Get a Life Page 3

  Our prototypes are done in our Battersea studio but our production is in Italy, so I asked our studio there to find a ribbon factory. Then I had to choose fabrics which they had pre-selected from the fabric fair. The less fabric the better, I think; too many and the possible permutations become endless as the ideas gather, and I like to ‘cook’ with basic ingredients. I kept to basic fabrics; with some, I let in the natural colour of the fibre as it comes from the loom. For other plain fabrics I stuck to black, grey, indigo, brown, flesh, cream, white. Set against the fabrics we took gold, a lamé looking like metal – gold sequins.

  I love our toiles, our prototypes which we make in the natural calico before we decide the final fabric; it’s as if the garment epitomises the first idea of itself. I took a very conservative man’s tailoring fabric (I love conservative fabrics – they have so many ideas to play with), a fresco in grey chalk stripe, and made a suit comprising a jacket from two years back and a favourite skirt – the ‘alien’ skirt – World’s End customers will know this skirt. We didn’t sell the jacket at the time because it has a lot of volume around the shoulder (masculine? But cross-dressing is as old as the hills) and over the breast – but I adore it because it makes a woman look important and there is nothing more sexy than that. I shall wear this suit. Next autumn it should go into our archive but it will come home with me instead. One thing I knew about the collection – I wanted the woman to look important.

  Plain fabrics show off the cut of clothes. I like to mix garments from different times and places: historical, ethnic, twentieth-century couture – I copied a coat from Balenciaga and a dress from Chanel. I sometimes copy from myself, re-doing clothes from way back in my archive. I like new things as well as things repeated and developed from last season. Most of all, I like ‘do it yourself’, as if the wearer has spontaneously put her own creation together in an afternoon. I introduced colour by printing. Until recently printing was done only on screens or rollers but now we also have digital printing. The cost of full colour is less because it is all done in one go. There is no setting-up cost so you might as well have every print different. That’s what I did and found every print in my small booklet of fabrics from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

  The suit I want, and it’s coming home with me.

  Then I chose three yarns for knitwear which we had used for MAN – ordering a greater quantity keeps the price down and because the men’s collection is in progress I have the advantage of already having worked with these yarns. We always choose fabric and yarn before the concept of the collection materialises – but this choosing helps the decisions. Andreas was very keen on this finest wool yarn, especially in a butter colour; perfect would be a classic cardigan, undone at the throat, fitting close over the body. This we did, except my clothes cannot be straightforwardly classic. People expect that dynamic power of drape in the cut.

  Sweater with brocade sewn on pocket.

  One of the first things I usually do is to try out new cutting principles on a miniature dummy. Our friend Iris, once our full-time pattern cutter who now manages to come two or three times a season, arrives to work on new cuts and ideas that Andreas and I have each thought of separately. Last year, she brought her own idea – a dress made out of a cushion cover. She and Andreas worked on this idea lots. We have fittings which involve toiles begun by our in-house pattern cutters (it can take weeks for one dress) and with Iris’s help we get to a point, even sometimes as far as working out which fabric we will use and the sewing method. (A design is a result of hundreds of decisions through trial and error.) Even Iris who, until now has always triumphed, tells me that she is never sure she’s going to make it. For me, she is so clever she walks on air, she has a unique talent that is properly trained. It is wonderful to be able to trust someone completely.

  It’s now time to find out why there is still no sign of the brocade eagles ribbon. The original hand-woven sample – using real gold thread – measured ten inches and there are no ribbon machines wide enough. It is interesting to note that antiques cost more in their day than they would do now. It could happen that someone could take a lifetime to make a cupboard with moulding, lacquer and inlay, or months to weave a yard of Venetian velvet which then cost the price of two cows.

  The answer to my eagle brocade would be to use a full-size loom with several repeats across the whole width – then cut them through into ribbons. However, I don’t need all these repeats. So I take advantage of this fact by including an image of Dionysus in the weaving programme, keeping the gold thread on the surface of the fabric. Meanwhile, Andreas, whose heroine as a woman and as a fashion icon is Marlene Dietrich, has produced dresses inspired by her. Brigitte, our head of couture, organised the embroidery on versions of Marlene’s nude-effect gowns. Andreas worked with tulle with Marlene in mind.

  Hats are important. They bring gravitas to a show. We suggested helmets, which always look heroic. Prudence, our milliner, chose the American GI helmet as absolutely generic. When we were deciding how to decorate them she produced a square of gold leaf which she could press into the felt and so cover entirely in gold. I asked her how much this five-inch square would cost: £5. Incredible that you can beat gold so thin.

  Inspired by Marlene.

  Andreas had also designed gloves and jewellery, but when the sample shoes arrived they were not nicely made. Therefore, he got them done in the gold sequin fabric and asked for a gold catwalk. Nobody will see them because of the reflection. When they arrived they were nicely made anyway and coincidentally Andreas’s friend Tony, who does the look and lighting of the show, had prepared ideas for a gold catwalk.

  The people we work with are crucial, though there are things only I can do or Andreas can do. But our design assistant, Luca, must not forget a thing and keep things moving.

  Our fitting model was Jenny. Because she has a perfect body proportion, the collection, when it is produced, will miraculously fit everyone else. The last thing I did before leaving for Paris – Andreas was already there working on casting and logistics – was to have Jenny stand quietly while I pinned and cut a spontaneous dress in Dionysus fabric. It took only a couple of hours because essentially, by using a live model instead of working on the mannequin, I could see how the whole thing fitted and worked in motion.

  I called the collection World Wide Woman. A collection is more than the sum of its parts and this one entered a realm I had not envisaged. The final alchemy came from Andreas’s suggestion to Val (make-up) and Jimmy (hair): make the girls look like horses.

  The effect was Out of this World!

  [We do three main collections every six months: Gold Label, Red Label and MAN. We are always designing one while presenting another, which then is delivered to the shops six months later.

  We promote the shows on the main Vivienne Westwood website and sometimes I add stuff to the Diary, which belongs to the Climate Revolution website. That is why covering the fashion shows here seems a bit spasmodic, not of equal importance. We have just fused the two websites.]

  APRIL 2011

  MON 4 APRIL LET US NOT DIE FROM HABIT

  In my Manifesto, the True Poet says, ‘The present is always the present moment of the past. We are the past. Art links past, present and future.’ So far, so good. But when he goes on, ‘Cut off from the past there is only habit,’ it’s important to grasp the connection. Cut off from the past there is only the day-to-day continuum – no comparisons – therefore no ideas and no foresight. For what is it we really compare when we look at the past? How the world could be different, more wonderful; where we went wrong; how people see things.

  Jared Diamond’s book, Collapse – How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, tells some of the stories of societies who thrived, flourished, then died through habit. The most horribly fascinating story was that of the Greenland Vikings, Norwegians who colonised Greenland from AD 984 to the 1400s. They built churches and a cathedral, wrote in Latin and Old Norse, wielded iron tools, herded farm animals, follow
ed the latest European fashions in clothes – and finally vanished in one winter. There were five thousand of them and they lasted almost five hundred years – which is longer than the English-speaking society of North America has so far survived.

  They were contemptuous of the native Inuit – who were adapted to the environment and did survive – and learnt nothing from them. The Vikings even had a taboo against eating fish. They were culturally hampered in making the drastic changes that would have helped them to preserve their habitat. By default they chose death to change. There is a connection between culture – the way we see the world – and climate change. Let us not die from habit.

  THURS 21 APRIL THE MANIFESTO COMES ALIVE!

  What we’re doing on the website revolves around the AR (Active Resistance) Manifesto and I’ve realised that what we’re building here can be transformed and published as a book with the Manifesto as its heart. I think the book should be called ‘The Art Lover and the Lost Generations’ – or even ‘Get a Life’, because that’s what it means.

  This slim pamphlet is of a size to fit the pocket, and the text is of a width that the eye does not need to travel across as you read – as in a newspaper.

  AR’s (Active Resistance’s) speech in the Manifesto is particularly relevant to ‘The Art Lover and the Lost Generations’. The idea is ‘culture for beginners’:

  What I mean is this: in the twentieth century we were not engaged in the world. We took everything for granted – and also the future – so today we’re an endangered species. Culture comes from our engagement with the world of a shared experience. We have allowed ourselves to become alienated from deep contact with each other and manipulated by politicians.

  We launched the new Manifesto #2 yesterday evening, taking advantage of the first glorious day of spring to do the reading on the roof of our office in London. It was a real social event, with wine and snacks for the performers and audience. The speakers were in prime form – everyone was completely engrossed in their roles – and I felt very encouraged. The Manifesto is very clear to everyone. It just requires concentration on the part of the reader because it is heretical to received opinion. It would be great next time to combine the reading with a workshop.

  Of course we had a lot of students here and they really enjoyed the acting – they were all cheering, right from the beginning – especially when Luca (our design assistant) jumped in as Pinocchio. Chiara, from our purchasing department, played the True Poet, and Brigitte, the head of the studio, played the Art Lover; Theo, who deals with the Japanese market, played Whistler – his long speech with its American accent was spellbinding. We were delighted that Lily Cole (model, actress, studying History of Art at Cambridge) arrived from Paris to play the role of Alice. Although she hadn’t seen the part before she did a wonderful job.

  I was particularly happy to welcome our guest, Matthew Owen, Director of Cool Earth. I’m going to be working closely with this charity in the coming months. Matthew made the point that the best way to get anything done is do it yourself, referring to the work Cool Earth is doing to save the rainforests. Cool Earth uses a bottom-up method, working with the indigenous people who live in the rainforest to help them protect the land they own. This is already having a dramatic effect – over 150,000 acres have been saved in the last eighteen months, protecting an additional million acres by their strategic location. I’ve decided to get involved with people who take the Do it Yourself approach to things.

  MAY 2011

  WEDS 25 MAY THE PROCESS OF DISCOVERY

  Brian Sewell recently criticised the Tracey Emin retrospective at the Hayward Gallery, London. This is how I see the problem:

  The academic dogma today is that tradition belongs to the past, and we must forget the past otherwise we can’t be original. It goes on – you don’t need to draw, that’s old-fashioned. You don’t need to be able to represent anything. Just take the actual objects of real life and, if necessary, rework them, which you can do by sending your concept to an engineer or factory workshop. Art schools teach you how to do this through ‘presentation skills’ and this is what is now called conceptual art.

  Well, you do need real skills to express yourself. You learn skill by studying tradition, trying to copy the techniques of great artists; only by doing this have you the means to express what you want to say. Art has to be representative. A representation is an epitome of a point of view, an overview. I believe that an idea is formed, and it is in the very process of applying one’s particular skill – all those extraordinary decisions, the decisions of a lifetime – that the artist discovers their idea; the simplification must be spontaneous, a matter of the artist’s spirit transmitted to the work. By illusion, creating an illusion through representation, the true artist achieves a totality – a world which the art lover can enter. The conceptual artist makes an arbitrary selection from the real world. He discovers nothing, nor can the art lover. His work is sterile.

  In answer to Tracey Emin’s question, ‘What’s it all about?’ Brian Sewell ends his review by answering, ‘You, dear Miss Emin, you – but you have never been enough.’ No artist was ever enough in themself, not Titian, not anyone. It was what they did – the skill that gave them the means to discover their vision – that was enough.

  THURS 26 MAY OUR FIRST TRIP TO AFRICA

  Travel less, stay longer. I think it’s gross to rush off just for business, then straight back. I always try to do more than one thing on every trip to discover something about the history of the country. Andreas and I, with members of our team, were away for ten days working and travelling from Nairobi to Segera, in the very centre of Kenya. We’ve been working with the United Nations Ethical Fashion Initiative to produce bags and accessories in Kenya. The idea of this programme is to lift communities out of poverty using environmentally sustainable materials and processes. Charity = dependence; Work = control over your own life.

  Simone Cipriani, who runs the project, had the idea of bringing our designs to local craftspeople so they can produce attractive fashion items for international markets. Now, after working with them for two seasons, we have 250 locals directly involved in Vivienne Westwood manufacturing. We were really pleased to see what a difference the project has made to their communities. Andreas and I spent time at the workshops to work with the craftspeople to add more designs to our range. Eventually, we aim to employ five hundred people.

  In the Nairobi slums, we met a man called Stephen who has a team making the brass fittings for our bags. He’s become quite an entrepreneur – known locally as ‘Stephen Brass’. And we were amazed to see how people take bones directly from an abattoir and make them into buttons and jewellery. Simone’s team deals with every challenge and tries to turn it into something positive. A lot of dust is produced when the bones are cut – it was allowed to blow away and was inhaled by the workers who didn’t wear masks to protect themselves. Simone decided that the dust could have value and now plans to use it in rose fertiliser and then, possibly more ambitious, for bone china. These plans have made the dust precious to the men who now conserve it and wear masks to protect themselves. Everything at the rubbish dump is recycled – and some of it is used for our production. It’s an important source of income for slum dwellers. Waste food and rubbish from airlines is collared by slum hierarchies.

  I was surprised to find that rents for small concrete houses are not cheap. There’s a whole social structure and economy in the slums – the houses double as shops and workshops. People are healthy, though I’m told the life expectancy is below average. They were happy and friendly to us, especially the children who always greet you with a ‘How are you?’ Second-hand clothes are a very important business here – given free by charities but then often sold on.

  I believe the UN programme is making a really positive impact on the people’s lives. Another small business they started is the production of fuel from paper found at the rubbish dump – like a kind of papier-mâché briquette. Andreas and I went to a school
in Nairobi to meet students who had previously been working on the rubbish dump – some of them as young as four years old, abandoned by their parents. They were rescued by the UN and are now being taught about farming so that they can return to the land and lead healthier lives.

  Juergen Teller’s image of Ajuma modelling our clothes in a Nairobi shanty town.

  Our photographer, Juergen Teller (who we always work with on our fashion campaigns) also travelled with us to Kenya to visit the communities involved in the Ethical Fashion Initiative. He shot a reportage of the visit which will be displayed as an installation in the Pitti Palace, Florence, in June. The video highlights issues such as education, access to water, recycling and the ways in which the Ethical Fashion Progamme is helping to improve the quality of life in these communities, though damage to the environment is not addressed.

  As Juergen was to be with us in Kenya for the UN video, we decided to shoot our next fashion campaign there. It’s a lot of work doing a fashion shoot – it takes two or three days to prepare and, as the clothes only arrived the night before, we had been busy.

  It’s always hard work (but I enjoy it) because Andreas and I model in our own publicity – so we are dressing models and ourselves in a van and then coping with doing the shoot outdoors – right amongst people’s lives. People were curious and one lady told me that she admired me for doing such a thing at my age. We brought so many accessories with us to Africa that Juergen suggested we pretend we had a shop and were selling things like everybody else.