Philip Treacy

Speaker 30:00

This is the BBC.

Presenter0:03

Hi, I'm Kirsty Young. Welcome to Desert Island Discs, where every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury that they'd want with them when I cast them away. This is an extended edition of the original broadcast, although the music is shorter for rights reasons. I hope you enjoy the podcast.

Presenter0:42

My castaway to-day is the hat designer Philip Tracy. A maverick creative force, his trailblazing style has marked a paradigm shift in a hitherto highly conservative genre. Not for him the charms of the dainty, pastel-feathered fascinator. No, his hats are constructions of such spectacular drama, ingenuity, and engineering that he's turned millinery well, on its head. From Lady Gaga to the landed gentry, he is the go-to guy for someone wanting to make a statement on a concert stage, a cat walk, or simply sacheting into the chapel at a society wedding. Indeed, it was as a little fellow growing up in rural Galway that he would stand week in, week out, at the doors of the local church, entranced by the get-ups of the wedding guests and the beauty of the bride. He says of his world-renowned designs, I think and I hope I have changed the way we look at hats. They are no longer symbols of conformity, but highly individual acts of rebellion.

Presenter1:43

I am constantly challenging the perception of what a hat should be and what role it should play. So we're recording this then, Philip, at the height of well, I would think it's the height of hat season. We've got lots of summer weddings, Royal Ascot's just finished. What sort of working hours have you been keeping over the last couple of weeks?

Philip Treacy1:59

I would start maybe at about seven in the morning and finish at whatever time in the evening I could get home, sometimes midnight, sometimes not at all.

Presenter2:14

You are still at a workbench working, with your hands

Philip Treacy2:16

But yeah, I mean, sometimes people are surprised that I actually make the hats as well. I have a very small skilled team of six people and me, but I have to develop the actual ideas and the sample. So it's a very kind of hands on job for me.

Presenter2:31

In the week I mean mentioned Royal Aska, it is probably you know the spectacle where we see most women wearing most hats for most of the week, because those are the rules. How many hats

Philip Treacy2:33

Yeah

Philip Treacy2:39

Yeah, yeah.

Philip Treacy2:41

Life

Philip Treacy2:42

Royal Ascot? But Royal Ascot makes our year go round, really. So last week was Christmas for us. Fifty thousand people per day go to Ascot, twenty-five thousand of those people wear a hat. So Ascot keeps the industry going around, really.

Speaker 12:52

Bruh

Presenter3:02

One of the things I think that scares ladies a little bit about wearing hats are the rules that surround it. And so, for example, we're talking about royal ascetic, why not? In the royal enclosure, you must wear a hat and it must have a base of no less than four inches. I mean, what's that all about?

Philip Treacy3:08

So for example

Philip Treacy3:10

The Royal English.

Philip Treacy3:15

I mean

Philip Treacy3:16

People have to wear a hat. They can't wear an excuse for a hat. So that dreaded word fascinator that we all hate.

Presenter3:23

We all hate why

Philip Treacy3:25

I don't know, it just sounds like a dodgy sex toy to me. You know, it sounds like such a weird word. And, you know, a fascinator really is sort of a hairband with a floppy flower on it. And any child can make a fascinator. So a hat is a different thing. So patronage of the royal family keeps hats alive. Her Majesty the Queen has kept hats alive in the imagination of people all over the world. She's worn hats for all her life. And if the royal family chose not to wear hats, let's say in the 60s or 70s, when some people gave up on them.

Presenter3:54

Where hath

Speaker 13:55

Yeah.

Presenter3:58

Give up on

Speaker 13:58

Okay.

Philip Treacy4:00

Then I wouldn't really be sitting here having this conversation with you because hats are part of the culture of Englishness and of Britishness.

Presenter4:09

Let's go to your first piece of music, Philip Tracy. Tell me what we're going to hear.

Philip Treacy4:12

It's some music that I love to listen to when I work and when I do fashion shows. I quite like house and techno. My kind of formative years when I started were spent listening to Pete Tongue on a Friday night or Danny Rampling or I don't know, there's something really

Philip Treacy4:29

visually exciting about this kind of music. It's not everybody's cup of tea, but the ebbs and flows of the music when you use it in a catwork context, those are the kind of moments that we live for.

Philip Treacy4:46

About the hands of fate

Philip Treacy4:50

When right before your eyes

Philip Treacy4:54

Yep, it comes too late.

Philip Treacy4:58

I've learned to ignore them.

Philip Treacy5:01

When they bring me down

Philip Treacy5:05

I want the fishes peak alone.

Philip Treacy5:09

All around

Presenter5:15

That was It's My Turn 2009 by Angelic Remixed by Daz Bailey.

Presenter5:21

Only a couple of generations ago, of course, we would all have been wearing hats. I mean, I don't recall seeing my grandmother out in public, I think, without her hat. Really, she didn't wear a hat indoors, obviously, but if she was going out, then she was going out in her hat. To what do you attribute

Speaker 15:27

That's

Speaker 15:29

Death.

Philip Treacy5:29

Yeah it's

Philip Treacy5:30

And she was going

Presenter5:34

or abandoning that habit.

Philip Treacy5:37

A hat has has always been a hat, but a hat has changed from a conformist accessory to an accessory of rebellion.

Presenter5:44

Bad.

Philip Treacy5:44

Almost.

Philip Treacy5:47

You know, when I started twenty-eight years ago, it was a much more mature customer, like, and there were no young girls.

Speaker 15:54

Cool.

Philip Treacy5:55

And so Isabella Blow, my friend, she used to always say, get them when they're young. Things are changing. So young girls are more interested in hats because maybe their parents weren't interested in hats. But the hat in itself has changed dramatically over the years. And hair certainly took over from hats in the 60s. I had a very interesting customer, the late Duchess of Devonshire, who was a customer of mine for many years. The luxury of meeting amazing and designing for amazing people over the past 30 years is you

Philip Treacy6:29

Get to have a conversation.

Philip Treacy6:31

With them, the one fascinating story she told me was that she went to JFK's inauguration.

Philip Treacy6:37

And on the morning of the inauguration that she walked into a room by mistake, and JFK and his brother were kicking their top hats around the room and laughing.

Philip Treacy6:50

Yeah.

Presenter6:50

And so that was a rejection of the establishment. I'm not wearing a top hat. I mean, he wore it walking to his inauguration. It was a statement of out with the old. Yes. Out with the fuddy. Of course. I am frustrated by the fact that you're probably far too discreet to name names, but I wonder if you could give me an indication. At the recent royal wedding at Windsor,

Philip Treacy6:50

And so that was

Philip Treacy6:55

Yeah.

Speaker 16:58

Yeah.

Philip Treacy6:58

Of course.

Speaker 16:59

Yeah.

Speaker 17:08

Yeah.

Presenter7:09

I mean roughly what percentage of that congregation were wearing a Philip Tracy hat.

Philip Treacy7:13

Not that many, but you saw them. So maybe like twenty, twenty five, thirty people I designed hats for.

Presenter7:16

The big twenty two

Presenter7:19

I designed how

Presenter7:20

Let's have some more music, Philip. Tell me about this, the second one. What are we going to hear?

Philip Treacy7:24

I love Michael Jackson and I got to work with Michael Jackson's clothes. And I designed a fashion show where I wanted to make a show about Africa getting rich. So we had 25 black girls. Everybody tried to persuade me we wouldn't be able to find 25 black models, but these girls flew from all over the world, including Africa. And I needed clothes. And a friend of mine in Los Angeles does celebrity auctions, big ones. And lo and behold, they were selling Michael Jackson's entire wardrobe and they lent it to me to do a show. I'd prepared a room for it. We'd had $10 million worth of security. And when the clothes were on the rail,

Speaker 18:03

Yeah.

Philip Treacy8:07

It was like pop history, from his fencing looks to his thriller jacket to hi the trousers he performed Billie Jean in. They were like the most famous pop relics of the twentieth century.

Presenter8:31

On me like the river Jordan, and I will then say to thee, You are my friend.

Philip Treacy8:40

Carry me like you are my brother.

Presenter8:47

Be like a mother, will you be there?

Presenter8:55

Will you be there, Michael Jackson? Um, let's take a little wander down memory lane then, Philip Tracy, why not? You were born in County Galway, in the west of Ireland?

Philip Treacy9:03

In a village called Ahaskra?

Presenter9:05

I'm glad you said that because I was frightened of mucking it up. You were the second youngest of eight children.

Philip Treacy9:06

That yeah, I was

Philip Treacy9:08

Yeah.

Philip Treacy9:10

Yes, and my youngest brother was a seventh son. My father was a baker, my mum was a housewife, uh we grew up in a village of five hundred people.

Philip Treacy9:19

And I was completely different to the others.

Presenter9:23

And what in what respect?

Philip Treacy9:24

Well, I was interested in different things and so at six years of age in school one day I noticed that the boys did something and the girls did sewing and one day I said to the teacher, Can I do that? There was a long pause and she said

Philip Treacy9:41

Okay. And then she told all the boys to sew. So all the boys sewed, crocheted, knit. I could never knit, but I could crochet.

Presenter9:49

What was it you liked about sewing at that age?

Philip Treacy9:52

I just thought there was something fascinating about joining two pieces of material together.

Presenter9:57

Creation. It was creation.

Philip Treacy9:57

I was always kind of making things, Christmas decorations, toys.

Philip Treacy10:02

Dresses, anything. Dresses for people or when I was about eight or nine I basically wanted a doll to dress and my dad brought me to the local town and bought it for me.

Presenter10:18

He took you into the toy shop.

Philip Treacy10:19

Yeah, and because I wanted to make fashion clothes for these dolls, and at that moment I didn't really see what the problem was.

Presenter10:29

Did anybody see anything?

Philip Treacy10:31

Yeah, I mean everybody said something but you know one of the most strongest memories I have of is being in somebody's house very tiny and my father's friend saying to him, don't you think it's a little odd? Don't you think it's a bit strange this child is doing this? And I remember distinctly hearing my father say whatever makes him happy and you know

Philip Treacy10:57

Moves me still to think of him like that because I think it's a good idea.

Presenter11:01

Well, it's an extraordinary thing.

Philip Treacy11:03

Mm, it's an extraordinary thing.

Philip Treacy11:06

His approach to it, you know, they didn't encourage me and they didn't discourage me. Well, they let you be. When you've got something inside you, it comes out.

Philip Treacy11:17

And I had, you know, some kind of creativity that um that I couldn't help.

Presenter11:27

Tell me, Philip Tracy, about this next track then. This is your third. Why is it on your list?

Philip Treacy11:31

I am Irish, obviously, and Danny Boy is my favourite Irish song, and Andy Williams was my father's favourite singer. And my dad died when I was eleven, and so I associate this sound with him.

Presenter11:48

Oh, Danny Boy.

Presenter11:53

The pie

Presenter11:55

The pipes are calling

Presenter12:03

From glen to glen

Presenter12:08

And down the mountain side

Presenter12:17

The summer's gone

Presenter12:20

That was Andy Williams and Danny Boy. Uh, Philip, we've heard then um about everything your father did to encourage his young son. You haven't mentioned your mother, though. What did she make of her little sewing boy?

Speaker 112:29

Yeah.

Philip Treacy12:33

My mother was probably worried for me, really. But she had to cope with it because basically I was fascinated by her sewing machine. And so when she would go and feed the chickens,'cause my mother kept chickens and hens and pheasants and geese, so we were fully functioning, kind of small holding. Holding. It wasn't even a small holding, it was a good just a large garden.

Presenter12:49

Small holding

Philip Treacy12:54

And uh when she'd go and feed the chickens I could take the machine out'cause it made a lot of noise. So it was like a military operation to get the machine out, put it up, take the lid off and then pedal like crazy for like two minutes before she came back. So

Presenter13:03

I'm not sure.

Philip Treacy13:08

And she did

Presenter13:08

And she didn't like it because you think she worried o of what it would say about you.

Philip Treacy13:13

Yeah, probably, but I wasn't thinking that in that moment because I was I just wanted to sew.

Presenter13:17

You just wanted to say that.

Philip Treacy13:19

Was you

Presenter13:19

And was your mother beautifully turned out? Did she take care of herself?

Philip Treacy13:22

My mother was a beautiful woman when she was younger.

Presenter13:25

Right.

Philip Treacy13:26

She had some hats, but what I remember most about my mother when she put her hat on was that she spent quite a long time working out the angle of the hat. And I think I taken that from her because I always looked at her and thought, What is she doing?

Philip Treacy13:41

and what she was doing

Philip Treacy13:43

Was she wasn't just throwing her hat on, she was placing the hat so that the hat enhanced the face. So the positioning of the hat was actually more important than the hat, which I agree with. You know, a hat really is what it's doing is changing the proportions of the face. So it's plastic surgery for the face without the pain.

Presenter14:03

And the little village of 500 odd people that you grew up in, it had this church. The church was pretty near your house. It was across the road.

Philip Treacy14:06

Yeah.

Philip Treacy14:09

It was across the road.

Presenter14:09

And you would watch the wedding guests, I'm right, Corina?

Philip Treacy14:12

I would go to the weddings uninvited, you know, in an anorak, short trousers. Did you? Yeah, and so I'd be the one down the back looking at the wedding and

Presenter14:17

Did you

Philip Treacy14:22

There was just something exciting about weddings. They were like fashion shows and somebody turned up in a beautiful dress and everybody was in a good mood and there was confetti and the cars. You know, I've got to work with some of the greatest couturiers that have ever lived and seen the most beautiful clothes, but I still think of those wedding dresses I saw as a child as the most beautiful of all. And I don't know why. I think it's obviously rose-tinted glasses, but

Philip Treacy14:45

They were gorgeous. Weirdly enough, uh as a child, I remember coming home from school and seeing Princess Anne's wedding on T V on Black. In the very early seventies, right? And yeah, remember she had these kind of medieval sleeves.

Presenter14:54

That would be the very early seventies.

Presenter14:58

Sensational, yeah.

Philip Treacy15:00

I couldn't get over these sleeves. I just thought, why are they so long? And I didn't really understand what medieval was.

Presenter15:05

Tell me about our next uh disc. What are we gonna hear?

Philip Treacy15:08

My fourth song is Do You Would Want to Hurt Me by Boy George, and Top of the Pops was probably one of the most influential programmes in my life ever. I remember I w I too was one of those people watching on that Thursday night when Boy George appeared, and

Philip Treacy15:26

And you had never seen anybody like this before. And I've always responded to originality. And there's even the opening chords of it, it just brings me back to that moment when I first heard him. And I became this massive Boy George fan. And my sister sent me everything that was ever written about him. And in one time out, it was his hat maker. So I knocked on Stephen Jones' door and he gave me work experience. And then at night, I was a dresser on a Vita. So it was my first London experience. And it was the most exciting moment, I think, of my life. And Boy George is forever associated with that. You know, I tell him I design hats because of him, but he just doesn't believe me. He just doesn't believe me.

Presenter16:09

He just has

Presenter16:10

Let's hear.

Speaker 316:13

Excuse me, it's sad.

Presenter16:17

To realize

Speaker 316:20

My crime

Speaker 316:24

Let me learn the

Presenter16:34

I have damned.

Presenter16:39

Feel inside your eyes.

Presenter16:46

That was Culture Club and you really want to hurt me. So, Philip Creesier, I I will sort of sum up a period of your life because you fitted quite a lot in quite early. You studied fashion in Dublin at the National College of Art and Design. You spent time in London, you did an MA. Where did you do your

Philip Treacy16:56

Yes

Philip Treacy17:01

At the Royal College of Iraq.

Presenter17:02

And they sort of designed a course around you, because they didn't really do the hat making.

Philip Treacy17:07

They had a hat-making course, I believe, in the 60s, and they were thinking of redoing the course. And so I was their guinea pig on the course. And while I was there, a lady called Shirley Hex, who's the kind of godmother of British millinery, she's taught everybody how to make hats and taught me how to love my craft.

Presenter17:15

On the court?

Speaker 117:20

Uh

Presenter17:20

But there are

Speaker 117:21

Yeah.

Presenter17:21

Valenary

Presenter17:27

You have mentioned the name Isabella Blow. She's a woman whose name was very well known within fashion circles. She was a patron of unknown designers, and she very much took you and at the same time Alexander McQueen under her wing in the early days. Yes. She spotted you. How did she promote you?

Philip Treacy17:33

She was a

Philip Treacy17:42

Yeah.

Philip Treacy17:44

Yeah.

Philip Treacy17:46

By looking after us, really.

Presenter17:47

Uh

Presenter17:48

She opened doors for you like no other. You were designing in your early twenties for Chanel Couture, which is the ultimate of design. Yeah, I mean we went.

Philip Treacy17:51

Design.

Speaker 117:51

Yeah.

Philip Treacy17:54

Yes.

Speaker 117:55

Uh

Philip Treacy17:55

Is she oh

Philip Treacy17:56

Yeah. I mean we went we went to a Vogue party one time with Isabella and Isabella just bypassed everybody at the party and just grabbed my hand and took me over to Carl Augerfeld and introduced me to him. And the best way I can explain Isabella's approach was Isabella thought she was doing Carl Augerfeld a favour.

Philip Treacy18:15

She was doing me a massive favour because one month later I was designing for him at Chanel Couture, but she thought she was doing collager for the favour. So that's how much Isabella's belief and what that did for our self-confidence and Alexander included. You know, not everybody can call Anna Winter up and get her to come to see a young designer's show like she did for Alexander McQueen.

Presenter18:15

She was doing me a massive favour.

Speaker 118:28

It's a values.

Presenter18:34

Did she not?

Presenter18:43

Time for a bit of music, Philip Tracy. What are we going to hear next?

Philip Treacy18:45

Broxy Music, Brian Fairy and Avalon and this whole sound reminds me of Isabella. When I hear this song I think of her, you know, dancing. She loved this and Brian's Fairy's music sounds like him. It's just the most elegant music.

Philip Treacy19:04

Now the party's over.

Philip Treacy19:08

I'm so tired.

Philip Treacy19:11

Then I see you come

Philip Treacy19:15

Outta no way

Philip Treacy19:18

Much communication.

Philip Treacy19:22

In a motion.

Philip Treacy19:25

Without conversation

Philip Treacy19:29

Arano Sha.

Presenter19:38

Uh

Presenter19:39

That was Roxy Music and Avalon, and chosen Philip Tracy because it brought back very fond memories of your dear good friend Isabella Blue, who was so instrumental in your career. And you mentioned that part of that little triumvirate, that triangle, was you, Isabella Blue, and Alexander McQueen.

Philip Treacy19:55

We were her boys. You were. And she was our mom. And she looked after us like a mom, and she watched out for us. Did she cook for you?

Presenter19:56

And she was our

Presenter20:01

Did she cook for you? Did she as people will know, Alexander McQueen took his own life, Isabella Blow did too. You are the the last one left standing.

Philip Treacy20:04

Yeah.

Presenter20:12

How do you remember them as people?

Philip Treacy20:14

People associate them with tragedy and sadness and darkness, and uh the people I knew were completely different people. They were

Philip Treacy20:25

Full on

Philip Treacy20:26

Exciting people to be with. I mean, Isabella was.

Speaker 120:29

I mean, is

Philip Treacy20:32

She was full of life, not full of death. I mean, she was just.

Philip Treacy20:38

One of the most life-enhancing people I've ever come across. I mean, a visit to Tesco with Isabella in her outfit was as exciting as a visit to.

Philip Treacy20:47

The opera because something would happen, or she'd meet somebody. She was an amazing people person, and she was very.

Philip Treacy20:54

Giving of herself to people around her.

Presenter20:58

But she expected a lot from you. I mean, she ex she wanted the hats.

Philip Treacy21:02

You know, Isabella would take the hats out in the evening and she'd refer to them in the third person and she'd say, you know, she had a great dance at Annabel's, meaning the hat, or somebody said this about her, or she would call incessantly for a few weeks about that. She'd call at about seven thirty in the morning and say, How is she?

Philip Treacy21:21

And then you'd say, Well, Isabel, I haven't started her yet, and then she'd call you up and read a passage to you about Eleanor of Aquitaine going into battle, or Catherine de' Medici about a veil full of stars or the sky or something, and you'd be on the other end of the line thinking

Philip Treacy21:38

Good morning, Isabella, you know and and then she called in the evening and say, you know, I'm so excited about her and and so basically the key to all of this is that Isabella's expect how she would have built it up so much in her mind that the idea of disappointing her

Philip Treacy21:57

on any level with whatever she was waiting for. It just wasn't an option.

Presenter22:01

And so, did that take you to greater creative heights? Did it require you to extend yourself?

Philip Treacy22:04

Of course.

Philip Treacy22:05

Extend yourself. And she educated us. You know, she was a very cultured person. She was a very, very big influence on our lives. And her influence cannot be underestimated with Alexander McQueen, because they like to underestimate her influence with him. You know, I read on the movie that's just come out, somebody in the movie says something. This is the new dog.

Presenter22:26

This is the new documentary.

Philip Treacy22:26

The new documentary says something that nobody invented, Alexander McQueen. Alexander McQueen invented himself. Well, I understand what that means technically.

Philip Treacy22:35

But, you know, let me tell you, I was there.

Philip Treacy22:38

And there was everybody loves Alexander McQueen now, but you know, when he started out first, they didn't love Alexander McQueen for a three or four year period, and Isabella did love him. And

Philip Treacy22:49

adored him and basically cheerleaded him. You know, she used to re refer to us as race horses, so we had to deliver. We had to win the race. So that we were her racehorses, but we had to win the race. So we were tied together as

Speaker 122:59

The r

Philip Treacy23:09

As a family, I suppose.

Presenter23:11

We're on the sixth of your list. Uh this is somebody who I know you have a lot to say about, and maybe we'll say more about her after we've listened to her music. Tell me why you've chosen this track in particular.

Philip Treacy23:20

Well, uh, I chose this p track in particular because I

Philip Treacy23:25

Matt Grace.

Presenter23:26

And this is Grace Jones, which is a good idea.

Philip Treacy23:27

And this is Grace Jones, and there's no messing with Grace. Grace came into my shop one day when I was in Paris, and basically I have a hat that's it's it's a sailing ship.

Presenter23:37

She came into your London show. Into the corner.

Philip Treacy23:38

Into my London show. And I was in Paris, and basically, Grace was in town to do the Windrush anniversary concert in the 90s. It may have been the 50th anniversary. I'm not sure exactly. And she was headlining it, and she came into the shop. And basically, the person who was working the shop was redirecting her to anything but the ship. And basically, Grace had set her eye on this episode. So, you know, she told me afterwards they were trying to steer her towards everything. So basically, the ship is not for sale. Michael Jackson offered me $25,000.

Presenter23:40

Yeah.

Philip Treacy24:10

Pounds.

Presenter24:10

You talk about the ship. This is a hat with a ship on it.

Philip Treacy24:13

It's a ship hat. So it's kind of like a poetic idea of what a hat can be. But it is a 17th century sailing ship, and one of the joys of creation is you start with the flat two-dimensional material, you turn it into three dimensions. So when I made this ship for Isabella, it began to appear. So it's like a sailing ship.

Presenter24:14

So it's kind of

Philip Treacy24:32

But there's only one. And, you know, I love Michael Jackson, but I didn't really want to go going off to Neverland and I didn't care for twenty five thousand pounds in that in that moment. And so the ship is not for sale to anybody. But Grace is in the shop and she wants the ship. And, you know, most people take no for an answer.

Presenter24:51

Yeah.

Philip Treacy24:51

Yes, but not Grace. And so Clever Grace I was impressed before I'd even met her. Clever Grace closed the shop and took everybody that worked with me in her long black limousine to the concert with the hat, with her, entertained them for the evening and dropped them home with the ship. I mean, you couldn't make it up.

Presenter25:10

Fair play.

Philip Treacy25:11

And so uh

Philip Treacy25:13

Walking in the Rain is a classic Grace Jones song and when I first got to know her, she took me to Amsterdam. She performed in front of twenty thousand people and I found myself side of stage rather nervously as she opened her mouth and belted out this song and she was wearing a hat that I designed that had laser tentacles coming out and

Presenter25:31

And

Philip Treacy25:31

She's

Philip Treacy25:34

Unique.

Philip Treacy25:35

Uh

Presenter25:35

What's it really?

Presenter25:39

Coming off you just

Presenter25:42

Enter all you fool.

Presenter25:46

Sit down, no no.

Presenter25:50

Oh, the

Speaker 325:54

Trip the light, fantastic.

Speaker 325:57

That is

Presenter25:58

Wiggle hits.

Presenter26:01

Coming.

Presenter26:04

Fucking up your lips

Speaker 326:07

Walking in the rain.

Presenter26:11

That was Grace Jones, your friend, walking in the rain at their Philip Tree. See, you have worked with not just Grace Jones, but the likes of Madonna. You made this exquisite sort of crystal head piece once for her that I saw for the Super Bowl. You've worked with Lady Gaga, too. I remember seeing her wearing a sort of hat that was like a telephone. I wonder how you

Philip Treacy26:22

For the Super Bowl.

Presenter26:30

Navigate collaborations with people who themselves have very specific creative ideas and are.

Presenter26:37

How can I reasonably put it big personalities?

Philip Treacy26:40

Yes, I think I've always been attracted to strong women.

Philip Treacy26:45

And entertainment ladies are.

Philip Treacy26:50

Strong characters.

Philip Treacy26:52

My first recollection of Grace was on top of the pop singing Private Life, and she didn't even look human. She looked like an alien. And I remember distinctly thinking.

Philip Treacy27:01

I couldn't imagine having having anything connection with them. Little did I know what was in store for me in the future. She lived with you for a short period. Well, sh for a short period. So, you know, we got to know each other quite quickly. After her sort of coming to the shop and they told me that

Presenter27:08

That was

Philip Treacy27:17

She wants to meet you in the hotel down the road, so I kind of slightly nervously went off to the hotel. We had a great evening. She was everything I'd hoped she would be. And I thought that was it. And then the next day and the afternoon, I got a call saying, Oh, hi. And I was like, I thought we'd done that.

Philip Treacy27:38

So we saw her again, and then we saw her again, and then she moved in with me. I always remember her pulling up in her very large van with rather a lot of luggage, and my partner, Stephanie, was looking out the window and he said, How long is she staying? and I said, I don't know. And she stayed ten days and

Philip Treacy27:57

See, you know, I'd come home at lunchtime and Grace would be washing up at the sink with yellow marigold gloves on. And I'd say, Grace, you don't have to wash up, it's okay. And she'd say, You know, honey, it's okay. I'm so grateful to you for letting me.

Philip Treacy28:08

Come and stay here because room service is driving me insane because, you know, Grace likes to sleep in the day. So we got to know each other quite quickly.

Philip Treacy28:16

Working together went from there. I've been collaborating with her for about 15 years, and I've art-directed some of her shows. I've traveled all over the world with her. We developed this routine where she'd wear a different hat for every song. So I'm at the side of the stage putting the hat on when she comes off. She was made for hats. And so, as a result,

Philip Treacy28:37

We're hat lovers.

Presenter28:39

Can we discuss the pretzel hat? Well, I call it the pretzel hat.

Philip Treacy28:42

Yeah.

Presenter28:42

Yeah.

Philip Treacy28:42

Uh

Presenter28:42

You see it doesn't you see the weird thing about this? Just to be clear to listeners, this is the hat worn by Princess Beatrice in twenty eleven to uh the royal wedding the the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge famously were the world was watching. Yes. And Princess Beatrice was wearing a hat designed by you. It's become known as the Pretzel hat.

Philip Treacy28:58

Yeah.

Presenter28:58

To say it got a lot of publicity may be to rather understate the case, Philip Tracy.

Philip Treacy29:01

Yeah.

Presenter29:03

It wasn't all positive. People thought it was a weird hat and that she looked odd in it. What was that experience like?

Philip Treacy29:06

Yeah.

Philip Treacy29:07

Yeah.

Philip Treacy29:09

Well, you know, if you put three people into a room, you can't get them to agree on the same thing. Don't mind three billion people's impression. And you know, we're in an age where everybody's got an opinion. Indeed. And I thought I was making a little hat with a bow on it, but I didn't realize I was an American Idol or X Factor and that it was Judgment Day.

Philip Treacy29:29

And there was a moment when I thought I'd find myself, you know, my head on a spike outside the Tower of London, you know, in different times I might have. But it was a m very modern hat. Yes. Rather ahead of its time, possibly. And modernity is always unusual things.

Presenter29:41

Yes, rather ahead of its time, possibly.

Presenter29:47

Tell me about your seventh disc, Philip.

Philip Treacy29:50

My the first album I ever bought was Kate Bush and The Kick Inside. And we'd never heard anybody sound like this ever before. And she just came from a completely different place. You know, Kate Bush isn't talented. Kate Bush is gifted. She's my kind of, you know, ultimate musical hero, really.

Speaker 330:15

As the light hits you

Speaker 330:19

As you shift along the floor

Speaker 330:25

Ah

Presenter30:25

Find it.

Speaker 330:25

How to face my face

Speaker 330:30

How did I come to be here anyway?

Speaker 330:35

It's terribly vain once gone before

Speaker 330:42

Yeah.

Presenter30:46

That was Kate Bush and Oh, to be in love. You were just saying there, Philip Fleasie, there's one more thing you want to say about Kate Bush.

Philip Treacy30:51

My fascination with Kate Bush started at twelve and I wrote to the T V company that she was on this show and they wrote back to me and said, Would I like to be the inaugural?

Philip Treacy31:02

Fan of the Kate Bush fan club, and I didn't have the money to join the fan club at the time. So it's just she's been a constant kind of obsession of mine. And last winter, I was in a coffee shop. You know, as you do, when you're standing in a queue, you look around you, and I just looked around, and Kate Bush was standing right behind me. And those eyes and that face were looking at me. It was one of the most shocking religious experiences. And I did something completely stupid. I told her that she was Elvis. She looked a little surprised.

Philip Treacy31:36

I bought her a cappuccino, but it was one of the most amazing moments of my life.

Presenter31:42

You work to deadlines all of the time. Do you sort of live on your nerves? Yeah. Of course.

Philip Treacy31:44

Yeah.

Philip Treacy31:46

Of course. The idea of not delivering is not really an option. So we work all the time. I mean, we've just had Ascot the day before Ladies' Day had Ascot Wednesday night. We stayed up all night long. And then Thursday morning I flew to Zurich to fit Tina Turner for a hat and then I flew back and we continued working until three o'clock Friday morning. But that's kind of normal for people who do labor intensive work. But you go with the energy and the excitement of the job.

Speaker 132:16

Uh

Presenter32:22

I want to send you to this island to give you a damn break. That's what I want to do.

Philip Treacy32:25

That's what I wouldn't mind doing. But you know, once you get into that routine of manic creativity, it's hard to come off it, which is why.

Philip Treacy32:38

Why, I understand in a way what happened with Alexander McQueen because uh it's full on.

Philip Treacy32:46

When you work in the fashion industry.

Presenter32:48

That is an extraordinary set of circumstances and your talents that have taken you from rural Galway to see and do all of the things that you've done. And quite often when people have travelled very far from their roots, one of the great things that they can have as a comfort and as a ballast is people who've travelled there with them. I'm thinking now of Isabella Blow and you mention again Alexander the Queen, neither of whom are with you now. How have you found a way to move forward?

Speaker 133:09

Yeah.

Philip Treacy33:09

And you have to

Philip Treacy33:10

Yeah.

Philip Treacy33:15

Well, if you told somebody that you were getting advice from Grace Jones, they would probably think you needed your head examined. But she actually gives really good advice. And one amazing thing she said to me, which helped me enormously, was I once asked her around this period when both Alexander and Isabella died how Grace dealt with the fact that Andy Warhol, Keith Herring

Philip Treacy33:40

And many, many people that she started out with how she dealt with them not being around any more. And sh her answer was brilliant. And she said, you know, when I go out on stage, I do it for them.

Philip Treacy33:53

So when I make something or when I work for somebody,

Philip Treacy33:58

I'm still doing it for them.

Presenter34:01

Let's have your final piece of music. Philip Tracy, what are we going to hear now?

Philip Treacy34:04

Well, this song is called Both Sides Now, and I particularly love this version. And in a very obvious way, I feel like I have seen Both Sides Now. I've come from a very humble background. I've made hats for kings and queens, and that background has enabled me to exist within all of that. And so Both Sides Now means many different things, but there's a beautiful line that kind of is a parable of is the only thing one can do in life is just basically to live every day.

Presenter34:38

Ah, but now, old friends.

Presenter34:42

They're acting strange.

Presenter34:46

And they shake that

Speaker 334:46

The hides and they tell me that I've changed

Speaker 334:52

Well something's lost.

Presenter34:55

Something's key

Presenter34:59

In the living

Presenter35:00

Every day.

Presenter35:03

I've looked at life from both sides now.

Presenter35:10

That was Both Sides Now from Joni Mitchell. Philip, it's time for me to give you some books. Everybody gets the complete works of Shakespeare and the Bible, and then takes another book along too of their own choosing. What's yours gonna be?

Philip Treacy35:22

I would particularly like an encyclopedia of shelves if I was on a desert island. Then I would really like to.

Philip Treacy35:30

Know what I'm looking at. Sure, you may. And so I would choose that.

Presenter35:32

You may have to do it.

Presenter35:35

Okay, and a luxury too. What would your luxury be?

Philip Treacy35:37

Well, my luxury would be a thimble.

Presenter35:40

Ah.

Philip Treacy35:40

And so I use a tailor's thimble. I've got it with me.

Presenter35:44

Can I see?

Philip Treacy35:45

And so it doesn't have a top. And so it's one of those things that I work with every day. I need it. And basically, you know, it's this piece of metal on the end of your finger and you use it for sticking pins of the blocks into the wood. And it takes such a long time to get used to this piece of metal on the end of your finger when you start out first. When you get used to it.

Speaker 135:55

Yeah.

Speaker 135:58

Yeah.

Philip Treacy36:06

You can't do without it. So when I get up in the morning, I I put my thimble on, like I put my clothes on, it's like a comfort blanket. So as a result, my finger is now the shape of the thimble. It is. And so my thimble is is part of me. Okay. I'm going to give it to you though.

Speaker 136:11

Sounds good.

Presenter36:12

Come on.

Speaker 136:12

Yeah.

Presenter36:12

The

Presenter36:15

Bye.

Philip Treacy36:21

Well I g but I feel I ought to give it back. No, I mean it's do you have a stack of them? I I do. I mean I have some more, but I I'm it's such an honor to do your show that I wanted to give you something back.

Presenter36:24

Do you have a stack of them?

Presenter36:31

Well now I feel honest.

Presenter36:33

Thank you very much. Tell me then, if you had to save just one of the eight tracks from the waves, which one disc would it be?

Philip Treacy36:40

I think I'd listen to Kate Bush, and, you know, her voice is like the birds soaring, so I think it would be useful on an island because, you know, the pitch and the the ebb and the flow of her voice it reminds me of birds in flight.

Presenter36:54

Okay, it's yours. Philip Tracy, thank you very much for letting us hear your desert island this. Thank you very much, Kirsty.

Philip Treacy37:00

Yeah.

Presenter37:13

Hi, I really hope you enjoyed that interview with Philip Tracy. You'll have heard him refer to one of his clients, the late Duchess of Devonshire. She and her husband were Roy Plumley's guests in August of 1982. Our back catalogue also features a number of British designers including Betty Jackson, Stella McCartney, Xandra Rhodes and Celia Bertwell. In 1992, Sue Lolley interviewed Vivian Westwood.

Speaker 137:39

The hallmarks of uh punk, Vivian Westwood, which you and Malcolm McLaren invented together in the early seventies, was was anarchy and destruction. How did you arrive at that invention? What was the thinking behind it?

Speaker 137:54

Punk rock was essentially an exercise about rock and roll.

Speaker 137:58

And Malcolm once said that rock and roll is the jungle beat that threatens white civilization. And it is essentially the idea that youth wishes to attack authority. Of course, youth will always wish to attack authority. But I think that punk rock was a really fantastic and heroic attempt to understand whether there was such a thing as an establishment that like a kind of door that you could almost sort of kick and and have some sort of effect on. So you began, if you like, to dress these ideas, to put clothes on these kinds of ideas, and you ended up

Philip Treacy38:34

Yeah.

Speaker 138:39

Um well, you describe it. I mean, if if someone had never seen punk, what would you say were the hallmarks of it in fashion terms?

Philip Treacy38:42

You had

Speaker 138:47

It was built up from all the motifs that we'd been sort of exploring in terms of what this rebellion, this youth rebellion, would be.

Speaker 138:56

And the first thing was the Teddy Boys, and then then we got bored with the Teddy Boys because they seemed to be more interested in having loads of records and collecting all the right ones and having all these sun label records and everything. And we got more interested in rockers with their slogans. And we renamed our shop Too Fast to Live, Too Young to Die.

Speaker 139:20

which was a rocker slogan. And we started to get all these T shirts with chains on and all these black things and um and leather, that was where the leather came from, said the rockers. Yeah, it was, right, that's right. And uh then the next thing that we did, because we weren't satisfied enough with that, is that we got arrested for doing this T-shirt which was supposed to be pouring a graphic of two naked cowboys and somebody was wearing it in Piccadilly at the same time as the programme about Johnny Go Home and it was all about rent boys in Piccadilly and the police were in there and they saw a man wearing this T-shirt and they arrested him.

Speaker 140:05

And we we got done for that. Well, because the cowboys' penises were hanging out at the time.

Speaker 340:07

Yeah.

Speaker 140:12

Yeah, the the I tell you I can remember the verdict of the judge in saying why it was pornographic. It was that they were too close together in that in the respect that you've just mentioned, that their penises were too close together and that also they were over large, so he said, and also one of them was tying the other's neck tie.

Speaker 140:33

Uh anyway, that was the clincher. And then on from there came th th the whole fashion of of bondage and straps. So we so we decided to just go all out for that then and we called the shop sex and started to sell more pornographic T shirts.

Philip Treacy40:40

Trap

Presenter40:41

Yeah, so we

Presenter40:50

Vivian Westwood Talking to Sue. All those programmes are available to download from your usual podcast provider. Next time with Wimbledon in full swing, my guest will be the tennis player and campaigner Billie Jean King. I do hope you'll join us.

Speaker 341:17

This is the BBC.

Speaker 341:21

It was twilight.

Speaker 341:22

And Bailey was late. An extraordinary real life story. The black woman in the South who raises sons, grandsons, and nephews has her heartstring.

Presenter41:32

The author Maya Angelou's Memoirs on BBC Radio 4 across the coming year.

Speaker 341:40

I will be a conductorette. I will. Well, nothing beats a trial but a failure. Give it everything you got.

Presenter41:49

Beginning with Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Search for the amazing Maya Angelou, wherever you get your podcasts.