – saying of course that if we had true culture we would have different values and therefore we would not have climate change. I told them that Gore Vidal said ‘the Nobel prize should be given to readers not writers; everybody’s writing a book but nobody is reading.’ By that he meant that the fit reader is someone who reads the best writers throughout time, those who tell the universal truths, and that is why I hardly read fiction from the last few decades, it’s so cheap and ephemeral. I said that today art education is generally a negative experience and represses the fact that inspiration comes from the past and absorption in its ideas and preaches the nonsense that it all starts from here i.e. you/the tabula rasa. ‘Ignore the past, express yourself!’ Therefore people don’t communicate – if it makes sense to them it’s good enough – or, their ideas are too banal for anyone to be interested. I explained to these kids, ‘You have to supply the stepping stones so we can both get across the stream, they have to be there even though they might be hard to find.’
I liked Greta Bellamacina, the poet who has chaperoned the project. She is a serious person.
FRI 16 AUG FLY LESS, STAY LONGER – AND BALCOMBE
Andreas went for a long weekend to see our friends Rosita and Paula, who produce for us in Italy. They have a little holiday flat in the great old city of Viareggio near Carrara – famous for Michelangelo. Andreas is in his element on the beach and you know the Italians – how different enterprises own each strip of the beach down to the sea, and they provide everything: showers, towels, robes, sunbeds, beach restaurants and service.
I didn’t want to go: ‘Fly less, stay longer’. It’s too short a visit to bother hanging around in airports. I prefer to stay with myself at home and read. However, my son Joe had asked me to go to Balcombe, where the government want to start fracking.
On the train with Ben, Joe, Tomoka and friends, Joe showed me an article in the Financial Times where energy companies had issued a threat to the government amounting to: we can’t make profit from renewable energy (unlimited). We can make profit from fossil fuels (limited). Unless governments support fossil fuels we will have to close plants and investment will plummet. Such an admission! Joe said he’d never read anything like it. He was so excoriating about fracking that I said, ‘Oh Joe, I wish I was a ventriloquist and you could talk to the press.’ When we arrived the press were asking me how long I was staying and what I felt about civil disobedience. I hadn’t realised that today was the start of the drilling and that the protesters intended to stop it. And as it happened Cuadrilla laid off because the police had said they couldn’t protect them. I was really pleased to hold the sign, ‘Lock the Gate’.
The Balcombe anti-fracking protest.
One of the protest groups camping in a field donated by a local farmer is ‘Reclaim the Power’. I talked to Cara (a stunning beauty with freckles and blonde rasta hairdo). I said, ‘I’m all for Claim the Power but as for Reclaim, I don’t think people ever had the power, people have always been manipulated or made stupid by every form of government and the present plutocracy has been the most successful.’ I thought next day: this is it. Climate Revolution starts in Balcombe. Climate Revolution has to join in. We will establish the revolution by fighting fracking in this country. We will take our model from 350.org.
SAT 17 – SUN 18 AUG KNITWEAR
Saturday: yoga and reading. Sunday: to work from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. on the knitwear. I finally cracked it. I had worked out a scheme which depended on samples from Italy – I needed to check weights and degree of firmness and colours. Having just received samples, I had loads because every time they had never been quite right – they kept changing from what I had asked for. I started from scratch – just keeping my scheme in mind – pinning this wonderful mix of knitted squares on the stand. I got what I wanted – the possibility of combining different textures and colours and looking like it had been thrown together – which it had.
The knitted-squares dress – it is modelled in the photo on p.239.
WEDS 21 AUG CHELSEA MANNING SENTENCE
The day of the Chelsea (Bradley) Manning sentence: thirty-five years, speculation of parole after twelve years. There’s an appeal. We went to the American Embassy to meet up with support groups, then a bunch of us, including Andreas, went to the pub. I did enjoy talking to all my friends.
Now the guess is that Chelsea Manning might get parole in seven years. What a strong character Chelsea has – true to herself! And I think she will become even more popular now. Public opinion is so important. I think her popularity will help Edward Snowden.
SAT 24 – SAT 31 AUG FRIDA KAHLO
Andreas went to Corsica for a week. Once again I preferred to stay at home. All week we had worked hard and I needed to keep in touch with myself so this bank holiday weekend I began by writing up the diary and it took most of the weekend, though I did pop out on Saturday to have dinner with my friend, Giselle.
On Tuesday, I went in to work to make sure the last important information is relayed to our manufacturers in Italy now that they are back from holidays. The other things I have to do are sort outfits for this season’s Red Label presentation for London Fashion Week and check the content and look for the launch of the Climate Revolution site.
At the weekend, I had time for myself and met Shami and her son at the Royal Academy’s exhibition of Mexico’s 1910 Revolution. Photos and paintings: very intense. The photographs left an indelible impression on me, so skilfull was their composition, but the greatest thing was a tiny self-portrait by Frida Kahlo.
SEPTEMBER 2013
MON 2 SEPT BEN’S GOT ART
My son Ben writes the World’s End shop website and he was explaining the origins of a man’s suit – one of our favourite classics, which we have just reintroduced. It is from a portrait of a man called Krall by Otto Dix and Ben found out more about the work of Dix and talked to Andreas. Then Andreas came to me, really excited, and he made me excited because he said, ‘I think Ben’s got art!’ If this happens to you it’s a gift out of the blue – you enter the parallel universe (where everything is perfectly expressed). Andreas has got art, he gets it immediately – and I’m sure Andreas is right about Ben. I talked to Ben, who said, ‘I’m very alive to the subject matter.’ I don’t know if I get art. I know I love paintings; I stand in front of them for ages and I don’t want to leave. I think you’d call it worship – or meditation. I marvel and I’m completely grateful they exist.
They have found a new Titian. Andreas showed it to me on his computer. It’s been 120 years since the last discovery and this one has been in a private family collection. Titian painted it when he was young, around twenty-five. It’s a Resurrection. Andreas said, ‘It’s obvious, of course it’s competitive, he is showing off his power. It’s very important. An interesting face – someone he knew. Intellectual. The loincloth (shroud) is the greatest ever painted, its swathes include every possibility but it
doesn’t exist in real life.’
I don’t know how big the painting is. It could be life-size or more. Jesus fills all the space; he fills the world, the clouds are the horizon, the sunrise is low down, level with Jesus’s legs. The composition gives confidence, in Jesus and in the world – a feeling of security. ‘Christ’ means the ‘anointed one’. Christ has saved us for everlasting life by dying for us on the cross. We can share in his divinity: ‘I am the way, the truth and the life.’ This is what I read in his expression: I’ve done it, I have fulfilled my destiny. Contemplation of this all-embracing icon gives peace and confirms heaven.
Though I have no religious belief I can share in the power of this painting, put myself in Titian’s shoes, go back in time and understand the solidity and confidence that this religious outlook gave to one’s view of the world. Jesus’s face is full of health in the prime of life. His flag is the victory over death (the dragon of St George).
SUN 15 SEPT RED LABEL SHOW
We kept postponing our decision as to how to present Red Label, our very important second line. Were we going to do a catwalk show or … our marketing people explored the idea of a film combined with a presentation. Time ran out and Andreas rang up Lily Cole and asked her, ‘Lily, you’re an activist for the environment, can you think of a way to use a presentation of Red Label?’
Lily was interested to know that we wished to focus attention on Environmental Justice Foundation’s campaign (EJF) to help climate refugees. She herself is already a passionate supporter of this. EJF are distributing postcards for people to send to Ban Ki-moon to get the UN to give official recognition to this human crisis. There are more than thirty million climate refugees (compared to ten million war refugees). We could put these postcards on seats and help distribute them in other ways.
Lily talked to a friend from her schooldays, Lorna Tucker, who makes films. Lorna is also my friend and at the moment is making a film on Leonard Peltier. They came up with an idea. Lily (I didn’t know this) is a dancer. She would dance Hans Christian Andersen’s story of ‘The Red Shoes’. The girl cannot stop dancing unless she can rid herself of the shoes. This would be a metaphor for climate refugees who must escape their hostile environment. The dance of death must end. Trapped in its hostile environment an animal will die. It will try to leave. It will leave but there is nowhere to go. Lorna made a ten minute film of Lily’s dance which we will send to Ban Ki-moon and for the Red Label presentation Lily danced live for three minutes and then the fashion show took place. We somehow wanted the models to look like animals who die due to degraded environments. Andreas gave the brief to make-up and hair, Val Garland and Mark Hampton: imagine an animal caught in headlights.
Red Label make-up for the show.
The postcards ask us to write about home.
I wrote: ‘Anyone who gets home late from work and finds she’s forgotten the key. What a disaster! My home is my refuge.’
Lily wrote: ‘Planet earth is our home. Yet climate change now makes someone homeless every second.’
MON 16 SEPT GRAPES OF WRATH
The library at work now has a selection of eight books with six copies of each, enough so that some of us can get together and discuss them. The book of the month is Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath and we decided to launch the library with a showing of the film, starring Henry Fonda and directed by John Ford.
We did this in the Doodle Bar, across the road from our studio in Battersea. It was really nice. Prior to going over, Tizer had organised people to each bring a dish of food and then there were free drinks at the bar. I was disappointed that mostly the same people came – the ones who get involved, come on demonstrations. The others? I know people need to get home after a long day but it is really a question of habit; they could say, yes, I’ll go, and if that means I have to make arrangements at home, I’ll do it. It’s so important to engage with the world.
Grapes of Wrath is a great film. Henry Fonda wanted that role so badly – he is a hero and all the casting is shrewd – and the sets – the way it looks is graphic and timeless. It succeeds in condensing Steinbeck’s message and it ends at a good point for a film – on a note of optimism. The advantage of the book is (of course) more words, words that flow and ideas that build. More time to introduce us to the aspirations of all the individual characters who belong to this rich story of human kinship. The book continues beyond the point where the film stops and though the chances of survival for the family are precarious the pathos of the final scene is unsurpassed in literature.
WEDS 25 SEPT A VEGGIE RECIPE
I’ve been working on next season’s Red Label as well as preparing stuff for the Climate Revolution site for when the site structure is ready. And of course Gold Label. The last week has been lovely; seeing all the designs become reality, receiving the last of the embroideries, the hats, the jewellery. I was trying to put the show together – draw it out on paper, outfits, what goes with what – tops and bottoms. It seemed quite difficult and somehow we will have to do it in Paris with all the actual clothes when they arrive. This will make us rather later than usual. It’s always a good thing to have a provisional run to work from.
Andreas always buys flowers for the studio. He is so excited, he said: ‘The feeling I have, I can only compare it to the harvest.’ Johannes, who works on Worlds’ End (an ex-student of mine from when I taught in Berlin), takes it upon himself to cook because we all work late. Here is one of his recipes (vegetarian).
For 8–10 people:
2 small Hokkaido squash/pumpkins, 1 onion, 1 leek, 5 sticks celery, 2 carrots, 1 big piece of ginger, 2 cubes vegetable stock (yeast free), 1 chilli (red), 1 lemon grass, 1 can of coconut cream, ½ bottle of white wine, juice from 1 lime, fresh coriander.
Cut all the vegetables into small pieces. You can use the Hokkaido squash with its peel, which makes it a lot quicker to prepare than butternut squash. Put everything into a big pot, fill up with water and bring to boil; use less water if you want a thicker soup. Add salt and soup stock and cook for 10 mins. Now add the spices (cut very small) and the wine and cook for another 5 mins. Take it off the heat, add the coconut cream and mix it with a hand blender until it is smooth and creamy. Add lime juice and coriander topping.
THURS 25 – FRI 26 SEPT PARIS PILGRIMS
I left with Andreas for Paris. Our Gold Label show is on Saturday and we don’t have a title yet – and even more than this I need to tell the story of the collection, for a press release and for when I do my interviews. So I just wrote everything down, hoping the title would grow out of the process, and it did. This is far too long and complicated for a press release but I was able to pick out a few paragraphs. Here is the full version:
Gold Label Spring–Summer 2014. Everything Is Connected. In search of a title. Now that our world is at the chaos point I want to know more about the world order of the medieval community. My interest in these people deepens.
A couple of years ago I went with Andreas to Canterbury. There was a service in the cathedral and we weren’t allowed into the splendour of the nave and altar. I’m so glad because instead we gained another experience; we explored the cloisters and vaults and I felt that I was wandering in the presence of ordinary people who lived in a different world to mine and I thought of the specialists – the alchemists of those days who aspired to become more spirit than flesh because they believed in a divine order of things.
I thought also of pilgrims throughout time and it became a working title for this collection. How did they dress? They would try to balance the need for humility and austerity with a display of their importance in this world. In those ordered earlier worlds you dressed accordingly to your status. I thought of the pagan Greek, a young male pilgrim walking to the shrine of Apollo in his noble nakedness, his cloak, hat and staff. Only young men of the priveleged class were allowed to walk around naked. We used this image in our invitation.
Our medieval pilgrims on their journey must be austere, serious and festive, each wearing her
most important clothes.
Their colours begin with un-dyed cloths (perhaps this mark of piety implies wealth – poorer people would try to show off more) and colours and tints of vegetable dyes. There is always a way to show wealth, for example scholars and clerks dressed in ‘austere’ black but in those days the process of achieving a black dye cost a fortune.
Amongst the travellers would be important people from the countryside wearing their most festive traditional dress. I love the way that folk costume carries its wealth: an apron can be the most costly item, an example of the finest, most perfect or most elaborate spinning and weaving; a belt could have taken a skilled member of a village a year of his spare time; scarves and cloaks and jewellery can be pinned flat, transposing the refinement of their decoration into an overall panache.
Frida Kahlo began to inspire our collection. We visited the Royal Academy’s current exhibition on the Mexican revolution which happened at the same time as World War I. Frida was one of the artists who grouped together to celebrate through their work the new power of the people. She wore the Mexican folk costume. You may think anyone could look like her by doing that but they couldn’t. She had the keenest sense of style – the way each day she just fixed her hair, sometimes adding ribbons or flowers. You would think that Sam McKnight had just flown in to do it. She made the look so spontaneous, so her, so chic, and she wore it all her life. A great fashion icon and a great artist.
Get a Life Page 19