Vivienne’s Diary: 10 – 26 September

I wanted to tell you about my make-up for the inauguration of Climate Revolution photo for the Paralympics. I was supposed to be Boudicca, the Queen of the Ancient Britons, who fought the Romans and used a blue dye called “woad” for warpaint. And because I am dead serious about the Climate Revolution, I wanted the face of war.  I had discovered this face when I drew out the Family Tree – I just drew a face that was the opposite of a smiley face (Wipe that smile off your face!) I painted my face like that and painted arrows on my arms, all in blue. When, a week later, I repeated the ceremony at the end of the Red Label fashion show, I did not have time to do my arms.

Monday, 10 September: Interview with Suzannah Frankel and a photo for the Independent on Saturday magazine

click to read article

I had purposely postponed this until after we had announced the Climate Revolution at the Paralympics. Suzannah is a writer who has a social interest in fashion and is strongly aware of climate change – and I knew she would be sympathetic to reporting the Climate Revolution. For the photo I wore the same dress which is now a banner.

Daniel Lismore is another member of our nucleus; he knows so many people. He is tweeting. Adrian Cheng is tweeting.

Tuesday, 11 September: Interview for Harpers to go with the Bailey photo and regarding an award they wish to present me with for work with Cool Earth. What a treat! They sent me Bella Freud. We haven’t had a long conversation for years. We’ve known each other since we were punks and Bella was once my assistant. We were together in Italy. I was designing the Crini Collection and I stayed with her on weekends in Rome where she was living with her boyfriend. She drove a Vespa like the young Italians and now she came by scooter to our Battersea studio.

Wednesday, 12 September: I finished last week’s diary – I’ve been doing it in the mornings from 7.00 – 10.00 (Sometimes I don’t wake up until 8.00 or even 9.00). Continued my work on Gold Label.

Thursday, 13 September: Gold Label. The point has passed for Rosita to take on any more work and we continue to work on especially, the evening dresses. I am still worrying about which fabric goes with which design. Andreas and I work together and slowly we talk it out. Our fittings involve very much how to sew and how to finish the dresses according to the kind of fabric. Making clothes depends on letting the fabric do what it wants to do.

Friday, 14 September: I colour my hair then, at midday, I take the tube from Clapham to Highbury and Islington. Then by bus to a studio for a photo shoot for designs we did for Palladium jewellery. I love going to different parts of London. I could have had a car but I like public transport. Georgia May was our model and I had to join in the first session for Grazia magazine who wanted me in some reportage shots (photographer, Sean McMenomy).

Then Andreas and Juergen (Teller) arrived for Palladium’s official campaign.

Georgia May photographed for us when she was fourteen

I had such a happy time. I like to be with Juergen. He is quiet (concentrated) and at first Georgia May thought perhaps he didn’t like her (she told me). What I had not anticipated was the pleasure I got from being with a young person. She talked and laughed – but never for nothing. Andreas told me, “She is really observant. It takes one to know one.” She is diplomatic like her mother. This is deep within her; maybe it’s inbred rather than taught. Her talk makes everybody feel good, that’s what I mean – she’s so sensitive to other people. And how she loves her mum and her family! She brings “Mom” into her talk all the time, tells us how she’s lost 10 pounds in one week in training for “Strictly Come Dancing”. And she simply adores her sister, Lizzie. She reminded me to give her the Cool Earth brochure and the programme for Climate Revolution – and one for Lizzie and she wants to contribute to Cool Earth. And, “I need a book.” I told her “The Story of the Stone”.

Georgia May is sexy; she just needs to look at you, look into the camera. She’s done no bad thing in her life. Every woman, young or old, would like that jewellery when they se it on her.

*Note to my friend, Sharon, who read the first volume of “Story of the Stone” and to Georgia May: Sharon asks if it’s a soap but set in China many years ago. If it is a soap, then it’s the original for all soaps because I don’t believe there was anything like it until it was first written. It’s fiction but it’s real, based on real characters. It gives the impression that life is short but timeless and certainly each life is important and crystal clear. Names are important and would be more so to a Chinese person where a name is an idea (we call Chinese characters “ideograms”) with its overlay of allusion and different or contradictory meaning. Each life affects everything else. Art is an illusion of reality but sometimes more real. Through art you sometimes get the world in one go. The telling of this story holds the rhythm of life – all this intimate detail in the grand scheme of things. Rhythm of life is essential to the practice of yoga and this is driven by the breath. I have ignored this until now, simply taking pleasure in stretching and strengthening the body. I must soon try to pay attention to the breath (Andreas breathes his yoga; you become light). This book shows you how to pay attention to your life. It could have been my life or your life. It’s important to remember that the particular layer of life of this family was an important one in the maintenance of a stable empire (See Diary 18-26 June).

Sharon, you remember, is a Buddhist nun and she is going to India in October. Lots of love, Sharon, and send us a letter.

Vivienne speaking at Friends of the Earth

Saturday, 15 September: Yoga. Afternoon: Friends of the Earth rally.  Speaking alongwith Caroline Lucas and a wonderful lady from the Philippines, Lidy Nacpil. I told them about Climate Revolution and, of course, they all laughed that the fight is between the idiots and the eco-conscious. All NGO’s have to work together and the very naming of Climate Revolution gives us that focus.

Evening: To the offices in our shop building in Conduit Street to work on the Red Label Show with Andreas, Murray, Yasmine – friend and stylist. Still fitting the girls, styling the outfits and concentrating and clarifying the collection for the presentation. Shoes, bags and Stephen Jones hats. Stephen explained he made the hats real i.e. as if in an age where people wore hats this would be their best hats. We are working with a hair stylist new to us, Mark Hampton.  I don’t know what Andreas and Murray told him – something about the Queen, for sure – and he arrives with these wigs; caricatures of wigs from the past, around the 50’s. More than half the girls would have their natural hair – the main inspiration here, Debby Harry in the 80’s.
And then when Val Garland does the make-up it really reminds you of cut off heads in a wig shop. The face is yellow and Val suggests other colours as well, pink and green. It’s as if the person in the wig shop painted features on to his featureless head blocks – a black line of eyelashes on the skin under one eye, the other eye trying to be the same but a bit different. Val explained that she would grade the level of extremity so that some girls would look more normal.

Did I like it? I kept quiet, stayed neutral. Of course I liked it and I knew with this look you would really see the clothes. It’s just that Val is so crazy, more crazy than me. She and Mark are hyper-artistic. Then we have the nail lady, Marian Newman, who just does her thing. They’re great. Biked home about 3 am.

Charlotte and Alice Dellal

Sunday, 16 September: At the show: The venue was a great hall in the Foreign Office, 19^t century grand classical. Thank you so much to the government for inviting us. The pretty girls looked good in their make-up under the lights at the rehearsal. Interviews. Lights, music, great sound, colour, “Rooster” Sarah Stockbridge singer of the band with her lovely bass guitar boyfriend Cobalt. Show starts. Finale, then I unfurled my dress into the Climate Revolution banner, helped by models/warriors Charlotte and Alice.

Then Cynthia and I went into an anteroom to talk with three of our guests: Suzy Amis Cameron who is doing a lot especially on education, Samata Angel, Global Campaign Director for Red Carpet Green Dress, a fashion competition we will collaborate on with Suzy, and Christiana Wylyan environmental advocate and partner in Satori Capital, an investment firm focussed on sustainable investing. We had the chance to get to know each other and talk about ways we can help each other. We’re all doing Climate Revolution.

Suzy explained that when she needed a dress for the red carpet – she was a model and actress before becoming the wife of James Cameron who directed “Titanic” and “Avatar” – she had to instigate a whole research foundation in order to procure an ethical and ecologically friendly dress. She would like me to guide the winner of the next competition organized by her foundation from the concept to the actual dress and then a celebrity will wear it on the red carpet at the Academy Awards. I had an extra reason for wanting to do this which is to tap into this research for my own use.

Later we had a dinner and party at the Embassy and we would like to thank them for their contribution of £5000 to Cool Earth.

Monday, 17 September: Worked all day on Gold Label running order. I was thrilled to see Lady Gaga wearing a Climate Revolution t-shirt.

Evening: We were invited to our friend Lawrence’s birthday party. I like Lawrence but we’re always with other people and I haven’t really found out what he does – something to do with Bill Gates and at the moment getting mobile phones to women in Iraq to empower them, I think. He’s American, finished his education in France and as well as speaking French, I know he speaks Arabic, Kurdish and Persian. If he likes you, he loves you and tells you so – that’s how we started.

We had told Lawrence we were tired and might not make it. I’m so glad we did. The address was near and in the evening we biked over. Lawrence’s party was in the home of his friend; Bruno introduced himself as our host and led me by the hand. He is Chinese and his family must have lived out of China for some time. I say this because he is cultured and a man does not gain such culture in one generation – and the Chinese revolution smashed culture and smashed all cultured people. I have never seen such works of art, Chinese and Japanese. The dinner, Andreas says he will never forget. I want to see Bruno again as soon as I can. More of him and of Lawrence in the future.

Tuesday 18 – Tuesday 25 September: Working on the collection and the show for Paris. Hats: we didn’t know what to do but Prudence brought an unusual helmet shaped block (wooden form which the hat is moulded on) and we worked out the materials with the idea that it would introduce something alien – like the metal slab did in 2001.

Music. Andreas worked out permutations of our toiles and our couture fabrics for evening. Here are some of his references:

Wednesday 26 September: Leave for Paris.