Get a Life

by Vivienne Westwood

  WEDS 8 APRIL BIRTHDAY PARTY – THANK YOU, SARA

  My birthday. How many flowers I had and thoughtful presents! Sara (Stockbridge) gave me a party at her home and invited my friends. I gave a little talk to tell everyone where I’m up to, what been happening. It is useful to have a formal talk – it helps make a party more of an event. The big problem for all activists is how do we get through to people? I enjoyed myself and realised how important my friends are to me. Thank you, Sara, for everything.

  FRI 17 APRIL SIMON AND BARBARA

  I see friends that I work with and we talk about work and a bit about background events – personal and universal. But I am so busy that it is a treat to see other friends. Simon, a son of my cousin Christine who died young, called into our studio in Battersea, down from Scotland with his partner Barbara. They were staying with his friend who is working on the restoration of Westminster Abbey and have been experiencing it as the friend shows them his work. They are both carers but Simon has a new job – for the past two weeks he’s been a bus driver. His caring job had deteriorated. It is now run for profit, not for the best interests of people. Barbara is Polish and very dedicated, studying with a view to having more responsibility in her job. They just stayed in my room, talking with me and my son Ben, then had a little tour of our building and the different operations. They are going on the Eye tomorrow and maybe to the British Museum. I asked Simon what were his hobbies. He said, ‘You won’t like me when I tell you.’ He goes shooting in the woods. I told him I thought some of the wood pigeons are endangered.

  SAT 18 APRIL TTIP – POLITICIANS ARE CRIMINALS

  Yoga. Then to Shepherd’s Bush Green to speak at an anti-TTIP rally. TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) is a trade deal which is being negotiated in secret between the US and the EU. (Are chlorine-washed chickens coming here to roost?)

  An example of what can happen is in El Salvador, where the water has been poisoned by mining, the public demonstrated and the government stopped permission for further mines. Now a giant Canadian mining monopoly is suing the government for (I don’t remember) millions or billions for loss of earnings. TTIP uses the ISDS (Investor-State Dispute Settlement) legislation which gives the same rights to giant monopolies as to governments, which means that these giants can sue anything or anybody by claiming loss of earnings. They can wreck the planet and smash every law which protects us. It is a catch-all law. TTIP can stop all workers’ rights, stop protest, impose fracking, privatise the NHS – anything. We would be ruled by giant monopolies, criminal governments and the faceless evil of the private banks.

  By the wish to impose TTIP, governments have exposed themselves. They now have the confidence to show their hand. They have drawn the line. They are pro-profit and anti-people. They are criminals and every one of their policies is a crime against humanity. They are movers in a giant game and they thrive on power: people are pawns – collateral damage, cheap labour.

  I now know what to do. I was with Cynthia. I said we have to make a point of calling politicians criminals. She said people do that already. I have sometimes heard them called ‘crooks’ but I have not heard ‘criminal’. Cynthia works with computers and the social media. I don’t. I rely on her as my medium, she tells me what’s happening out there. I said we are activists and we have to tell everyone to say criminal. We never say ‘politician’ unless the politician is a good politician. Then, by constantly referring to criminals, it might sink in: change public opinion.

  SUN 19 APRIL NOBODY NICER THAN AMERICANS

  On Sunday evening Andreas and I went to see my old friend Dennita Sewell. We last saw her in the archive of the Metropolitan Museum, New York, at the time of our ‘Vive la Cocotte’ collection. We copied a Dior suit; Andreas took measurements and called it the ‘Metropolitan suit’. Dennita has been head of fashion at the Phoenix Art Museum for fifteen years and she was on a fashion tour with a group of twenty women supporters and trustees of the museum. They invited us for dinner at the Lansdowne Club and Andreas remarked that he was the only man.

  Dennita’s ladies are Jeffersonians. I talked about +5 degrees and End Monopoly Capitalism and they were very encouraging, indeed they did their best to cheer me up. They too want a better world. Andreas enjoyed being with such people. We love art historians and when Americans are nice there is nobody nicer.

  TUES 21 – SUN 26 APRIL PRATO

  Andreas and I went to Rosita and Paola’s in Prato, near Florence. These are our friends who produce for us in Italy and we stay with them in their home. Andreas and I worked together – he mostly on the Red Carpet dresses (fabrics now chosen) and me on unisex knitwear. On Saturday morning we drive half an hour through Tuscan hills, past miles of nurseries, to Viareggio, with its long beach and restaurants on the sand. In its heyday it was very rich and popular but some of the great hotels are now boarded up.

  I came back on my own because Andreas caught the train to go and see his father in the Tyrol.

  MON 27 APRIL HIGH-RISE LONDON: A MODEST PROPOSAL

  Wrote article for Huffington Post about the scandal of London being torn down for the building of high-rise flats for speculators. I pointed out that as the flats are empty no one need build them. The government could just issue bonds – IOU the right to build a high-rise, then the speculators could just keep selling them on until it all goes bust.

  THURS 30 APRIL RAMSGATE ELECTION

  To Ramsgate with Joe. Our friend Nigel Askew lives there. He’s popular here in his home town and is standing for the Reality Party against Nigel Farage. He has a bus, a double-decker, which he’s had for twenty years, and he uses it to raise awareness for good causes at festivals and for anything else useful; e.g. ten years ago they fed homeless people from the bus and campaigned for their shelter and support in London. I first met him when we travelled in the bus in Malcolm’s funeral procession, up through Camden to Highgate Cemetery. And since then we travel in it and use it as a base in anti-fracking demonstrations.

  At the opening of Evolution cafe with Nigel and Joe.

  We are in Ramsgate and Margate to support his campaign in the general election and the local council election. And I am also here to open Joe’s Evolution Café. This has good vegetarian food and snacks like beetburgers (beetroot – scrumptious). The innovative chefs Tom Batterby and Giuseppe are young lads and the waitresses are local girl activists. One of them, Laura Hackett, wrote Nigel Askew’s campaign speeches. A great idea is that if people enjoy their meal they can buy a meal ticket which is pinned on a board and anyone who is poor can ask for one.

  Ramsgate, Joe says, is ‘artist-led’. People who find London expensive move down here and the resort, once dilapidated, has been very much renovated. But there are still a lot of poor.

  MAY 2015

  SARURDAY, 2 MAY TAX AND THE GREEN PARTY

  Myself and Climate Revolution and Joe have been working with the Green Party since Christmas. I gave a donation which enabled them to field more candidates for the coming election. We had meetings. What inspired me to get involved was of course that they are the only English party who care about the environment and that this and everything else is connected. I was impressed by the small leaflet I was handed at an anti-fracking demo which listed their main aspirations. I urged them to stick to it. Keep it simple. Stick to your four big aspirations: against fracking, against austerity, pro-community, pro-human rights. You are the polar opposite of the other parties. We were delighted. A day or two later their message was an image of Luke Skywalker with a green-lit baton and the text: We are the Revolt.

  Just before Easter we got an email of a poster for their billboards. I was feeling stressed (tell you why in a bit) and I freaked out. I thought the poster was terrible. Negative. Where was the aspiration? It seemed only detail and off-putting. My enthusiasm drained away. But then next day I started to see that, though I would have done it differently, it was their poster and it suited them. But I really shocked myself and doubted myself. How could I have bee
n so extreme in my passionate dislike? There was nothing wrong with the poster. It was rather clever. And by the tone and feeling I saw that we did have the same vision and our discussions had helped.

  At the time of our Gold Label Paris show (7 March), the Telegraph did an article citing an item extracted from my company’s tax accounts, which they claimed had deprived the British government of tax. It did not worry me at all because I am quite comfortable that not only legally but morally I pay the right amount of tax. Of course the paper linked this claim to the donation I had made to the Green Party. A good week later when I got back to England I decided to make a statement against the smear, especially because the Green Party needed this cleared up. First, I went through everything with my accountants, asking questions. I wished to make a simple statement but I kept thinking I needed to supply some detail, but every time I tried, the detail led to more detail and I found myself at every spare moment and in the middle of the night holding imaginary conversations with the world at large explaining why I had not morally avoided paying tax. At the time of the poster I still hadn’t done this statement. I was frustrated.

  So right now in the diary, even though this stupid story has evaporated, I would like to use the opportunity to make a general statement – and there’s an end:

  An offshore company is a convenience. It means you build a company as you go along. When the company makes a profit, I receive it in the form of a dividend on which I pay full income tax in England (45 per cent). In this way I end up paying more tax here because the profit is greater than it would otherwise be. I am not a non-dom. I live here.

  Nevertheless the Young Greens, bless them, weren’t happy; I wasn’t pure enough for them. Shame they believed the Telegraph. They went on our planned tour without me. We had proposed a series of public lectures and debate with economics expert Andrew Simms: ‘How to get from Here to a Green Economy’. We were to visit eight towns throughout the country, focusing where strong Green candidates were. I thought, ‘Why should I create a fuss for me and the whole of the Green Party? Give yourself a break.’ And they went off without us, I think. A wasted opportunity. It is important to have this debate:

  Make clear that the Greens expect political power and they are seen to be preparing for this.

  Show that a green economy could build a fair, comfortable, kind and safe society. Not just green jobs but education, social life, art and culture.

  Show the Greens to have the only responsible financial vision.

  What’s good for the planet is good for the economy. What’s bad for the planet is bad for the economy.

  I have met very good people in the Green Party, friends, dedicated and inspiring. I am so glad there is a party you can believe and vote for. By the time you read this the election will be over and then we’ve really got to get it together. We will have to fight the next government on every issue – prevent their crimes. Hopefully, the SNP will also take the fight into parliament.

  TUES 5 MAY MAN AND SUPERMAN AT THE NT

  Visit Julian, then to the National Theatre with Andreas – Man and Superman by Bernard Shaw, starring Ralph Fiennes as John Tanner/Don Juan, and Indira Varma as Anne. It was first played in 1905 at a time of socialism, the campaign for worker’s rights (build-up of trade unions) and women’s rights. The core of the drama is of a man and a woman completely attracted to each other. He wishes to preserve his bachelor state of noble isolation as a sceptic and thinker (Superman) and will not be sucked into marriage and the daily social round of the idle middle class (Man) by the young woman, who at every twist and turn defies all logic by her idiosyncratic and unexpected wiles as she baffles and twists him round her finger. Everything is unexpected except the inevitable ending. The drama turns on the outrageous opinions of all the cast and exposes English morals by reversing them all.

  The play has three times as many lines as a play written today, lines which compound the irony. Fiennes was on stage almost the whole time and he sped through the lines in their hundreds. Shaw didn’t give us time to stop thinking; we were kept on our toes throughout and didn’t miss a turn. This was a virtuoso collaboration between writer and actor. Consummate skill. Sheer concentration of mind. Bravo! Bravo!

  Tanner/Don Juan goes to Hell in the middle acts. I am thinking of reworking Faust into a new play: Mephistopheles would be the press, taking us to Hell on Earth.

  THURS 7 MAY ELECTION RESULTS

  Tories won. Old people duped by their obvious lies. Nothing changes – we will have to fight on every issue. Our campaign, ‘Politicians are Criminals’, aims to polarise the opposition – on the one side a few criminals and on the other public opinion.

  SAT 9 MAY EVERYMAN AT THE NT

  My friend Susan came to stay. Remember, we met at teacher training college aged eighteen. She is two days older than me. In the evening we went, with Cynthia and Peter Olive, to the National Theatre to see Everyman. Another Faustian theme. It starred Chiwetel Ejiofor – terrific actor – and the text was a new adaptation by Carol Ann Duffy. Her poetry is really good; this is in a rap style.

  Everyman is a morality play from medieval England and its story is bang up to date because Everyman (‘Ev’ in this version) has wasted his life on self-indulgence, consumption and irresponsibility to family and to the higher things in life (God/good deeds). God tells his servant, Death, to kill him even though he’s in the prime of his life because God demands a reckoning. Ev has an accident and in the few moments before he dies he makes a journey, a review of his life, so he can tell God what good his life had been. He can’t find any and desperately tries to do something. A good scene is where ‘Fellowship’ has left and he, Ev, has left ‘Worldly Goods’ and thrown away his credit cards. He is sitting in a rubbish dump with a wino. She shares her drink. ‘Knowledge’ (Penny Laden) is the wino and she wakes in him the realisation of his ignorance. Knowledge is the only one who will accompany him into death.

  For myself, I see God as a concept of our perfection. Ev had not followed his deep curiosity to understand the world; not engaged with the human genius through culture; not honoured God. Knowledge says: ‘Everyman, I will go with thee and be the guide in thy most need to be by thy side’. This is my story. Knowledge is my friend in my need and throughout my life till the end. Knowledge is when you personally really know something. You have to find it – by following your deep curiosity and comparing things. My motto is ‘you get out what you put in’.

  The end of the play was beautiful. Ev told the truth. He remembered the beautiful things he had seen and the moments of love. Again, National Theatre: best acting. And the programmes are always full of knowledge and so well designed. This one refers to Everyman as a ‘Play for the Anthropocene Age’. Carol Ann Duffy is our Poet Laureate. We should be proud.

  THURS 14 – SUN 17 MAY SAVANNAH, GEORGIA

  Andreas and I flew to New York with Christopher (our marketing director) and Laura (head of our press). There we met André Leon Talley and flew to Savannah in Georgia – to Savannah College of Art and Design, where André is a mentor and trustee. André is part of fashion, very well known in our circle; as a teenager he became protégé and assistant of Diana Vreeland, the legendary editor of American Vogue, and he has worked with Anna Wintour.

  The college, SCAD, is to give me the André Leon Talley Award for lifetime achievement. We have installed an exhibition, Dress Up Story – 1990 Until Now, which covers the last twenty-five years of Andreas and I working together. SCAD has a museum of paintings and furniture and applied art – a small random collection. Andreas selected some artefacts from photos SCAD sent us, in particular a collection of English portraits to create an environment for our exhibition. He worked on it in England with the director of our archive, Rafael, who had gone ahead to install it. It was well done.

  We saw the students’ work in their diploma fashion show. It went fast and slick, which was a shame. It’s not like you’re in Paris and everybody has to rush to fit into the timing of a grand schedule with all
the top designers. I would have liked to look longer.

  Paula Wallace is the founder, owner and director of the school. She sold the family house and moved to Savannah where she bought a building and set up the school. Savannah had many untouched old buildings – it is Gone with the Wind and it had been in decline for a century. The buildings were cheap and she bought more. The school has now 11,000 students – including branches in Atlanta, Hong Kong and Lacoste. The town is now regenerated.

  I feel I should tell you of the hotel we all shared in Savannah. Paula’s husband had decorated it and it was full of curiosities – every painting, every object had been chosen because it was peculiar or gross. Over our bed hung a giant-branched candelabra that had come from some baronial-sized hall; running out of our fireplace was a herd of twenty plastic horses; large old books with cloth or leather bindings were used as decor everywhere, colour co-ordinated blue. We didn’t take any pictures because we didn’t like anything – invasive decor! But then we got used to it and it seemed friendly and like home. Wonderful vegetarian food. We tried grits at breakfast!

  We enjoyed spending time with our colleagues and so very much with André, and Danny, our organiser, driver and guide. And we enjoyed Savannah. Each morning at sunrise Andreas had a run through ‘fairyland’ as he described it. It is set out in squares designed by a philanthropist, John Forsyth, with grand trees to shade the heat and absorb the humidity. The trees are oaks with wide branches and are hung with Spanish moss, which is a parasite but an air plant. The best experience was on Sunday morning when Andre took us to the First African Baptist Church: singing – ravishing – ‘soul’.