Turning the Questions Back on Bella Freud, Fashion’s Favorite Interlocutor

0:00Getting the girls trip out of the group chat just feels right. The Fort Myers area delivers the memories, bonding, and let's do this every year energy. Start planning at visitfortmyers.com.

0:17This is The Run Through. I'm Nicole Phelps. Today, I'm so happy to be joined by the designer and podcast host, Bella Freud. Bella launched her podcast, Fashion Neurosis, one year ago. She's the great-granddaughter of Sigmund Freud and the daughter of painter Lucien Freud. She's interviewed guests like Rick Owens, Marina Abramovic, and Kate Moss. Her podcast is a must-listen, and not just for fashion people. But that said, she has been in the fashion industry since the age of 16, when she started working with Vivian Westwood, and she's run her own eponymous label since 1990. We talked about why she started the podcast, her love of uniforms, and how the show relates to her work as a designer and a maker.

1:00Welcome, Bella Freud. We're so thrilled to have you on the run-through. Thank you so much, Nicole. I want to do one of your classic moves on you and ask, what are you wearing today and why did you choose it? I'm wearing a denim, what I call a Minnelli shirt, because I do a shirt that has a tie with it. And I have worn this shirt so many times, but it makes me feel good. And also the temperature here is weird. So it's warm and it's not hot. So I'm wearing that with a pair of tailored chalk-striped trousers and some trainers. So I feel safely myself and vaguely sort of put together in my way, which is probably a bit disheveled.

1:52Well, it's a treat for us to see you here in New York. And tell us what the occasion is, what brought you this trip. So I'm here for the Fashion and Psychoanalysts program at FIT, curated by Valerie Steele. And Valerie Steele is an old friend, and so she asked me to be part of it, and they have an exhibition. And so I thought I'd come here for that. I mean, I was invited here for that. And then I've organized some recordings for my Fashion Neurosis podcast the first time I've done it outside of my sitting room at home. Yes. Tell us about how did you choose an alternative space? Well, actually, my son showed me this photograph of a friend of a friend's house.

2:44and it was absolutely beautiful, just this kind of snapshot with books and atmosphere and I thought, I know I could work there. And so I managed to find out who it belonged to and they said yes. And it's perfect, you know, I've just been setting up, moving their furniture around a bit and it just has a mood. I wanted somewhere that had a feeling of intimacy and kind of that drew you in. And it has all that. It's really nice. Well, fashion neurosis definitely does have a sense of intimacy. I think that's one of the reasons why people love it as much as they do. And it explores the connection between fashion, psychology and identity.

3:36It's been launched just over a year, right? You launched it in October of 2024, I think. You have spent many decades designing. You launched your brand in 1990. So can you tell us why, what sparked the idea to do this podcast and why you wanted to pursue it? Well, I knew I always wanted to write something about what happens in fashion because I've never rarely seen things that are true to what does happen in fashion. And normally there's a veneer and that's pretty much the same thing that's repeated. Maybe like Isaac Mizrahi's Unzipped was one of the best things I ever. I mean, it was so fabulous.

4:24All the kind of silliness and all the brilliance and the depth and... The neurosis, for sure. Yes, exactly. And the coincidence. But I wanted to write something that brought in also the loyalties and the sort of the attachments and the friendships within the industry and who does what for whom and who likes who and also the jokes and the code. Because people say these hilarious things and come up with this whole new language. And I thought, no, where do you see that? You know, it's always who's in the front row and so what who's in the front row, you know. And then I just had this hunch that people are more interested in clothes than they know.

5:20But they, and I know why, because I know everyone has so many hang-ups who are in fashion. And we use clothes to kind of manage it and to disguise it and to kind of like coax us into what works for us or them. And so I was trying to figure a way to tell these stories. And I've been messing about with ideas for years. and then I knew it had to be a film thing because I've always been interested in film and I didn't really know about podcasts until someone mentioned it and I wanted to do a chat show and anyway someone said why don't you do a podcast and I'd been playing about with filming setups and stuff and I thought okay I'll do that

6:22And you got Rick Owens for your very first designer conversation. Yeah. I had this dream list that I'd written, you know, invented, you know, before lockdown. And he was always on it. And I just knew that he had all the answers. And then he said yes. and what was so wonderful sort of you know when you're in the middle of an obsession you don't really think why it couldn't happen you're just completely fixed on how it could happen and then when it launched and I knew I wanted to start with him and then I thought god he took such a such a chance with me that it wasn't out you know that nobody had ever heard of it and and he was just so wonderful and I knew he would be like that and he just showed everything that's totally sort of magnetic about the fashion world and sort of strange and unquantifiable and totally and disarmingly beautiful and he's very funny.

7:38Yes, Rebecca Mead in the profile that she did in The New Yorker picked up on how funny and how candid he was, right? Talking about his own hang-ups, as you say. I know. And what I found interesting is when you, you know, especially, I don't know, certainly speaking for myself, I spent so many years not speaking, you know, hiding from my hang-ups. And then finding that having conversations about them, they suddenly sort of don't have the traction that they did. And it's quite funny. And who cares? And we all have them. And, oh, that's your one. And this is my one. And, you know. And that was quite interesting.

8:23Well, listening to the podcast, you've had a lot of people that you've known for many years join you. Think about John Malkovich, who you'd made movies with many years ago, or Rachel Kushner, the author who you befriended. I mean, I loved hearing the story of how you got to be friends with Rachel Kushner. But how did you know, you know, sort of starting out as a designer that, like, I could do this? I just knew I could. I find I'm quite good at that kind of thing. And I wanted to be in a band when I was a teenager and I never really had the confidence. And I feel like I'm now in a band, you know, because I feel strangely unselfconscious in front of a camera, you know, just talking.

9:21I think if I've got a subject, I feel at ease and I don't really notice any of that. And I just, that was never the thing that worried me. And it's kind of exciting to find out how to do something you don't really know. Like I knew how I wanted it to look. I knew lighting was very important. And so I have a great cameraman And I just said, look, make me look better. How did you, why did I look better in that episode than, you know, something that's, you know, just really an ordinary question. I learned technically how that happened. And then I can offer that to my guests. I want everyone to be happy with how they see themselves.

10:16It's, you know, it's no joke. Right. So for the people who maybe haven't seen the video version of your podcast, your subjects are lying down. And the camera, how close is it to their face? Because they're sort of staring right into the camera. It's probably about four feet above their head. It's pretty, yeah. And does that intimidate any of them? I mean, it's a lot of famous people, a lot of people who have been on camera, you know, throughout their lives. But I wonder if that kind of intimacy of looking into the camera. I've thought a lot about this knowing you were coming here because for me, I'm new to podcasts, too.

10:54And I find that eye contact and looking at a person's expression is so helpful as you're trying to shape a conversation. But you're not necessarily looking directly at the people you're speaking to. And they, you know, they're lying down on your couch. And so they're looking at the camera. How do you think that the setup sort of plays into what you're doing? It plays in more than I sort of planned. Because I thought, when I was playing around with ideas before lockdown, I was working with a friend, a filmmaker, and he said, you need some props. And I thought, okay, they can lie on the couch, I'll be in a chair.

11:37And I thought, you know what? someone's going to do this and if it's not me I'll be so annoyed that I had all false modesty about using Sigmund Freud style thing and then I thought I want an overhead camera to see almost into their thought process and I thought it would look really good to see people's eyes kind of just, you know, with ideas going around before they even come out of their mouths. And then this thing happened. In fact, it was Jonathan Anderson who said, I don't have any cues from you. It's really strange to not be able to get any signals watching your eyes or mouth. And I thought, oh, I hadn't really thought about what it was.

12:29But something seems to happen. people lying down and I watch them and I watch them looking up and it's like I'm I'm sort of being the guardian of this interaction and then sometimes I find myself saying things that I had no plans to but there's a sort of freedom because of the no cues that I had no idea about

13:03More with Bella Freud after the break.

13:17Hi, I'm Rebecca Ford, senior awards correspondent at Vanity Fair and co-host of Little Gold Men. Oscar season is upon us. Little Gold Men takes you behind the scenes of the race for the biggest prize in Hollywood. There's a hundred wrestlers in the room, but only one can be Oscar nominated. Whether you're a movie lover or an industry buff, Little Gold Men from Vanity Fair has everything you need to know about this year's Oscar race. Follow and listen to Little Gold Men wherever you get your podcasts.

13:53So you've been talking to people about their fashion neuroses for a year now. And I wondered if you could talk about threads that you feel like have started emerging. I suppose it's interesting the sort of early moments in people's lives and hearing those kind of flickers of identity which are so strong when you're a child and you're fixed about why you need or want something and why that should be the case. or even if there is something and who is the object of, you know, who you first see that never leaves you. And that's interesting how powerful that is, this sort of childhood consolidating of you don't really know it then, you just know you have this kind of chronic desire for something.

15:02But it's not a kind of materialistic thing. It's something to do with feeling your own, like yourself, you're making yourself. And that's always interesting. And, you know, who gives it to you or where it comes from and how, where you get your, who kind of helps you through your evolution into childhood to adulthood and did you get that or did you not? How did you use clothes as part of that sort of mountain climbing thing where you're going through trying to navigate all your insecurities? I mean, I'm just going on the assumption that everyone is. When I was talking to Ez Devlin, who's the most sort of creative person practically I've ever met, and I kept trying to project all my own like, you know, darkness, and she just didn't have it, you know.

16:09And we had quite similar upbringings, except for she had sort of confirmation where mine was missing. and it was really interesting. Well, let's talk about your own upbringing and your connections between fashion and identity. How old were you when you think you sort of became aware of fashion and how did it happen? Well, fashion seemed, when I was a child, something that was very, very remote. but I was aware that my mother dressed differently from her peers. You know, she was a hippie and she didn't wear makeup. You know, and other parents when I got to school had, you know, kind of outfits.

17:00Some of them did and makeup. And my mother was, you know, she was really young and really beautiful but she attracted attention in a way that was, it was kind of difficult because we also didn't have any money so we got negative attention. And also, you know, she just was completely, did her own thing and looked, she looked great but now people when someone looks great, they're very appreciative. But in those days, people were really sort of angry in a funny way. And so I had a kind of mixed feeling like fashion. I mean, weirdly, I think the first time I really noticed fashion was watching The Thunderbirds on.

17:55There was a series called The Thunderbirds, which was a cartoon or stop motion. and there was a very chic woman called Lady Penelope who had a chauffeur called Parker and he'd always go, yes, my lady. And she would wear these amazing outfits like what I imagined couture would be and she had a hat and everything and then she was like a spy and always, you know, doing, putting the world to right in this very kind of, you know, front row couture way. so my fashion came through kind of weird roots really and and then the first real fashion show I saw my sort of godmother figure she she took me to this show and it was um a Mr.

18:48Chow's I must have been about 13 I was really I can't remember how old I was and And these guys, you know, I'd never seen anything like it. You know, this celebration of ravishing sexiness and these amazing black models. And what was the designer? Do you remember that? It was this man called Michael Rainey. And it was way back in the 70s. And he had, there was Granny Takes a Trip and Hung On You. And it was something to do with that. and it was like my mind was blown but it seemed nowhere I could go and it was much later that it was more when punk was really where I suddenly felt like oh my god this is for me I can enter into something and because I had the good fortune to work for Vivian Westwood I saw that she brought all this elegance to it and by that time you know I'd started watching like Bunuel films and French films with all these amazing looks and it was somewhere between extreme elegance and a school uniform and I felt like I was fat beginning to find my tiny little niche place.

20:13So you were a teenager right When you got a job at Seditionary's, which is this sort of legendary, now legendary store owned by Vivian Westwood and Malcolm McLaren, right? Can you paint a picture of what it was like to be like a kid in that environment? Well, yeah, it was great. It was great. I mean, it was tense because I'd lived in the country and I came to London and then got in with these such cool kind of sneering, you know, dismissive people. So I was worried about saying the wrong thing and like being gauche, but I was gauche. So I just had to kind of, you know, it was a real education.

21:02and it was the antithesis of what, you know, marketing, you know, we'd stand there at the end of the room and to come into the shop, it was like an oblong with this kind of neon light, bluey neon light and there we'd be at the end, you know, just so unfriendly. But people would still come in. Sometimes they'd come in, yes. And it was then quite exciting when they did because then we sort of turned into, you know, just teenagers who were trying to sell things. But if you were gauche, I mean, how did, why did they want you? I find it hard to believe that you were gauche. I was so, what they used to call green.

21:47I mean, I didn't know anything, you know, but the clothes just gave you this guise, and it was, it really struck me how, what clothes could do for you. So I moved to London and I left home when I was 16 and I didn't know anything much. And I found that if I put these clothes on, people were afraid of me and no one had been afraid of me. and I thought, this is great, you know. I don't want to abuse this kind of frightening thing at all, but I saw that clothes had power, and that was really interesting, and I noticed who I was drawn to and what they were wearing and how this whole sort of background of trying to be anonymous or the idea of that, was a bad idea, really, and how it could kind of give you courage.

22:52You could be really afraid, and in this kind of, these scary clothes, and you could get from A to B like that, and then be part of a tribe. I mean, a very exacting tribe. You messed up, and it was like, And, oh, she's so naff, you know. But it's all part of it, really. So you do this for a couple of years, and then you move to Rome to study fashion. Is that right? Yeah. I moved to Rome, and I was interested in uniforms and, like, the code. And in Rome, everyone was really snobbish. It was all about, do you have four buttonholes on your jacket, and do they undo? and all these kind of micro things, which I found incredibly interesting.

23:47And at that time, people didn't really, it was very, you know, there was the sort of aristocracy and then working people. And I spent, I started to find people who had, like I made friends with this shoemaker who'd worked with Ferragamo and just used to go and hang out in his little room. It was just him. And I learned a bit about how to make shoes and I made some shoes and then there was tailors there. And I met this woman who had a knitting machine on the top of a tower block. And so I just started making things. And then I reconnected with Vivian when I lived in Rome because she was living somewhere in Italy and she came to stay with me.

24:37and I was making, I was living with this man and he was friends with Keith Richards and Keith Richards had come to town and I'd shown my drawings, I don't know where I got the courage and he went, oh maybe we'll get that coat together one day and I was like, yes, okay, I'll come to Paris and he was recording The Stones in Paris And I went to Paris with this girl who was really, really good at sewing. And we used to go and hang out in the studio until two in the morning when we could do a fitting. So Keith Richards was one of your first clients? Yeah. That's a pretty high bar to start from. Are you still a teenager or are you even in your 20s by now?

25:27Yes, I was in my early 20s. Yes. Yeah. So what was it like to work for Vivian in those years? It was fantastic because I learned everything from her. And it was a very, it was a difficult time in her life because her and Malcolm had split up. And Malcolm had really tried to destroy her. And she was working alone. And so I started working for her. and I really learned everything from her and she was both patient and exasperated by me because, you know, I was both, you know, useful and exasperating and so I did all the different jobs and I just learned really that you never give up and also I learned to, if I didn't understand an idea, to just keep looking until I got it Because often she would make things and they would seem I couldn't, didn't get it.

26:32And then I did get it after a while. So you used that resourcefulness then to launch your own brand, right? Around 1990. Yeah. I just thought if I don't do something immediately, maybe I'll never work again. Maybe I'll just won't do it. So I went straight into making knitwear and accessories and that was it. I just never stopped. Every difficulty that arose, I just went on. And, you know, sometimes it's been big, sometimes small. But the thing that's important is to keep going. And, you know, here I am in 2025. Yes.

27:20We'll be right back with Bella Freud.

27:46Artificial Intelligence, Jeffrey Hinton, or some of my extraordinarily well-informed colleagues at The New Yorker. So join us every week on The New Yorker Radio Hour, wherever you listen to podcasts.

28:02In our research, we discovered an August 1993 British Vogue cover with Carla Bruni. That is wonderful. And she is wearing, it's a pink dress. It looks like velvet to me. Yeah. And a shawl. So what was that moment like to see your work on a magazine cover? Yeah, that was fantastic. And, you know, in those days especially, it was such a big deal. I mean, it still is, but everything, you know, there's so much imagery everywhere now, whereas those things, you know. We waited for the magazines to come out, right? We knew what day they were going to hit the newsstand or come to the mailbox. Yeah, that was really, and that someone decided it was going to be you.

28:51You know, I think it was Alex Schulman who was the editor and, you know, she decided that was going to be the cover and, yeah, it makes you feel like embedded in this family of all the different workers in fashion, everyone who, you know, designers and models and makeup artists and lawyers, everyone. You know, there are so many kind of key people who are the glue of our industry. When I look at this cover, it's not the sort of Bella Freud that I first knew. I got into fashion in sort of the mid to late 90s. And I think by that time you had sort of launched your very iconic 1970s sweater. Do you remember?

29:39Yeah. Because I... What year was that? Well, I think it was 2010. Oh, okay. So maybe I'm way off. But then, yeah, because I launched in 2000. I did Ginsberg is God. Yes. And then 1970 came a bit later. But it was, again, like I just had no money. And then I made Ginsberg. I made a film, yeah, because it was when I'd made my last short film with John Malkovich and it was all about the fans of this beatnik poet and Ginsberg is God was like the kind of merged jumper. And then Kate Moss wore it and suddenly it was a thing. And then afterwards I think I'd had like, I'd suddenly left. I had a consultancy and things had been like somewhere and suddenly they were nowhere.

30:48And I bumped into this journalist called Justine Picardy and she said, what are you doing? What are you up to? And I said, I've got a new collection. It's one piece. And I was about to say, oh, you know. And then I thought, okay, try this. and she said, that's fantastic, let me write about it. It was a bit like being in a surrealist film. But in a way, fashion can be like that. As long as you can keep going, even if it is one piece, it is part of the continuity, it's part of the story. And then suddenly it was like a new way of, I felt like I got into my stride in a new way. Like when I'd started, I'd done all the things that were in my head.

31:40These kind of like sort of punk rock versions of Coco Chanel, you know, these mini dresses with white collars and cuffs. And then these like chic pale blue suits with everything was really short. I wanted it to be like someone had come with scissors in the night and just chopped, had an Edwardian silhouette and just. you know, just chopped off all the length. I love legs. I just wanted to show those legs. And then this time round, it was, the words came out. And I've always been interested in the aesthetics of protest and also the power of language and how you can distill it and make it kind of go in.

32:34and so then I started doing word sweaters and finding words that just had a meaning outside of not a kind of directive but that they could mean any you know they could just float there and the person could seize them and make them theirs. Right so the 1970s sweater it had no real meaning to you before you actually found the graphic, right? You stumbled on it and you liked it? I liked it and my sort of theme for the collection, which was four pieces, I think, was there was a model agency called English Boy. I think it was in the late 60s and it was part of this group of aristocratic hippies. and I sort of had this idea of like these cool guys like messy and they would wear their girlfriends tight jackets and in the way that Keith Richards wore Anita's clothes and she would be like try this and wear that and David Bowie this kind of shrunken silhouette and this kind of wearing things because they look good rather than whether they were for boys or girls.