I'm supposed to look a bit like something that's been left over in the jungle in Vietnam

Where to start to describe this BBC radio interview with Vivienne Westwood in which she describes what she's wearing and then the interviewer asks Vivienne what she thinks of what she's wearing?

'Everything's very literary with me and it's got to have a story . . .'

'My idea of sex is you've got to look important . . .'

'I'm not a women's lib person . . .'

'The more you dress up the better life you have. . .'

'I've never wanted to go around looking like a little girl who's just been raped . . .'

'I guess I've got an image of myself and I dress for the image . . .'

'I'm not interested in people who don't bother . . .'




Make a cup of coffee, settle in and listen. (and thanks to my sister for finding it)

The Great Mutton Debate - yet more

Lisa Armstrong in the Times today writes about how to dress for your age. It's an interesting piece for me to read because I first met Lisa back in the late Eighties when she commissioned me to write for the newly-launched British Elle. She was in her twenties then, I was in my thirties. I have a huge respect for her as an incisive, intelligent fashion writer. Here she is on how to dress in your seventies and eighties:

By your seventies and eighties, you should really be enjoying clothes. Focus attention around your face and wrists with necklines and bracelets, get regular manicures, splash out on the status bag or suit you’ve always wanted, keep reading the fashion pages and never succumb to elasticated waistbands.
. . .
Keeping up to date with the big picture in fashion is a good place to start when it comes to tweaking — or revolutionising — your look. Fashion doesn’t become less important as you get older, it becomes more. One of my personal style mentors is Joan Burstein, the octogenarian owner of the influential Browns fashion stores. Always extrapolating the shapes — knee-length, loosely cut shifts, trouser and tunic tops in luxurious fabrics — from the coolest designers (current favourites include Lanvin and Fendi), she is eternally stylish, elegant and hip.

And here . . .

is a picture of Joan Burstein, aged 80 infront of Brown's, the legendary London store which she co-founded with her husband in 1970 (she discovered John Galliano and gave a teenage Manolo Blahnik his first job in fashion.) The picture goes with an interview I did with her. We had tea at Claridges.

Thought for the day

I like fashion to go down into the street, but I can't accept that it should originate there. Coco Chanel.