Bay Garnett introduces her new book, Style and Substance: Why What We Wear Matters
For my book, I wanted to go to the source of style, and find out why people love and wear the clothes they choose to wear. Some were obvious as to what I would ask them - nobody does glamour quite like makeup artist Charlotte Tilbury; I know how much Rachel Weisz loves blue jeans, costume designer Sandy Powell is fascinating on clothes as character, and of course Bella Freud on the charm of the suit — which is one of my favourite pieces.
When she writes about the way her father dressed, it sums up so much for me; that great, true style is bound up in confidence. Lucian Freud might have dressed in torn and battered clothes but he looked so stylish, so himself in his clothes because they were utterly authentic to him. For each story what came searing through was how personal, individual clothes and style were to every single person included and how clothes lent so much joy and power to their lives. From Susie Cave on gothic to Chloë Sevigny on traditional with a twist and Stanley Tucci on a narrow stripe, there are so many intimate and personal anecdotes from everyone. I hope you enjoy them.
Bella Freud on the Charm of a Suit
When I was about ten I was into boyish clothes. My mother didn’t have much money so we used to go to jumble sales and I would look for boys’ shirts, enormous on me, and cut the ends off the sleeves to fit. There was something about them that I loved. Then, one day, I suddenly understood what it was. I remember looking in the mirror and feeling unhappy. Then I changed into one of those cut-down shirts and immediately I saw myself differently, so I felt different: confident and at ease. It was a eureka moment for me, the realisation that I could change how I felt about myself by playing with the relationship between my clothes, my reflection and my emotions.
When I got older I started to look for more feminine styles but I still loved things that had morphed out of clothes for boys. My cut-down shirts turned into shirt dresses. My clothing couldn’t ever be haphazard; it had to serve a purpose, and the purpose was to enhance my feelings. I would wear certain things again and again: black flares, a black T-shirt with mirrored sequins. I’m still a bit like that, actually. There is something very luxurious about returning over and over to a piece or a style that you love and that makes you confident. Today I’m wearing one of my black-and-white 1970 sweaters, for example, which I wear on repeat. (I do have five of them, admittedly.) I like to make things that people can wear for ever, though of course it’s also important to have new clothes from time to time because you need to reinvent yourself slightly in order to stay interesting to yourself.
I love to feel comfortable but I don’t ever want to feel cosy, which risks being too familiar. I want to feel good, agile, deft – and so much of that is to do with having the right outfit. I want to feel like a ninja who has the perfect suit. You can sleep in it, fight in it, go to dinner in it, seduce in it. But it has to be immaculate. At the moment I’m going through a phase of, ‘If in doubt, dress up rather than down.’ Most of my life it’s been the other way around. I’ve never wanted to seem like an attention seeker. Now I think, ‘Too bad. Time is short. I’m going to wear my best suit.’ Perhaps I’m outgrowing an inner critic.
Being stylish is undoubtedly more to do with what you think of yourself than what others think of you, but it can be hard not to care about people’s opinions. When I was a child I was very aware that dressing differently would draw attention, and that the quality of that attention depended on questions of power and privilege. My mother was very beautiful and she was a hippy at a time and in a place where people really didn’t like hippies. How she dressed reflected who she was, but being poor and unconventional attracted negative attention and made her vulnerable.
My father, on the other hand, was also somebody who dressed in ways that marked him out from other people but he had power, prestige and money, which allowed him to be independent of others’ thoughts and comments. He often looked glamorous, though sometimes he looked like a tramp: clothes full of holes. When he wore Savile Row suits and grey flannel it was always with a scarf rather than a tie. He never tried to blend in. He pleased himself. There is a tightrope that leads the stylish dresser towards either attack or admiration, and my parents went their own ways. Attack can evolve into admiration, of course.
One of my first jobs in fashion was with Vivienne Westwood, who was admired at first by a very particular group of people and denounced by everyone else. Later she was universally admired, without ever changing her style. She was a great influence on me, though we were not similar. She was an inventor of fashion; I am not that. But I saw how hard she worked. How much she had to persevere in order to get anywhere. I had seen it in my father, too. I think every act of creativity – including the creation of a style – requires you to work through your frustration when something isn’t going well. It isn’t about inspiration; it’s about application. Though a little inspiration is helpful to get you started.
I look to art and literature and music for ideas about what to design and what to wear. I’m voracious about it. Perhaps that’s because I didn’t have a proper education. I left school at sixteen, but I have always read everything I could get my hands on. I discovered that I visualise the characters I’m reading about, very strongly. Sometimes the visualisation I conjure up when I’m reading is almost stronger than the image I see when I look at a film or a painting.
When I was in my twenties and starting out as a designer, I came across the novels by the French writer Colette, about her character Claudine. I was captivated by this girl. She was so naughty and so fierce. I thought, ‘I want to dress Claudine.’ So I did. It was clear to me what she would have worn if she were around in the 1990s when I started to design. She’d be wearing Coco Chanel but micro-miniskirts; knitted soft fabrics that clung but also covered up. The sort of clothes that a girl would wear to announce she was subverting the codes of her bourgeois background. Designing for Claudine allowed me to distil as much meaning as possible into clothes that were not overt, shocking or loud. I’ve been refining that process ever since, more recently with my tailoring and with my slogan knitwear and T-shirts.
Perhaps it’s my father’s influence, or my own early taste for boys’ clothes, but I have always been fascinated by the possibilities of a suit. Ever since I was a child I have wanted to take that safe unit and tweak it. I used to envy boys their school uniform, which though it was imposed on them could be endlessly tinkered with, to signal their identity. Suiting is so minimal, which means that even a tiny adjustment can be dramatic.
And the charm of a suit . . . A good suit frames the face, enhances a person’s look of thoughtfulness and intelligence. As a teenager I became obsessed with the elegance of bus conductors’ uniforms, the way they gave dignity to the people doing the job. Later, when I lived in Rome, I studied tailoring. I learned about the interior work that goes on inside a jacket, the decorative work involved in a buttonhole. I observed that some people wanted others to know about the suit they were wearing. If they turned the cuffs back to show off the craftsmanship, for example, that might signal the difference between an aristocrat who’d been wealthy for generations and a spivvy mafioso.
The way we wear clothes, the gestures we create with them – all that is the essence of personal style. This drive to distil meaning into clothes led me to using words and phrases as decoration on knitwear. Language is crucial to me. I love to look at the banners that people make for protests: what are the personal slogans they want to carry with them? There’s something so moving about the words that people choose to put on themselves. Pedantic messaging is rarely effective but language can send an oblique signal that communicates because it’s intriguing.
I also love the patterns that words create. Sometimes I find a word is perfect for a sock but would be too weighty for a sweater. In one place it might be provocative, in another it takes on a sweeter tone. Style is our clothes’ capacity to speak for us in disarming or intriguing ways. When we get our clothes right, it shows people another aspect of ourselves that they wouldn’t necessarily have apprehended. An actress friend of mine wore one of my suits to do an interview with the press and she showed this cool and shy side of herself that you only discover when you get to know her. I love the way we can collaborate with our clothes to communicate more, and differently. This is what’s so magical about style, and it’s deeply powerful. I have felt that power myself, many times.
When I was a girl obsessed with Colette’s Claudine, I channelled Coco Chanel as she emerged from her convent school and began to make her way in the world. I had a favourite outfit, a velvet chiffon striped dress with a matching cardigan coat, which I wore with a crisp white shirt underneath so that the collar peeked out above the dress. It must have cost all of £2 second-hand but it was such a distinct look and it communicated what I was thinking about in a way that seemed to surprise people. That gave me a lot of confidence. I was tremendously shy but I felt I could let the outfit do some of the work. It bought me time to think, when someone spoke to me.
People respond to this powerful magic when they see it, and once you notice, you see it everywhere. Whether it’s Tilda Swinton in the pale-blue suit I made for her or a child deciding very deliberately to wear this skirt with those tights or clash it with that sweater, a stylish choice is one that draws attention to a person’s way of thinking and being. I still find it mesmerising. Caring about what you wear is sometimes regarded as vain or superficial but I see it as a tool, a practicality. In rain, you need Wellingtons. In life, you will have to navigate events, emotions and people. If you’re wearing a good outfit, it’s easier. The right clothes just make everything better.
The first piece I bought with my own money: When I was a schoolgirl, my friends and I used to visit the market in East Grinstead, the local town. There were a couple of Indian stallholders who imported beautiful things, the kind you’d imagine Carole King wearing . . . with pintucks like Victorian blouses but perfect for the seventies. We couldn’t afford those fabrics so we bought the cheesecloth tops. I remember buying a pair of simple white trousers from one of the stalls. The fall of the fabric, the proportion . . . They silenced my inner critic. They were just perfect.
The one piece I’d save if my home was on fire: It would have to be my 1970 jumper, with the gold stripe running from the black rollneck down each sleeve. Even if I had nothing else and had to wear a bin bag tied round my waist as a skirt, with this jumper I would feel fine. I would still be me.
