Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Fashion designer and later critically acclaimed sculptor.
On the island
Eight records
Martha Argerich, Gidon Kremer, Mischa Maisky
I heard Antoni Marwood playing the violin and playing that piece. I was totally transported by that piece of music. And I will always remember, and I think he will as well, is when he finished at the interval, I saw him in the garden. I rushed to him, embraced him and thanked him for my discovery of this incredible piece of music.
when you are seventeen, eighteen, you're romantic and you feel you're gonna meet that big love and you will never want him to leave you. Whatever you do in life, you want him to stay with you.
when I went to Paris I was uh eighteen and I spent my time listening to jazz and I discovered uh the king of soul, Muddy Waters.
When I started sculpting in my early thirties, I listened to a lot to opera and the voice was something that made me want to sculpt, and La Calas in particular, because the tragic life of that woman, the beauty of that woman, that sensual voice, all that. moved my guts and made me sculpt.
this is my love for not only uh jazz, but also cinema. Big treat is to see at least one movie a day. which I carry on doing, and I saw this movie Ass Anseur Pour Les Chaffau, and Miles Davies recorded the soundtrack over one night session, and it's an incredible piece of music.
This is a very important piece of music for me. It's a song which is not only anti war, but also about people standing for what they believe and who they are. So I've decided to dedicate it to Mohammed Ali.
this is for David, is The Man I Love, sung by Sarah Vone, which I kept listening to because after a few weeks of going out with him, he went off on holiday at Christmas for a week, but I was desperate because he had left me behind, and so I kept listening to Sarah Vone, The Man I Love.
Four Last Songs (Frühling)Favourite
Gundula Janowitz, Berlin Philharmonic, Herbert von Karajan
the last uh piece uh I chose uh are the four last songs by Richard Strauss. I absolutely adore the the piece you're gonna hear the spring. It's something that stirs my inside.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:55Tell me a little bit about being a sculptor, because fashion is inevitably a very collaborative process, whereas being a sculptor is being alone in your studio with a piece of material to work. What do you need around you when you're working?
I actually only need the clay. And I work a lot from photograph. If I do portraiture, I will have sitters, but very, very briefly. And that's the big difference, obviously, in my new life, is that I am alone and I love it.
Presenter asks
2:29From the Neck Up was the title of your first exhibition in 2014. It was David Hare, your husband, that thought of that. And you referred to yourself at the time as the oldest debutante in London history. How did you find that process?
No, I was not nervous because I've been uh sculpting for over thirty years quietly on the side. And I always knew one day I will show my work. But I didn't want to do it while I was a designer. I wanted to stop one thing and be out with the next thing.
Presenter asks
3:50What's your relationship with fashion now? Do you care at all?
The keepsakes
The book
Marcel Proust
I've got a beautiful edition which my mother gave me when I was fifteen and I actually never read it completely.
The luxury
Not recorded.
I don't actually no, I don't uh I don't read magazines, I don't go shopping, but uh I always care about my old clothes. I love my old clothes and I have kept, luckily, over the years, my favorite inish collection. So everything I've got is old but can be worn forever.
Presenter asks
6:10Tell me a bit more about [your father] particularly.
I doubt my father. He was the nicest man I've ever met. He was happily living in Turkey until his dad died. … He was radiating love. Physically he was a beautiful man and um he never found any fault in any one. He was just goodness just goodness.
Presenter asks
7:42The mother is still alive. She's over a hundred. And you say she has a strong personality. Do you think that was because she felt she had to be, because your father maybe had a softer heart?
Well, I don't maybe she didn't have to be, but she still is strong. … telling me off. For example, she always thought I didn't know how to dress and how she hate my hair, too much hair. She always would like me to uh have it very short and uh so uh she never accepted my way of life. But I have to say, when uh I was seventeen and I wanted to leave Nice because I thought this town was far too little for me. My father didn't want me to. He was very traditionalist and he thought a girl has to stay at home until she gets married. My mother said, Let her go and she was fighting with him for me to go. So I owe her to have been able to go to Paris when I was eighteen to to do what I wanted.
Presenter asks
31:29What would you like your creative legacy to be? Does it feel to you as though that's what you'd really like to be known for?
Well, you know, I did uh the head of Thomas Gensborough for the Gensborough House. And when I went, I never had that with my clothes, and I saw my clothes on thousands of people, and I know clothes get destroyed little by little. There will be nothing left of me in fashion. But that head of Gensborough will remain in that museum. And then I felt I'm gonna leave a little mark of my passage here on earth. So It felt really good.
“He was radiating love. Physically he was a beautiful man and um he never found any fault in any one. He was just goodness just goodness.”
“I hate her and I love her. And I think she does the same.”
“I always designed for myself, really, to please myself, to to do things that I knew I would wear.”
“The first moment I touch the clay is totally, totally emotional. And still now, you know, after all those years, I just go into I've got a dustpin where I keep my clay. I just put my hand in the clay and I feel it. It's like touching the earth.”
“I don't feel British at all. But uh I do feel French, although the fact that my family came from elsewhere I'm more attached to France probably than I am to England, but I can't say I'm desperate to go back or I'm happy where I am.”
“There will be nothing left of me in fashion. But that head of Gensborough will remain in that museum. And then I felt I'm gonna leave a little mark of my passage here on earth.”