Fashion Neurosis with Es Devlin

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1:10Hi, come in.

1:18Welcome to Fashion Neurosis, Es Devlin. Hello. Can you tell me what you're wearing today and why you chose these particular clothes? Yes. I'm wearing white jeans. They've got quite an interesting kind of bow shape with a frayed bottom, which I really like. I've got four pairs of these jeans because I hadn't seen them before. And once I found them, I just thought I'm going to get a number of these and just wear them every day. And I have a yellow t-shirt that comes from Pangaea and I have 20 of these yellow t-shirts. and I wear them most days. And then I have this really nice yellow cardigan that my husband Jack bought me.

2:03I've only got one of it, so I haven't washed it yet. This is quite a new item for me. And I have a pair of Converse shoes that I actually designed on the website where you could choose which colors they were. And I chose what I thought were quite different shades of cream, but they're pretty similar. But the reason I'm wearing these items is because I love the color yellow and I feel incredibly comfortable and like myself in them. They really suit you, I must say. I love those jeans. You look so charming in them. It's very, you look like an invincible traveler, which is how I often think of you, actually.

2:50On my bike. You're a world-renowned stage designer, director and artist. You've designed for the theatre, for high fashion and hugely famous music stars and the Super Bowl. You've said you don't like to get too comfortable in one medium and I wondered what the feeling is that propels you to change your medium. Is it a restlessness? I don't think I'm restless. I think I'm curious. and voraciously appetited.

3:27And I am, I guess, really aware of how short and precious life is and every day is and want to express every instinct to follow each lead that curiosity presents, I guess. And you seem to have had a happy version of my childhood growing up in the country and being feral. And I wondered if you had an image of yourself as a child, like an alter ego look that you embodied. Like, did you have an obsession with a piece of clothing or a kind of outfit that somehow was part of your intrepid nature? Such a great question. I was the second of four children. So I wore everything that my sister had finished wearing.

4:20and so I guess I was always a version of my sister and then when I got to be a teenager and I was able to buy my own clothes I just bought precise replicas of my sister's clothing and I remember she got really cross with me one day because she had just bought a pink jumper from Topshop. And I had gone to Miss Selfridge and bought the closest I could find to this pink jumper. And she was furious because she was desperately trying to differentiate and I was still trying to emulate. But it's not really an answer to your question. I do remember an outfit I had that I loved that probably was the epitome of my image of self, which was a knitted dress.

5:12And I wore it, I think, with some stocky little boots and tights. And I think the reason I remember that particular outfit is there's a picture of me wearing it in a forest. And I was sitting on a log cabin kind of covered in forest leaves. So that's probably the abiding alter ego of sort of child warrior or something. Yeah. I had a very similar child warrior and spent a lot of time on my own on the Ashdown Forest. It was wild and you could really get close to the trees and the feeling of all the spirit of nature. When we were, I guess, 13, there was a teacher called Chris Thomas at the school I went to.

6:06And he took me and my sister and about 10 other of our art class with a land artist called Chris Drury. And he took us into Bejbury Forest. and we had to make a shelter and then sleep in it. And so we made sculptures all day. Then we began together making this round shelter. And it was getting dark and it had to be finished or else we had nowhere to sleep. And when we finished it, we lay with our feet touching like this and we told each other stories until we fell asleep. and photographs of what we made were presented in the basement of the Tate Britain, which was obviously the only Tate that existed back then in the late 1980s.

6:58And that had such an important and profound effect on me, I think. I mean, that's really amazing that someone took the trouble to take you from one place to another, not spatially, but in terms of if you do this, this could be the outcome. I remember asking my shrink saying, why did I end it up? Why was I like I was? And he said, I don't think you had enough of this taking someone from A to B in your in your upbringing. And it sounds like you had a few very significant moments of that. And how was your transition from girl to woman? What was your concession to femininity? Oh, such a good question.

7:53I guess the transition was all about my bedroom. Again, around the same time, 13, I painted my bedroom and there was an exhibition at the Barbican of Yukioi, Japanese woodblock prints. And my mother took me to it. I used to come up to London from where we were living then in Kent. And I'd come every Saturday morning to do my violin and clarinet and piano lessons at the, there was a junior course at the Royal Academy, which I managed to get placed on and do these lessons. And then in the afternoon, because I would buy a cheap day return ticket, it had a London Underground Pass on it. So you could go anywhere in London for a day.

8:48And I was doing this coming up on my own from the age of 11. And I was just wandering around London on the tube. And I could figure it out because I knew what colors the tube lines were. And I knew if I followed the red line, I would surface in Tottenham Court Road. And Time Out back then, Time Out used to list the jumble sales. And you could look up a jumble sale. And because we were, you know, feral country children, my way of finding my way in London was to go to the jumble sales because I had like, you know, my day out in London, I would be doing my music lesson in the morning and then I had probably£2.50 to spend in the afternoon.

9:29So the jumble sale was the place. And I remember I found this jumble sale and it said it was going to be in Neasden. And Neasden, I was like, okay, that's like at the end of the silver line, the Jubilee line, I can get there. And I popped up in Neasden, went to this jumble sale, had my little elbows out getting stuff. Anyway, one afternoon, my mother said, you know, she'd seen I was interested in Japanese art because I had my time out and I'd cut out one of the pictures. And she said, I will take you. And we went to the Barbican. And when we were leaving, we bought a book together because I had said to her, I want to paint a Japanese mural on the wall of my bedroom.

10:14I think because I had Kate Bush's album, The Kick Inside. which has a rather interpretive version of Kate in Japanese mode, let's say, on the cover. So we bought this book. And when I got home, I opened it up, and it was all Japanese erotic art. And my mom hadn't checked it very carefully. But that was okay. It still had all the bits I needed. And I decided that I would match these colors with Dulux paint because that was the right thing to paint on a wall. So I went and I got all these different Dulux colors, little testers. And I painted this whole mural. And it was an attic bedroom with kind of plugs sticking out of the wall.

10:57And I just went straight over the plug with someone's head. I didn't care. Went straight over the door, over the skirting board. I just carried on. And I think to answer your question of the passage from girl to woman, I believed that if anyone set foot in my bedroom, then the evening would take on some romantic, magical proportion. And that the bedroom, the room with its painting, with its parasol over here, with its bed, like this room would be in charge of the event. And so I guess something in that having a sense that rooms and places could have their own agency, I guess, was part of that transition for me, if that makes sense.

11:48Yeah, I mean, that's so illuminating and so unusual as well to include your circumstances in the positive outcome of any kind of friendships or romances that might enter into your life. And there was a tragic moment where I had invited some friends over to come up to my room. And in the end, they turned out to be not particularly good friends. and as I left the room for a while then we went out and when I came back later that night they had graffitied my mural no and they just drawn great big cocks all over it oh my god but you know what I didn't really fucking care I just painted over them carried the fuck on I was like sorry that's probably not meant to be swearing on this couch no you can say whatever you want gosh actually it's quite in keeping with the Japanese theme because I went to a restaurant in Tokyo not that long ago, and the whole thing was penis-themed.

12:50And they had these drawings all over the wall, various people had done. And at the end, you got this, with pudding, there came this little dish with an erect penis out of it that you drank something out of. I managed to have got it in my bathroom. Well, this was all underscored by Kate Bush, you know the kick inside which I think she wrote when she was 13 so that was that was very much the underscore for the transition. And you described being a young teen and having a time of not knowing what you wanted to do and I wondered if that unknown ever turned against you into something self-destructive.

13:39I mean, it was frustrating for others, especially, that I didn't know what I wanted to do. I had a boyfriend for a long time, from the age of 16 to 28. I remember the conversation, his father was on the phone to me saying, when will you get a job? I just hadn't found what I wanted to do or what I could do. I wouldn't say it became self-destructive, but certainly other people's frustrations were loud and I could sense them. But I guess even now I'm like that with decisions. If they haven't come, I tend to know that they won't come through my own will. I have to wait and be in a frame of mind that allows them to surface.

14:31I mean, I worked, but I didn't know what I wanted to do. I worked in a bookshop. I worked at Foils Bookshop. I was the wages clerk for quite a long time. I paid everyone's wages, even the boss of Foils. Everyone got paid in a small brown envelope. So I had various jobs, but I was actually one of the jobs was there was a stained glass maker on Portobello Road. And I got a job working there. And my job was to piece together broken fragments of stained glass windows into new small windows. And I used to do that on, I lived in a very small apartment with my boyfriend. And I had a little soldering iron and this kind of copper tape that you would wrap around the edge of each piece and then solder the bits of copper together.

15:29And I would just do it in the middle of the sitting room floor on a bit of wood. And it would take me about two weeks to make one of these things. And I think they would pay me like 10 quid or something. So it was really bad money. So I did little things like that for quite a long time. And it wasn't until I was 22 that I did a stage design. Wow. And I didn't really think I wanted to do it because I didn't really go to the theater. Wasn't really much of a fan of theater at all. I didn't really go. I just liked the room a lot where the course was. I walked into the room and I really liked it. I thought this room has got such an extraordinary energy to it.

16:12So I did the course because I wanted to be in that room. That was the only reason. I know it sounded a bit like going to a, walking into a restaurant or cafe and thinking, yes, I'm at home here and I could eat here. I can have a good feeling about myself. That's right. That's exactly right. But to answer your question, I don't think it became self-destructive. I think it was annoying to others who felt I was sort of, you know, not on course. But I didn't feel I wasn't on course. I would spend a lot of time copying chunks out of books. I would read things. And I found the book the other day, actually.

16:53I had really nice, careful handwriting at the time. And I would just carefully copy chunks that I loved. And I would go to the cinema and see films. I think I was just preparing. I was just absorbing. And so much of what I learned, and I spent a lot of time in the studio. My boyfriend at the time was a record sound engineer. And I would just sit and listen to the singers and the drummers and the guitar players. Just a long gestation period of observing ways that you could be in the world and then trying to find my place in it, I think. We met when you wore one of my suits to receive your CBE. And I wondered if what you wear is something that, think about when you're making a connection with a collaborator, your effect on them when you first meet them.

17:50I mean, I was so glad because I think it was the day before the CBE thing. And I hadn't really planned what I was going to wear. and so I just quickly I had seen this amazing image of this beautiful velvet suit that you had made and I must have had your number from somewhere or maybe I just dm'd you or something I just said hi I'm Ez I've got this thing tomorrow can I come to your shop now and I'm gonna pick up a hat on the way so and I didn't even have time to um to hem the trousers everyone laughed at me because I just tucked them into my boots so I wouldn't trip over them. The first time I ever made a fashion show was with Nicolas Ghesquière at Louis Vuitton in 2015.

18:39And we had a meeting in 2014. And my husband, Jack, is an expert in clothes. He's a costume supervisor, designer, and really knows his stuff when it comes to clothes in a way that I really don't. And I said, listen, I'm going off to this meeting in Paris. And he looked at what I was wearing and he thought it was pretty bad. He said, look, the rest of it you'll get away with. He said, you cannot wear those shoes. And they were like, I don't know, some shoes from June, I think. He said, you can't go meet Nikola Jaskier wearing June shoes. I said, well, the only shoes I've got, and he went up to the cupboard and he found these literally one pound carati shoes like with the brown plastic sole oh yeah and the black canvas upper and they had um I think I bought them from like Pearl River or something that or anyway you know Chinese karate shoes he said you'd be better off wearing those I said okay I'll wear those so clever he's so right so I wore those and you know the meeting went fine and Nicola was of course far too elegant to show any indication of surprise at the quality of my footwear but then years later um well maybe not it wasn't too long later actually the great Andrew O 'Hagan the author I was honored that he was writing a profile about me for the New Yorker and he contacted Nikola Jaskier and he said oh I just want to ask you about working with Ez and Nikola said yes it was extraordinary she came to meet me and she was wearing these one dollar karate shoes it's the first thing he said so funny um so yeah I should make more effort I think um I think it's a common thing isn't it if people have to make many decisions in a day they tend to say there will be some areas where I will just abstain from making a decision And I think for now I'm somewhat in that phase where anything to do with food or clothing, I try to limit choices, eat the same thing and wear the same thing.

21:04I know it's a bit boring. In theory, the better shoe was the worst shoe, the more of a shoe, but the cheap shoe was an authentic thing. and that's what always makes an impression on someone. And even Nicola Sheskier noticing that, obviously with admiration. So it's fascinating. And hats, you mentioned hats. Oh, yeah. I went through a hat phase. My daughter says to me, she said, I miss the hat years, mom. That's so sweet. Do you know, I think it was just because I didn't have time to do anything with my hair and I was at that point where I had young children the hair was going gray you know the idea of sitting for hours and getting the bloody gray roots done it wasn't going to happen and you know I was in situations where someone might take a photograph the hair might look shit might hang around for ages I'll put a hat on so but then my mum said, Ez, you can't keep wearing the hat.

22:10It looks pretentious. Oh, really? Gosh. So your mum's quite sort of on your case. She was about the hat. She said the hat years are done. I still do wear the hat occasionally. I certainly wear a hat in any time where it's remotely excusable to be wearing a hat, like if it's remotely sunny. I love hats. I really do like a hat. But I've stopped wearing it, you know, just in general. But it is more effort on the hair, for sure. There's more hair effort. I think we just need to invent a fantastic algorithmic pigment implantation. That means if you don't, if you're not ready to go gray, the hair will just grow the right color.

22:55That would be good. Yeah. You know, I'm very interested in geometry and shape and form. So I will consider the outline, the shape, you know. So the beautiful thing about your suit that I wore was I knew it shaped, it gave me a geometry, which made me feel confident in that situation. And I have a few pieces like that. I have a Nicolas jacket that was part of a presentation that we did together in the basement of the Louvre when he was referencing, the collection in the Louvre. And that, whenever I put that on, I know that I will be this shape. And I have a couple of McQueen jackets like that, that do that thing.

23:41And does anything scare you? You act with such, so much courage. And does that come from a successful overcoming of a challenging situation or just innate confidence? I think it comes from joy. Each day waking up, I'm very conscious of what an extraordinary privilege is, not just to have so many privileges that I have, but to be a human, to be alive, to be on this planet. I know it sounds a little generalized. I did a thing this morning, actually. I do it most mornings where I give myself a free half an hour. It used to be 20 minutes. I've just upgraded it to half an hour. So now I set the alarm at seven and I don't have to get up till 7.30.

24:30And I read a passage by an author who I love called David Abram about sleep being the body's encounter with gravity and gravity seeping through every single cell in the body. this submission to gravity and this uh collect connection between every cell in one's body with all the other cells in every other body that happened to be sleeping at that time and that are all submitting to the to the force of gravity um and because i know that i don't have to be awake every like I'm lying right now every single particle of my back is in this embrace of planetary force and that to me is joyous enough and then because the way my room is set up is such that a piece of light comes through the gap between my blinds and lands on the wall I have this extraordinarily beautiful line of light that is just as if the room were a camera perfectly framing the traces of the atoms arriving from the sun, from our nearest star.

25:44So I just lie each morning and contemplate the gravity of the earth underneath every particle of my back and this extraordinary line of sunlight from our nearest star. And just being held in suspension between those two things is purely joyous. And I think it's a matter of trying to hold on to that. I read a book lately, again, The Master and His Emissary by Ian McGilchrist. And he talks about not the difference between the right and left brain as in one does one thing, one does the other. He explains both sides of the brain do everything. But the quality of attention that the left side of the brain uses versus the right is quite distinct.

26:35And he takes it back to 700 million years ago, the very first nematodes, worms. There's evidence that the two sides of the brain were always for two different types of attention. Broadly speaking, the left-hand side of the brain is concentrating on detail so that it can discern things to eat. So detail searching, whereas the right hand side of the brain broadly is concentrating on the whole expanse to avoid being eaten. So that was the way the brain has always been divided is basically between the kind of attention you need to pay in order to eat and the kind of attention you need to pay in order to not be eaten.

27:21It's as simple as that. And actually his thesis, his ever more urgent thesis is that we have become out of balance. He would describe, I think, the axial age of Confucius Jesus as being the time when perhaps these two modes of attention were most perfectly in balance. And then he might say that actually the fall of the Roman Empire was the sort of beginning of disequilibrium between those two modes of attention. And that the state we're in now of this heightened importance of the transactional and the rational over the mystic and the holistic and the empathetic is something that we urgently need to rebalance.

28:08And I guess that sense of as consciously as possible, as often as possible, whether lying in bed contemplating a line of light or even lying here, trying to take oneself into that more broad means of attention means I'm not usually scared. Avoiding your unfinished home projects because you're not sure where to start? Thumbtack knows homes, so you don't have to. Don't know the difference between matte paint finish and satin or what that clunking sound from your dryer is? With Thumbtack, you don't have to be a home pro. You just have to hire one. You can hire top-rated pros, see price estimates, and read reviews all on the app.

28:55Download today. I'm really pleased that the Jane Goodall collection with Brilliant Earth connects to my vision of how we can live in harmony with nature. every choice we make ripples outward and you can choose what sort of impact you make i know that the things i've worked for all my life will carry on discover the jane goodall collection exclusively a brilliant earth and you talk a lot about drawing and um i'm always really interested in this, the idea traveling down the arm and onto the page. And do you always know what's going to come out? No. And the extended period of drawing last year, which came about because you so kindly took me to see the archive of your father's sketchbooks at the National Portrait Gallery.

29:59And it was seeing the unfinished sketches that gave me a sense of confidence that I could make a drawing of someone's face and that I might actually make a project of that. and actually seeing those drawings by Freud just of the eyebrow, I was shocked that on some pages in those sketchbooks, they actually looked like a bird. It was just this part of the eyebrow, wasn't it? Yeah. And when I asked you, why do you think that drawing was abandoned? And I think you said to me, well, perhaps it was all that he needed to know for then, for that part. And he'd got from it what he needed and could move on.

30:54I think that gave me the confidence to just leave traces of an encounter. And around the same time, I watched an interview that Jenny Saville gave, where she said, when asked, what are you really doing when you make a portrait? And she said, I'm just leaving the traces of the time that me and this person spent in this place, in this light. And it freed me. I thought, well, if I can just leave traces of the time that I spent with these people in this light, in this room. So I don't know what would come out of my hand. I was nervous though. I was quite scared making the drawings of 50 people who had all come to London having been displaced from their countries of birth in collaboration with the UNHCR last year.

31:54Yeah. I was nervous because I didn't want to offend. I didn't want to make a bad drawing of someone who trusted me to come and to give of their time. I didn't want to make a drawing that they didn't like. And then I read Bacon saying, I would never have my sitter sit opposite me. I would not want them to witness the injury I would visit upon their face. And I resolved that that actually was pretty wise. And for the project I'm doing now, I won't have the sitter in the room. I will do it all from stills of films, from films. Because that keenness to please, I certainly became aware of, which I think was probably not very interesting.

32:47I suppose it's a distraction, isn't it? I mean, sitting for my father was the opposite because he loved to work from a model. And as you pointed out, he would start every painting from this point between the eyes. And so when we'd start a painting or I'd see the beginning of someone else's picture, I would always see this beginning, this focus on that particular area. And in a way it made me, when I'm trying to start anything, I look for the feeling of that. And even with an outfit, and I wondered, in relation to that, like, where do you start with an outfit? I probably start with my hands. Really?

33:41Yeah, I probably start with my hands and rings.