Vivienne’s Diary: 6 – 26 October

Saturday, 6 – Friday, 12October: Weekend home. Rest of week: talked to Cynthia to get an overview of where we’re up to with the Climate Revolution, some Q v Q, wrote letters and generally brought myself more up to date with my in-trays and with what I’m doing. (I’ve still got letters to write including some in reply to you contributions to this site.) Cynthia had some important meetings: “While Vivienne has been away I’ve been working to keep our plans for the Climate Revolution moving ahead – meeting with investors and business people, NGO’s and charities to begin putting together the core of our ‘Council’, a group of people from different spheres who will work together to promote our Revolution. The people from these first meetings, along with climate scientists and Vivienne’s friends who are committed to stopping climate change, will meet in January to exchange ideas and begin organizing our first public events.”

Tati – photo by Juergen Teller

The nicest thing for me this week was a visit from Tati who has modelled for us in our shows and in two campaigns. She’s Argentinian, international and in town. She came with a great bouquet of chrysanthemums. She’s an art lover. She had been working with “Miu Miu” and she told how she enjoyed it; she’s fascinated by how the designers put outfits together, trying out and improving; she loves to be part of it. Tati is creative and, like all creative people, she lives in another world as well as this one. She has been to Machu Picchu, walking with a guide – you have to chew coca leaves because of the altitude. Her guide was the wisest person she had met – if you hurt your leg they just give you something – because they understand everything in relationship, understand the planet they stand on.

Andreas has spent every waking hour of the week, even once getting up at 4.00 am with the stress of it all, preparing for our visit to Vienna. Our friend, Gregor, is opening a Vivienne Westwood shop there and for this we are doing a fashion show. We have an exceptional invitation to present this show next Tuesday evening in the fine art gallery of Vienna, one of the six great galleries of Western painting (our own National Gallery is also one). So the show has to be great – we will show evening wear and select from our past two collections. We are also allowed to spend all of the Monday in the gallery shooting our next ad campaign.

The problem for Andreas is: the outfits have been worked on before for collections already presented, therefore our team of colleagues could prepare all of this for the shoot and the show and it would be good – but not good enough for Andreas – it has to be super sexy and divine and only he can do that. So he makes himself responsible for every fashion decision, logistics, budget – the lot – an enormous feat whilst carrying the frustration that it should be for others to carry the weight of the task. I got involved at points where I had to. We went to Vienna on Saturday to give ourselves time to calm down.

Saturday, 13 October: With Andreas to Vienna. We stayed at the Sacher Hotel. Andreas loved the rooms so much; he felt so at home. We walked across the road to the Albertina, famous for its collection of drawings and prints.

The exhibition was about Kaiser Maximillian I (1459-1519) who enlarged the Holy Roman Empire and established the Habsburgs as its emperors, mostly by clever marriages for himself and his children. “Let others live by Mars: we rely on Venus.” The exhibition showed how he employed the artists of his time – famous among them, Altdorfer and the unbelievably skilled and timeless great, Durer – to publish and consolidate his position for posterity through propaganda: his maxim, “The emperor never dies.” He made great use of printing, e.g. “The Arch of Honour”, a gigantic coloured woodcut the size of a wall which he sent around Europe in numbered sheets so that it could be re-assembled. It illustrates his acomplishments, historic scenes and a fake family tree tracing his ancestors back to ancient times and includes Moses and Julius Caeser.

ARCH OF HONOR, 1515 – Gigantic coloured woodcut made from 195 printing blocks, 341×292 cm

Arch of Honor (detail)

The most impressive artefact was the “Triumphal Procession of the Emperor Maximillian” by Altdorfer, a frieze of vellum sheets stuck together, ½ metre high and 50 metres long (the first half is missing – it was originally 100 metres) – skill: you can’t make a mistake on vellum (as with ink on paper, you have to start again). This idea was also repeated in a 100 metre print. I would also mention the most beautiful suit of armour ever made, not least because of the proportion. It would have perfectly fitted Andreas – so Maximillian was a tall man – especially for the age – with model proportions.

Sunday, 14 October: More art – I saw a painting for sale in a famous auction house. If there is any painting I would like to have it would be a small Watteau and I especially love his scenes of soldiers resting in camp. And here it was. It was the most perfect thing, though someone had once chopped away six cms on one side. If you bought it, you could live with it – a vision fixed in time it would bring security into your home.

We visited the shop and I worked on preparing the clothes for the shoot the next day. Juergen arrived, Kate arrived from holiday with her Mum and we had supper in the really cosy hotel.

Monday, 15 October: Shooting. I know the gallery well, the paintings are tremendous; part of my job was hurrying around choosing which paintings against which to photograph suited the different outfits. I had to wear a few outfits, so did Andreas, but we mostly left it up to Kate. We also shot in the rooms under the galleries where the picture restoring happens and we met my friend, Elke, working. She restored one of the world’s most mysterious and precious works – a late Titian of a nymph and a shepherd. Juergen was very happy.

Tuesday, 16 October: Evening – Karma. Was it Andreas’ angst which now produced such a beautiful show? The show was truly marvellous in this sensational setting. I sat with Andreas and watched as the girls walked their itinerary through the rooms and then saw them coming back, so there was this constant appearance and re-appearance of beauties.

Wednesday, 17 October: Andreas left early to go to Italy to work on “Man”. I went to the new shop with two colleagues to work on decisions of how to improve it. It just needed to be more of a mess, more tactile and atractive. I became really excited. My son Joe was with us over the last two days. He launched the shop together with Gregor. It was his idea to concentrate on the high end of our womenswear.

Thursday, 18 – Tuesday, 23 October: I thought I had finished my letter to economists at the time of my last diary blog. The impact of the letter is that it is simple. I proposed as an example: a factory in China has an order from the US for one million yuan of manufactures – then worked my way through the other steps which showed that if these manufactures were not essential, then the Chinese economy (and of course the environment) would be better off (less inflation) if the workers were paid not to work or paid to do a useful service. I know this financial example illustrates my fundamental argument: we have a bad economic system, this causes climate change and climate change, in turn, causes our financial crisis. Economists still insist on keeping the two things separate which is making the environment and the economy go from bad to worse. Our present economy just helps the extractive industry to get rich. We will have a sound economy when we address the cause, which is climate change.

On reading it through, I decided to expand certain details to pre-empt all objections and I’ve ended up writing too much. And that’s what I’ve been doing these several days until I showed it to my friend, Feargus, he’s a lawyer and a long-term opponent of the ruthlessness of the ruling power mafia. He will help me edit it – he thinks it’s good. This letter is so important. If we can get this obvious fact aired (it’s so obvious, it should be a simple as switching on a light) it will lead to the right action and we will win the Climate Revolution. It has been a cloud bothering me to get it done, stopping me from enjoying my work and my life, but I’ve learnt now not to do this. It will just have to wait.

So, I put the letter aside to start getting on with my work. On Friday I took time in the evening to attend the launch of The School of Historical Dress, founded by my friends Santina Levy and Jenny Tiramani, and I am a patron. I gave a speech on the importance of tradition and I was pleased to meet again another patron, Roy Strong. Santina and Jenny each have a lifetime of experience of research in historical dress. They have been curating the work of Janet Arnold who was a great expert in this field and who, to my own particular benefit, made patterns of historical dress. And published them in diagram so that I was able to scale them up and work from them. Santina and Jenny have just published further work which they collated, belonging to the trust of Janet Arnold in a treasure of a book (Janet Arnold, Jenny Tiramani, Santina Levy. Patterns of Fashion: Cut and Construction of Linen Shirts, Smocks, Neckwear, Headwear, etc, 20008).

I have a book on lace by Santina herself – of comprehensive magnitude – you can guess what period the examples come from, so exquisitely do they mirror the aesthetic of the time. It is a work of great scholarship. Like Janet Arnold, these curators carry on the baton of tradition. Without them we would not have the key to the past. I would do anything for splendid Santina. At the moment the school is peripatetic – they are looking for a building and I think with the bright fire of Jenny’s dedication they will get it.

Wednesday, 24 October: I’ve told you that fashion design for me involves an awful lot of logistics and organization not directly associated with the work. However, together with Andreas I managed to begin work on Gold Label, starting with fabrics and yarns.

At 5.00 I went to visit Julian Assange with Cynthia. We were wearing the “I am Julian Assange” t-shirts; the face is mine, looking like a man (photo by Juergen Teller). They will be on sale soon – check here for details – and all profits will go to Wikileaks. You know, they’ve had 90% of donations blocked by Visa, MasterCard, Western Union, PayPal, Amazon and Bank of America – this has been very well publicized.

I support Julian Assange because he’s clever and brave and the founder of Wikileaks – a brilliant organization in the public interest to expose the facts concealed and misinformation published by the authorities for their own protection. Therefore the authorities wish to punish him; they’re out to get him at all costs. I loved it when Julian told me that the US heavy hitters standing in front of the eagle announced to the nation that if Wikileaks carried on they should expect total reprisal. Julian was scared but continued. Next time they made the same threat, Wikileaks laughed.

The Swedish government is asking for his extradition. This is a ploy to extradite him from there to the US. In general, I protest in the public interest the perversion of law in our country: our law allows extradition on request, without charge or the presentation of evidence. The press constantly re-iterates that Julian has been charged with sexual offences. He has not been charged. For that, there would have to be evidence against him. He is the subject of a preliminary investigation involving allegations of sexual misconduct.

It is time to challenge the bad laws of our country which, in this case, now victimize Julian Assange and cost the taxpayer a great deal.

Julian is so full of facts – a visit is like going to school to learn the world political situation. We agreed that it’s not profitable to battle against the wilful confusion directed at him by the press. I hope that this will eventually bore people by its negativity and they will be more interested in those journalists who tell the truth. The totality of his actions has been in the public interest.

I don’t propose to say anything about his present living conditions – that’s his business, he made the decision. If he had not made that decision, I am sure he would be in solitary concrete in the US. (My opinion of Sweden is at rock bottom.) I personally applaud and am grateful for Ecuador giving him political asylum and standing up to the US.

I can do a really great thing for Julian (I took him wine but he would rather have had fruit) – bring him fresh air, oxygen, fitness by publishing my diet – the most aspirational food for any world denizen who has a choice (really easy, you just have to do it to know how convenient it is).

Thursday, 25 – Friday 26 October: On Friday at 2.00, Cynthia and I welcome a visit from Tamsin Omond of Climate Rush and Lush and her colleague, Juliet Chard. The idea is that activists should try to work together. It was an exhilarating meeting. We will be able to help each other a lot with the Climate Revolution. Cynthia and I have begun to meet key people who often contact us with a view to the application of our agenda for the Climate Revolution. We are saying little until we fit our plan together – but it’s happening!

Armor owned by Maximilian I