FRI 16 MAY CANNES FILM FESTIVAL
To Cannes. Pamela and her husband Rick organised a charity event during the film festival: baccarat gambling on a yacht with speeches in between. Pamela, with her short hair, looked more sensational than ever. She gave a speech to launch the Pamela Anderson Foundation. At the next break between gaming I gave my speech, ‘Who are our Rulers?’. Johan Eliasch, who started Cool Earth, talked about the charity’s work and we raised nearly a quarter of a million dollars, mostly for Cool Earth. Brandon, Pamela’s son, won the baccarat.
Rankin’s cover for Deborah Ross’s profile of Andreas in The Times.
We stayed in Cap d’Antibes in the Belles Rives Hotel, which Scott Fitzgerald, Zelda and daughter Scottie once rented. It was really lovely there among the cliffs. We ate there, down beside the sea.
Next night we went to a dinner hosted by Giorgio Armani for Vanity Fair. Pamela wore just a Climate Revolution T-shirt. Didn’t try to go to any film premieres. None interested me except the YSL documentary, which is said to be good. Honestly, I didn’t fancy paying (a lot); you have to, though usually the money goes to charity.
Stella Schnabel modelling our campaign – photographed by Juergen Teller.
TUES 20 MAY STELLA SCHNABEL
Our publicity campaign shoot with Juergen. We had fitted in three days’ preparation, before and after Cannes, so it went smoothly. We did it with actress Stella Schnabel, Julian’s daughter; her mother is Belgian so she spoke French as a child, though grew up in America and lives in New York. She is a strong woman, generous and charming, and speaks with definition and focus. I loved the way she said, ‘yes’: so positive. I couldn’t hear it enough.
She thanked me for having directed her to the Wallace Collection while she was here in London; she was very thrilled. It’s such a relief to meet people who are intellectually inclined. She’s staying with Anita (Pallenberg). We shot in our house. Juergen found a spot where the light was good and special and stayed there. We had prepared food and we all enjoyed ourselves. Stella liked the clothes.
FRI 23 MAY SUSAN AND LELU
My friend Susan came to stay – until Sunday evening. We met when we were eighteen at teacher training college and shared a room in Brixton. This is a real treat for me.
We dined at home with Andreas – a niçoise salad (no tuna). Susan lives in Portland, near Weymouth, and is up in London to check out a Greek pot (do go and look at them) in the British Museum; it’s part of a course she’s doing for the Open University. She and one of her daughters, Clare, have been running for council election for the Green Party. Clare almost made it. I said I’d go to help them next time. We went to yoga together, then we met Sara (Stockbridge) and Cobalt and Sara’s daughter Lelu at the Gate Theatre, Notting Hill, for Grounded – about drones. Really well done, theatre at its best. Lelu is just sixteen and I wanted her to come; it’s so important for young people to know what’s going on.
We all went over the road, after, to Le Pain Quotidien, where we met Peter Olive for a chat. Lelu told us that she had helped a young Indian girl from her school to avoid an arranged marriage to a man living in India whom she had never met. I don’t have an opinion against arranged marriage per se but the girl was desperate against it and I think Lelu was good to get involved. Lelu wears the look of girls her age: black footless tights and trainers, nylon blouson, cropped vest worn over bra, and showing midriff. Cleavage. Longish hair, full make-up. She’s beautiful, serious.
Susan and I went to the Matisse cut-outs at Tate Modern.
TUES 27 MAY WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT FRACKING
Launch of our We need to talk about Fracking campaign. Venue: HMS President on Victoria Embankment; 10 .a.m. Our letter of celebrities, scientists and organisations has just been published. It calls for an independent debate on the possible dangers of fracking to the environment and our health. The public need to know. We do interviews for press and TV and announce our tour of five towns in England, Scotland and Wales. By means of a panel of speakers we aim to discuss all the facts about the potential for fracking in the UK. Government propaganda has avoided this discussion.
Who are we? Having for weeks discussed the problem with charities, NGOs and business people, my son Joe, his charity Humanade and his friends formed this plan with Climate Revolution and backed up by Lush handmade cosmetics shop. Since forming the plan we have also talked to scientists to collect all our facts. Jeremy Leggett of Solar Century will be on the London panel.
THURS 29 – FRI 30 MAY VIENNA AND TEDX
To Vienna for the Life Ball. Stay at the Sacher Hotel. We go to visit our friend Irma, who Andreas has asked to prepare a traditional country dish, a home-made spelt pasta with a sauce of different cheeses. She is a very special cook – Andreas calls her ‘immaculate’. All the other things she prepares are immaculate, too: salads and a rhubarb tart. I met Irma at the same time as Andreas when I came to teach here; they were both in my class. She makes home furnishings and I have a patchwork wool cover for the bed from her which I really like. It’s immaculate. We are with Ruben, her son (around twenty), and two neighbours and lots of champagne.
Irma’s flat is quite big with high ceilings; the rent is controlled, kept low. In London you would have ten people living in the house, each paying what she pays for the lot. There are no school fees. They don’t seem to knock down or dig up the roads: easier to live here. We have a shop in Vienna, though sales have been affected because of sanctions and bank account freezes to Russians.
On Friday, an interview with Falter. The journalist, Christopher, is kind; he lets me explain step by step ‘Who are our Rulers?’ and what they do to end life on earth by means of their financial system. This was really good because it was a practice for what I will say later in the afternoon when I am giving a TEDx talk.
When I gave my TEDx talk I felt quite desperate; we heard last week that part of the Antarctic is in irreversible melt. If all its ice melts the sea will rise by seventy metres. Can we stop this? I ended up saying, ‘Please do something. You can’t do it on your own. Get together with a friend and focus on one thing.’ I gave examples.
SAT 31 MAY LUNCH IN THE COUNTRY AND THE LIFE BALL
We spent time in our shop with Gregor, who runs it. I had wanted to go to the art gallery but instead we took advantage of a Tesla car which was at our disposal and drove half an hour out of Vienna and into the country with Irma and Andreas’s cousin Teddy. On the way the undulating country was so beautifully cultivated. Luscious.
We went for lunch to a very special place. Martin, the owner, introduced himself. All the food is grown there, and the wine and schnapps, and they sell seeds of the old varieties and many different potatoes so that they don’t go out of existence. Wonderful tastes you never had before: e.g. slices of raw asparagus marinated for months in pear schnapps served with strawberries and then, among the salad leaves, slices of raw marinated rhubarb. Martin served us twirly crisps all in different colours made from different potatoes.
We sat on couches around a table on the grass and under garden umbrellas when it rained. Martin won’t admit people who want to discuss business. He wants people to relax and fully enjoy the experience. You must switch off your mobile and children aren’t allowed to press buttons. They can play and climb and there are paddle boats on the big pond.
We got on to art. I told him Matthew Arnold’s definition of art and culture and that visual art is a representation of reality – the Greeks called it ‘imitation’. Human beings are the only creatures that can do this, abstract something from the flux and fix it in time (timeless). The thing we call ‘abstract art’ is total rubbish. It has no meaning in itself; each separate person must invent a meaning and that has nothing to do with reality. The traditional Chinese painters refer to representation when they say ‘the purpose of painting is to perceive largeness in smallness’.
In the evening was the Life Ball, with first a dinner and auction to raise money. We were part of the fashion show and we were ever s
o good. The great thing was Courtney Love and I’m so glad that Andreas escorted her, took her hand and presented her to the world. It took three strong men to get her into her dress. Courtney, you are a phenomenon. I’ve never seen the like. Gary Kessler is the man who began Life Ball twenty-one years ago. We have come so far. AIDS used to be a death sentence. Gary, through his work, has helped save lives. Imagine it. How many people have saved lives?
JUNE 2014
THURS 5 JUNE NUREYEV AND ART AGAINST CONSUMPTION
Andreas in Italy until Tuesday 10th – for work and including the weekend at the beach. We are now starting our Winter 2015 collections at a time when the current ones are being finalised. The current ones go in the shops next spring, but we show them now: MAN this month and our two women’s collections, Red and Gold in September/October. My regular work is divided between fashion and Climate Revolution. I have been selecting, for the website, extracts from the biography of Rudolph Nureyev by Julie Kavanagh to show how art serves culture and that culture reveals the human genius. Over time, by reading my diary you will come to a view of true culture. My aim is to introduce you to my heretical point of view and thereby defend you against consumption – so that you will never be infected by this chronic illness. The pursuit of art and culture brings health to body and soul and is the antidote to consumption. You just won’t need it when you follow the real thing.
The terrible thing is that people do not know the difference between true culture and popular culture and that popular culture is indeed consumption. Thus generally the human race is not thinking but conforming to the degree that we are almost suffocated by the need to consume (under a blanket just sucking things up and pressing buttons). The dogma of consumption is the most effective propaganda of all time and it is a dogma to which most people now conform. It is the cause of climate change and we must stop that.
NB: Going to an art gallery is not consumption – you engage with the past and therefore engage in the life of the world. You get out what you put in. (And you do not destroy anything.) Put another way, it is sustainable consumption – not just sucking up.
SAT 7 JUNE RECLAIM THE POWER
My son Joe comes to my house to tutor me re fracking, making sure I have the facts right, and to talk about our tour. We planned a debate in five UK towns but it now seems the politicians and business people who are pro-fracking and said they are keen to debate have all pulled out one by one. We can only think they were scared of losing the argument; we have important scientists and campaigners including Liz, a young woman from Philadelphia, who will share her knowledge of the toxic impact fracking has had there, and Tina Louise, who comes from Blackpool and has been campaigning since the earthquakes fracking caused there. She probably knows more about fracking than anybody. The tour has been organised by Joe and our friend Jamie, who belongs to the activist group Reclaim the Power and who I first met at London Occupy. So the tour is now about informing people of the overwhelming disaster fracking could cause here, whilst making clear that the government don’t care and probably don’t even know what the consequences would be if they try to push it through.
MON 9 – MON 16 JUNE ANTI-FRACKING TOUR
The tour begins in Glasgow. I stayed in London because we had a meeting with Matthew from Cool Earth and some people who were at the Cannes event and are interested to contribute financially to his charity. We haven’t yet had their decision. [Just some rich Arab ladies who were really only interested in me.]
I join the tour at Nottingham on Tuesday, travelling with Lorna, who is making a film on me, following our work. We do interviews for local media. It is the phenomenon of our age that our campaigns are also amplified by social media. I am not on the panel – I talk at the end. Afterwards, I ask a young man who works in the Nottingham Conference Centre the way to the toilet. He shows me and he says, ‘I believed fracking was fine but now I’ve changed my mind because all the people who came tonight really care and the government don’t get involved.’
A cup of tea at Barton Moss climate camp.
Our team is an organic, collective little bunch; when they met each person just fell into place knowing what to do, Joe says – and Jamie put us together. We’re all travelling by van in bunk boxes. Lorna and I go to bed. I thought I wouldn’t like being so socially bunched up with people but they are so nice it’s the best thing.
Our driver is Brian and on Wednesday, we woke up in Manchester. I was born tweve miles away, and from my village we came on the bus as children to see Father Christmas in Lewis’s department store. There was a Christmas tree which went up the central cylindrical stairwell of tiered floors. I went shopping and dancing here – always a special occasion. We visited the Free Trade Hall with our school, all in our uniforms to listen to the Halle orchestra – and to walk round in the interval looking at all the young teenagers from other schools in their different uniforms, especially the boys. This, now changed into a hotel, is where tonight’s meeting will be.
However, in the daytime we drove out to visit the people in the climate camp at Barton Moss. These people are our base, holding the ground in protest against the intentions of the government. If you go to visit them you can have a real chat, learn a lot and they will make you a cup of tea. You will help them in their determination to stop any fracking. John McNamara, who began the Barton Moss group, is wearing one of our shirts. He started a garden at the camp. I enjoyed our companionship.
Ki Price’s photo of me dressed in a Welsh flag.
The event in Manchester was really crowded and finally we had two people who did not agree with us on everything. Unfortunately, members of the audience harangued them; we were grateful to the two and one of them did contribute to the facts. Later, our group discussed how we could keep things more calm in future. I don’t know what they decided, I went to bed.
Next day was Swansea. A glorious day and an unbelievable beach in a horseshoe bay. They say the beaches of South Wales are all a knockout. (I chose the word because you get blown away and then just to stand there brings you back to life, restores you straight away.) No wonder the resort was once so rich, with people coming for holidays. We explored George Hall: grand and immaculate art deco venue for our event. In the afternoon I went to the beach with Liz. We talked and walked, leaving our bags with some workmen who were taking a break. There is such a beauty emanates from trust – young people have it and Liz will keep it. When she looks at you, she opens her heart to the whole human race.
Our photographer, Ki, arranged me in a Welsh flag and took a picture for our publicity and then I went back for more interviews which I share with Joe. I enjoy these local interviews and appreciate spending so much time with my dear son. We had a supportive and passionate meeting and this time two local councillors attended but they were anti-fracking. The pro-frackers still don’t come. We went to the Indian restaurant.
On Friday, we woke up in Hammersmith, I said goodbye (love you all) and walked over the road to the tube. Home by 7.30 a.m.
THURS 19 JUNE RENAISSANCE MASTERS AT THE PALACE
Dinner at Buckingham Palace in support of the Royal (formerly Prince’s) Drawing School. Some of the drawings from the Queen’s collection were on display. Holbein, Claude, Raphael and Michaelangelo. These last two Italians lived at the same time as the French writer Rabelais, who I am going to read next. All men of the Renaissance.
Michaelangelo is so different from Raphael. I describe Raphael’s drawings as three-dimensional lines; he drew at the same time as he looked – from spirit to hand. Michaelangelo worked on his bodies, aware of flesh, skin and bones all together as one and built them up; he has the finest shading surrounded by a strong line that holds them in its perimeter so you see everything at once – you see them alive – he gives you the man. Raphael is just as dramatic but he doesn’t give you everything, you have to join him, go into the drawing.
The Royal Drawing School students are allowed to handle the drawings. I don’t know if they are then allowed to try to copy
them. But the only way to become your own master is to copy the masterworks.
FRI 20 JUNE MAN SHOW IN MILAN
To Milan with Andreas to work on the MAN show. This season’s new Red Label (ladies collection) was also ready in the showroom. I was scared of looking at it because even though it should be great you never know. I’d never seen the clothes made in the right fabrics and you don’t know how they will turn out. (This is different from Gold Label where we make all the samples ourselves – the difference is because we sell Red a month before the August holiday – in order to sell more – and Gold a month after.) I did a deal with Andreas: he looked at the Red and I styled the MAN show. One day later we swapped. Andreas thinks the Red is great.
Farms not Factories at our MAN Show in Milan.
I did our press release for MAN promoting Tracy Worcester’s Farms Not Factories campaign to stop factory-farming pigs.
JULY 2014
TUES 1 JULY VIRGIN COSTUMES AND BLONDIE
Invitations to go out four nights in a row, unusual for me – as you know, I like to stay at home except on special occasions when I go to the theatre or a classical music concert. Tonight, Virgin Air launch the uniforms we designed. We did enjoy doing this collection, not only uniforms for stewardesses but for all the different functions down to masseurs and waiters. The stewardesses really did look nice. Whoever did their hair, it was good, all caught up from the back and high on the head. I liked the steward’s uniform, the texture and subtle colour mix of threads in the fabrics.
One shirt collar was too small – I hate small collars usually; we’ll change it. The fabrics are the most eco-friendly, we worked on that. Blondie played at the event – she must be so bored having to do these private parties. Me, too.
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