Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Fashion designer and businesswoman known for her handbag designs, especially the 'I'm not a plastic bag' canvas tote, and for growing a kitchen-table start-up i
On the island
Eight records
I Was GladFavourite
Choir of King's College, Cambridge
I Was Glad by Parry is a very special piece to me. It was a piece I sang at school. It was also played or sung at our wedding and really badly. And I was really sad because it's a very small, tinny French choir. He didn't really sort of get it at all. So it's something that means a lot to me and also has very funny memories as well.
It's a piece that we used for our first ever Fashion Week show. It was actually the first on-schedule show we did. And it still makes me feel a bit sick in my stomach because the reveal at the very end is the me on a bicycle sort of pretending to power the entire machine. It was all animatronics, very difficult to describe. But it's a lovely piece of music that makes me feel sick and happy all in one.
This reminds me actually very much of a very dear, sadly no longer with us friend, Joseph Etterguy, who started Joseph, the shop. We were on holiday with them and he had this beautiful boat and we sat outside. It was Easter and we were all wrapped up and it was cool but the sun was out and we played this and we just laughed and drank too much pink wine and just had the most wonderful day and this piece of music will forever remind me of him.
Monks and choir boys of Downside Abbey
This is one of those big choral pieces that I sang at school and I think is just really very beautiful.
I'm love live music, and Earl is such an unlikely character because he's sort of sixties and he's dressed in sort of janja bottom glasses and spats and then sings a rather sort of raunchy bossa nova and is deeply sexy actually when he sings and uh it just makes me laugh.
I first heard it actually at my very dear friend's Father's Memorial, which was in Wells Cathedral, and there's that amazing cross transept there. And you couldn't see, but behind the the transept were a sort of an eighty strong male voice Welsh choir. So I've ever since then had a complete obsession actually with Welsh choirs in a slightly unhealthy way. And every single event we do at work I always go, How about maybe a Welsh choir at the moment? And they keep saying, No, no, no And then finally, actually, on my fortieth birthday, I was sitting at my desk and in walked a huge male voice Welsh choir and sang to me and I embarrassed and I cried and it was a total disaster, but it was a Welsh choir and this particular piece is very special.
On the subject of a bottle of wine, Zorba the Greek from the film where he goes, You want to dance? And I just think it's just brilliant. And it is actually often with a bottle of wine, often around the kitchen table or on holiday, not particularly in Greece, but just it's just one of those things that just makes everyone just have a great time.
Well, good old Dolly, Islands in the Stream. It's sort of a bit of a family anthem, really, and it just makes me smile. And it's very much a call to action for my kids. And in fact, our very dear friends, the Robinsons, who we holiday with a huge amount, mainly as their guests. So thank you, Robinsons. But they also have five children. They have four girls and a boy, and we have four boys and a girl. They both work together in fashion. So it's just a brilliant mix. And when this comes on, all 14 of us take to the dance floor. It's not pretty, but it's kind of great.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:29Businesswoman or designer, which one takes centre stage?
Center stage. That therein lies the problem in some respects, or perhaps the nice aspect, because I love both. Recently actually I took the brave decision, I think, to demote myself and go back to just purely the creative role.
Presenter asks
6:04Has Margaret Thatcher ever clutched one of your handbags?
She has, actually. She has. We made her a handbag a while ago now, and it was a real honour.
Presenter asks
13:52Did your parents mind that you weren't academic?
They no, my parents are very supportive. They and I am a great believer, and I think confidence matters in life, first and foremost. What I did get from school, and it was it was the most beautiful. It was actually a Tudor Palace, so it was called Bewley, and it was most architecturally really inspiring, surrounded by these incredible cedar trees. And I gained a lot from that architecture, strangely. But because I wasn't a natural in the classroom, I actually found real love for music there, and that was a real inspiration for me. And the huge choirs and the big choral pieces, and I actually thought about it as a career at one point. Singing. Yeah, singing. So that was fantastic for me, and I enjoyed my time there very much.
The keepsakes
The book
Brothers Grimm
I would probably choose Grimm's Fairy Tales because I have been read it a lot and loved it, and I do read it to my children, and I think it would sort of spark my imagination of all those plots which you could play with. So I think that would give me hours of pleasure.
The luxury
Yellow rotating pencil and book of unlined paper
I'm torn between taking a really lovely photograph album, but perhaps that would be slightly torturous experience. Maybe, therefore, the thing that I would always take. I'm next to me now is a yellow rotating pencil and a beautiful book of unlined paper. Because actually, with a pencil, you can kind of do anything. I could write, I write a diary every day anyway. So I would keep a diary and I would plan and make lists. Without lists, I don't think I could actually operate. And that would make me feel normal and sane.
Presenter asks
17:31Where did you get the money to place the order with the factory?
I very simply managed to sort of negotiate that I was paid before I had to pay the factory, so I just worked out a simple sort of payment credit terms. I didn't really understand it terribly well, and that's why I was in the past. Didn't they look at you and say, Go away, little English girl? Well, a couple did ... I did then find a factory that that believed in me and I think could see some potential in the design. Well, I think that came from the era.
Presenter asks
22:05How much harder has it been being a stepmother than you thought it was going to be?
You know what, it's just been honestly genuinely been the biggest honor and most lovely thing for me. And I think we all feel pretty lucky. Of course it comes with its challenges and of course there are times when I'm sure they want to murder me and occasionally, when they leave their trains in the kitchen, I want to murder them, but actually, you know what? That's just parenting, isn't it?
“Her cleavage bag.”
“Yes, I did, absolutely.”
“You know what, it's just been honestly genuinely been the biggest honor and most lovely thing for me.”