Vivienne’s Diary: 30 January – 22 February

I wanted to use my graphics of the two serpents that eat each other’s tail – the climate and the economy – and it looks very attractive now placed on top of Father Christmas: a warning that all the comforting things in life as we know it is fragile. I also used it for the Red Label invite

Wednesday, 30 January:
I wish to invest in the Trillion Fund  http://www.trillionfund.com/  because I think it’s fundamental to the success of the Climate Revolution. I have a meeting. Andreas is so entirely focussed on the Gold Label collection that it is difficult for me to take time out to do anything other; otherwise I’m not pulling my weight. He said, “You know I saw these beautiful Chinese carpets and I would love to buy them but I won’t because I have it in me that I can’t afford them. If people would buy only beautiful things, that is Climate Economy. That would be a revolution to change the world.One of the core members of the Climate Revolution cabinet is Michael Stein, whose brainchild is the Trillion Fund. How do we get clean energy up and running/switch from fossil fuels? Answer: It depends on the scale of investment. The fund is now begun and will soon be available to thousands of small investors. I will let you know when. People will be able to buy a bond for as little as £100. The Trillion funds acts like a bank – a new bank – because it can give a good interest rate to small investors, the reason being the limitless security of supply for the investment – the sun’s energy won’t run out like fossil fuels and because it’s clean it won’t incur the costs of environmental damage. We asked Matt Mellen, Campaign director for the Trillion Fund – and with us on Climate Revolution – to spell it out for us:

• Trillion Fund seeks to enable regular people to become a broad based movement of renewable energy investors
• Their funds – possibly currently languishing in low interest bank accounts, present a significant new funding stream for renewable energy projects
• Moving this money from conventional financial institutions, which are often unethically invested, to clean energy projects does more than reduce emissions – it seismically shifts economic power and boosts democracy
• Trillion presents a surprising solution. People can get a better deal financially and fund the clean energy revolution
• The empowering message is we all have the power to make a difference; we do better together and now is the time to act.
  

  Michael Stein

Talking to Michael, it seems his studies and career changes (http://www.trillionfund.com/about-us)   have brought him to this idea; the people he has worked with, the contacts he has made seem serendipitous and designed to help him. I am particularly impressed by how well he knows the internet and by the potential of his vast and useful databases to help create a new responsibly human economy. I am very excited at the thought that things could happen quickly, that we can get people involved and turn it around to stop climate change. Remember, we are going to do it by the next Olympics.

So now you know three of Climate Revolution’s cabinet members: me and Cynthia, Lush and Tamsin Omond (also of Climate Rush) and Michael Stein and the Trillion Fund. I’ll tell you about the others as I get the time.

Fashion is a daily job, sometimes from 10 am to 10 pm, including weekends. All those thousands of decisions, all those fittings; you go through stages where you just don’t want to see another toile, correcting it with our dedicated pattern cutters. I say this because fashion students think it’s just drawing, filling boards with collages for inspiration! And then somehow make the design and then it will never turn out as you thought it would because you have no idea in the first place of what your drawing means or entails or is supposed to be.

Another reason I mention this hard slog is to give an excuse for not working so much on Climate Revolution – Cynthia and the others are – and not having so much time to write this diary.

Anyway, one of the things I did was four pieces of artwork for embroidery – for four garments: two dresses, a jacket and a long skirt – using the drawings from the beautiful borders of illuminated manuscripts. Even though I got students to help me copy them out on the full-size templates for the dress patterns, this took a good week. This work is pleasant, easy and therapeutic and I felt guilty for doing it and taking so long because I was leaving the “hard slog” all up to Andreas.

We have to delegate our work and unless we check constantly it will take a wrong turn, people will work for nothing and we will have to begin again.

I can’t believe how amongst all this Andreas manages to time, prepare and follow all the details for the final presentation so that it all finally “happens” – the venue, the lighting, who will do the music, the hats; he asked me to help choose what gloves to get made. I was busy and told him I couldn’t be bothered right then. “What!” he cried, “There is nothing more beautiful than the arm of a woman, and the legs – and the face. What’s in between I don’t care!”

When my friend Deborah Ross came to visit us (she is the journalist who came with us to the Rainforest) of course I was delighted to see her and took time off chatting. She asked me what would be my chosen career if I had not been a fashion designer. My passions are reading and art and I have usually answered to this question that I would like to write plays and design and produce theatre. This time, thinking of my therapeutic experience doing my artwork for embroidery, I answered that I would have liked to be a painter, “I realize I have a real talent for graphic design and a strong direct transmission from feelings and sensations to hand. I feel I could have done something, transmitted a vision of the world.” It is true also that each fashion collection, though ephemeral, is a vision of the world and I’m looking forward to this collection in our Gold Label show. It will be beautiful. I feel as if I’ve been mining for treasure.

Thinking how I would like to spend more time with my friends. I told Deborah of a perfect situation, an idyll of friendship I had read of in a book by Marcel Aimee, “Le Confort Intellectuel”. Two men who each have a reason to stay away from Paris meet in a village set in the outskirts. The book is an excuse for a highly original attack on the complacency of intellectuals, but it is the setting for their conversations that so appeals to me. They have made a temporary escape from the worries of the world; they come across each other in their walks in the winter woods and repair to the warmth of the village bar or their apartments. Security is a necessity for the intellectual life.

Monday, 24 February: Time off to write up this diary. We go to Paris on Wednesday for our show which is on Saturday.

I will just list the other important things which have been happening this month:

Since before Christmas, I have wanted to find a way to address the confusion swimming around Julian Assange. I believe that misapplied feminism is holding Julian in legal limbo; women living in the privileged world who blindly support feminism, not seeing the wood for the trees. The word “rape” has been mentioned though there are no facts to support the allegation. Women want this cleared up. “I wish he would go to Sweden to answer the claims” they say. Do they really want our hero to satisfy their wish and vindicate himself by spending the rest of his life in a US Supermax jail? Julian is in danger because through Wikileaks he exposed the killings our authorities cover up in their wars which cause death and rape.

So I was sad and puzzled when my friend Jemima Khan joined the ranks of these irresponsible women and in general “the pathetic animus of a few who claim the right to guard the limits of informed public debate” (John Pilger). I phoned Jemima. I hope she will change her mind. I will see her when we are less busy.

The great John Pilger completely exploded Jemima’s opinions in the New Statesman one week later but by then her opinions had run through the global press.(John Pilger is just about the best political writer if you really want to know how this world is run).

I wore my “I am Julian Assange” t-shirt at the London Red Label show. So far, sales of the t-shirt have raised £3,000 for Wikileaks.

During fashion week, Joe Rush did a Climate Revolution artwork for our shop window in Conduit Street. In one half of the window he represents his view of the world: an iron cage with a man inside though the door is open whenever he wants to leave, a tree and a bird and a crab live outside the cage. These sculptures are re-made from rusty scrap metal. In the other half is a shining metal heart of Victory for the Climate Revolution made from two recycled petrol tanks from a Triumph motorbike.

The design is still up – Cynthia and the Climate Revolution team have organized a demonstration outside the Conduit Street shop on Saturday, 2 March (between 2 – 4 pm), the same day as our show in Paris. Come and join us. You can get all the details here: https://www.facebook.com/events/535035979853107/. I made some cards for her to give out.

click to enlarge

There are so many things building up that I want to work on but I have to deal with them in a future diary. Also, I managed to write one or two letters and read “Siddhartha” by Herman Hesse which I will tell you about after the show.

The Paris show is on Saturday and we are calling it “Save the Arctic” and are using a design we did for Greenpeace’s campaign. It was Andreas’ idea to use the heart shaped globe. The design says it all: Save the Arctic now and we might save the world; the white flag of truce is blank, signifying that the Arctic belongs to everyone. Greenpeace is thrilled. Sign up: http://www.flagforthefuture.org/  It’s part of Climate Revolution!