Vivienne’s Diary – May2015

Thu 30 Apr: To Ramsgate with my son Joe. Our friend Nigel Askew lives there. He’s popular here in his home town and he is standing for the Reality Party against Nigel Farage. He has a bus, double decker, which he’s had for twenty years,and he uses it for campaigning, 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 effectively campaigned for their shelter and support in London.
I first met him when we travelled in the bus in Malcom’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. We are in Ramsgate and Margate to support his campaign in the general election and the local council election. And I am to open Joe’s “Evolution Café”. It’s been open two weeks but this is the official opening with local press.

It has a choice of good vegetarian food, favourite snack 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’s campaign speeches. The great idea is that if people enjoyed their meal they can buy a meal ticket which is pinned on a board and anyone who is poor can ask for one.

One evening a man and lady came in with their two children and asked for any leftovers to feed the children. “It doesn’t matter about us but anything – a bit of bread – for the children.”

Ramsgate, Joe says, is “artist led.” People who find London expensive move down there and the resort, once dilapidated has been very much renovated but there are still poor people living there. It is really attractive with its harbour filled with small boats and its famous Goodwin sand dunes. The Reality Party got over a thousand votes and Nigel thinks his campaign did a lot to damage the support for Nigel Farage. The Tories got in.

Tue 5 May: 2 p.m. visit Julian.
7 p.m. National Theatre with Andreas – Man and Superman by Bernard Shaw. Starring Ralph Fiennes as John Tanner/Don Juan – in the Hell scene, and Indira Varma as Anne. 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 is determined to avoid the inevitable; he 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 scene changes also – from England, to kidnap by brigands on a Spanish mountain – while fleeing from Anne, to Hell – in a dream – John Tanner becomes Don Juan, and back to a hotel in Granada.

The structure turns on the outrageous opinions of all the cast; the theme exposes English morals by reversing them all.

The play has 3 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!

The play has a Faustian theme and I am most interested in the story of Faust at the moment as I think that we humans today have sold our souls to the Devil in exchange for power and consumption. And now time is up.

Thu 7 May: 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 polarize the opposition, on the one side a few criminals and the other public opinion.

Sat 9 May: My friend Susan came to stay. Remember we met at teacher training college aged 18. She is two days older than me. In the evening we went, together with Cynthia and Peter Olive to the National Theatre to see Everyman . Another Faustian theme. Starring Chiwetel Ejiofor – terrific actor. Text: a new adaptation by Carol Ann Duffy. Her poetry is really good; this is in a rap style. Try to see it. Everyman is a Morality play from medieval England and its story is bang up to date because Everyman (Ev) 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 “Wordly Goods” and thrown away his credit cards. He is sitting in a rubbish dump with a wino. She shares her drink. Penny Laden (Knowledge) is the wino, she is the only one who will accompany him into death. Knowledge wakes in him the realization of his ignorance. (This is me talking: 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.)

“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”. Ev. didn’t try to know knowledge until his death. Nevertheless she helped him recognize and acknowledge the love and beauty he had absorbed though the Grace of God.

Knowledge suggests contrition to pay for his sins. He lashes himself and treads on broken glass. In the past people paid penance by wearing flea-ridden hair shirts which tormented the skin. Everyman wants to change his jacket for the stinking jacket of the wino/Knowledge.

This scene is good, Everyman and Knowledge are sitting on the floor and a wall of rubbish snakes in behind them; the wall is formed by the cast who are completely covered and padded–out, wearing bin-liners and coloured plastic bags filled with rubbish.

In the other scenes the costumes were a little bit trite – the first ever idea that might enter anybody’s head – boring! I would have probably have gone back in time, included some medieval costume because Everyman is universal. The music designers did that – old instruments which gave a modern sound – timeless.

The end was beautiful. Ev told the truth. He remembered the beautiful things he had seen and the moments of love. He had loved every minute of it. God was Kate Duchene a cleaning lady (Death was Dermot Crowley). She was touched and honoured.

Again, National Theatre. Best acting; the programmes are always full of knowledge and so well designed.- It refers to Everyman as a Play for the Anthropocene Age; Carol Ann Duffy our Poet Laureate. We should be proud.

Sun 15 May: Susan and I talked and in the afternoon we looked at the Chinese pots and a beautiful Indian sculpture at the British Museum. On Monday me to work, Susan went into town on her own and visited the exhibition on Mary Delany. Tuesday she left.

Thu 14 May: 9.40am – Andreas and I flew to N.Y. with Christopher (our marketing director) and Laura (head of our press). From 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 has worked with Anna Wintour.

SCAD is to give me the André Leon Talley Award for a lifetime achievement.  We have installed an exhibition. Dress up Story – 1990 Until Now which covers the last 25 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 and Rafael wishes me to thank the small team from SCAD who worked with him to install it.

We saw the students’ work presented 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.

The students themselves were modelling and each designer had average 4 outfits so it would have been good to let them each style their own little section – hair and make-up, etc., instead of aiming at total homogeneity. There was some talent and technical skill but to me they lacked a story. I would have pinned them down, telling each to research history or an ethnic group. One girl’s story was construction workers which was fine but she needed a deeper setting. Lots of press and interviews.

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 old buildings, untouched and as it was. 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.

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I feel I should tell you of the home we all shared in Savannah. It was a “Gone with the Wind” house, really a hotel. Paula’s husband had decorated it. It was full of stuff – curiosities ; every painting , every object had been chosen because it was peculiar or gross  e.g. 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 20 plastic horses someone had collected . They were stuck down and coming as if out of the chimney; large old books with cloth or leather bindings were used as décor everywhere, they served as a base to stand lamps on and in Laura’s room they filled the fire-place  itself , the mantelpiece , and shelves on the chimney breast. They were colour co-ordinated blue.

When we first arrived Andreas and I were taken to another of Paula’s houses but we preferred to stay with the others and moved in with them . In that first house of curiosities there were many rooms (each with a bathroom) and only us.

In every one of these bathrooms were golden puff balls made of brass and in the form of dandelion clocks but 20 times bigger. They were stuck into the tiles of the walls, ceiling and floors but because of the thinness of the spikes they looked insubstantial and as if they had blown there. On a low table set against the wall by  the sink Andreas reached for a towel after washing his face and banged his head into one, he screamed and out of the small holes in his forehead the blood trickled down. That’s when we moved to the other house.

We didn’t take any pictures because we didn’t like anything : invasive décor! But then we got used to it and it seemed friendly and like home. André came to dine and talk . Wonderful vegetarian food . We could have anything we wanted . We tried grits at breakfast!

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We enjoyed spending time with our colleagues and so very much with André. Also our organizer, driver and guide Danny who always takes care of André. 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 spread branches and hung with Spanish moss which is a parasite but an air plant, they stretch in alleys between the squares. The best experience was on Sunday morning when Andre took us to the gospel church “First African Baptist Church – Singing: ravishing “soul”.

Lots of press, also from N.Y. and country-wide. I launched our Politicians are CRIMINALS Campaign and we will keep in touch with those many students about this and also I would like to talk to Paula more regarding fossil fuel divestment.

Mon 18 May: Flew back to N.Y. and said goodbye to dear André for the moment. Treated ourselves to staying in the Carlyle Hotel. Met my dear friend Terry Doctor, among other things an outstanding follower of fashion – he knows everything; also about politics.

Andreas is here to check a few things about the shop we will open. And Laura and Christopher are working to choose an American P.R. I told Terry I might not come for the shop opening. I might never come to N.Y. again – I only travel if I have to. I might never see Terry again! We went to the Metropolitan Museum to see the current exhibition China Glass. Yves St. Laurent’s, Poiret ‘s and Dior’s designs from his Chinese collection were the stars of the show.

Unfortunately the exhibition occupied the series of rooms in which is normally displayed the Chinese painting, a vast collection which is changed periodically. Each time I go I do see one or two paintings I have seen before but most of it is new to me. I spend all my spare time there when in N.Y. (except I do go to the Frick) but this time I couldn’t though I love the Metropolitan and looked at other things because I want to know what’s different about people who lived in different times with different values. I saw flower paintings by Van Gogh, 2 of roses and 2 of iris.

We met Stella Schnabel and her sweet friend Theadora who is Keith Richard’s daughter and she and Stella had been to the same school as Paz. We met Stella and Paz when they each modelled for our photo campaigns. We got take-away pizza’s (I don’t like pizza) but that’s what we did because the restaurants were too noisy and we met at our friend Sabina’s flat. Laura and Christopher came. I had spent the day with Sabina and Andreas because they wanted to look at 2^nd hand clothes in Brooklyn. Sabina is a super stylist and Queen of the Flea markets. She will be helping again at our forthcoming shows.

I wish we had taken a photo of Stella, she was wearing an old dress and it suited her. She is riveting, her posture and her voice give her the authority of an oracle. She is an actress. Her latest project is original. My Hindu Friend. So original that I can’t remember what it is. But I was really taken aback hearing that the director of this film could have such a deep idea. I must find out what it is and let you know. We were enjoying each other so much and probably getting drunk. I must have told them about my politicians/criminals campaign.

Let’s look at a bit more of America, I had said because I might not go again. So we went to stay in a house Sabina had bought in upstate N.Y.

I enjoyed driving up through Harlem and over George Washington Bridge and into green forests and rolling hills, like England on a much bigger scale and on an almost empty road. 3 hours’ drive.

Sabina’s house is in Andes not far from Woodstock and like Ramsgate it is becoming more populated by people from the city, this time N.Y. – living there or buying a second home.  There are many more organic and vegetarian restaurants than in England. Here, but also in the city – and it’s true in LA.

We met Sabina’s friends and particularly Kai and his partner John who cooked for our party. Their friend died and they are left with his collection of interesting and various objects which they plan to auction. This will be a practice for other auctions when they will create an artistic event which results in art productions which they will auction. The first will focus on opposition to fracking and raise money for that campaign. I’d rather wait till this gets nearer to happening to give the specifics.

This area was rich and famous when N.Y. was rising, supplying milk and other foods but it lost importance with refrigeration and distribution from other parts and particularly from California. There are still farms but also abandoned ones and other old properties. We went looking inside one: tools and machinery was all left rusting. On one floor were dummies for home dressmaking and effects of female life. On a shelf was a shoebox of letters. I took one, just pulled it out at random for this diary.

Sun 24 May: Left N.Y. 8.40p.m. Arrived home Monday.  Tues: Work. We are discussing with the architect the rebuilding of our studio. It has been hotch-poch-ed. But it’s best not to keep doing that and we should rebuild for a better working environment.

Thur 28 May: Afternoon to our Conduit St. shop to an event organized and decorated by our clever Visual Merchandising Manager, Lorraine: I am reading a passage from Alice in Wonderland. Of course I chose the famous scene, the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party. He murdered Time when he sang the song, “Twinkle, twinkle little bat”- so said the Queen of Hearts, therefore their lives are stuck at 6 o’clock which is tea-time.