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- [00:01]
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- [00:30]
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- [01:09]
Devlin
Hi, come in. Welcome to Fashion Neurosis. As Devlin hello. Can you tell me what you're wearing today and why you chose these particular clothes?
- [01:26]
EZ
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 gonna get a number of these and just wear them every day. And. And I have a yellow T shirt that comes from Pangaya and I have 20 of these yellow T shirts. Wow. And I wear them most days. And then I have this really nice yellow cardigan that my husband Jack bought me. I've only got one of it, so I haven't washed it yet. It's. 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.
- [02:36]
Devlin
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.
- [02:48]
EZ
Actually on my bike.
- [02:50]
Devlin
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?
- [03:14]
EZ
I don't think I'm restless. I think I'm curious and voraciously appetited. And 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.
- [03:43]
Devlin
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?
- [04:06]
EZ
Such a great question. I was the second of four children, so I wore everything that my sister had finished wearing. And 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 Ms. 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. And 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. The abiding alter ego of sort of child warrior or something.
- [05:36]
Devlin
Yeah, I had a very similar child warrior and spent a lot of time on my own on the Ashdown Forest. It was wild in. You could really get close to the trees and the feeling of all the spirit of nature.
- [05:54]
EZ
When we were, I guess, 13, there was a teacher called Chris Thomas at the school I went to, and 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 Bedgberry 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. Wow. And that had such an important and profound effect on. On me, I think.
- [07:03]
Devlin
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. 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 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?
- [07:49]
EZ
Oh, such a good question. I 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 Yukiyoi, 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 place 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. And 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. 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. And Timeout back then, Timeout used to list the jumble sales.
- [09:08]
Devlin
Oh, my.
- [09:09]
EZ
And you could look up a jumble sale and. Because we were, you know, feral country children. Yeah. 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 pounds 50 to spend in the afternoon. So 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. Neigh. 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, add my little elbows out, getting stuck. 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. I 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 COVID So we bought this book, and when I got home, I opened it up and it was all Japanese erotic art. And my mum 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. And I just went straight over the plug with a. Someone's head. I didn't care. Went straight over the door, over the, you know, 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. So I guess something in that being, 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. Yeah.
- [11:47]
Devlin
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.
- [12:04]
EZ
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.
- [12:23]
Devlin
No.
- [12:24]
EZ
And they just drawn great big cogs all over it. Oh, my God. But do you know what? I didn't really fucking care. I just painted over them, carried the fuck on. Sorry, that's probably not meant to be swearing on this cat.
- [12:35]
Devlin
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. And 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 put it in my bathroom. So.
- [13:07]
EZ
Well, this was all, you know, 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.
- [13:20]
Devlin
And you describe 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.
- [13:38]
EZ
I 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. I mean, I worked, but I didn't know what I wanted to do. I worked in a bookshop. I worked at Foyle's bookshop. I was the wages clerk. I can't remember for quite a long time. I paid everyone's wages, even the boss of Foyles. Really everyone got paid in a small brown envelope.
- [14:47]
Devlin
Oh.
- [14:48]
EZ
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. And 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. It wasn't until I was 22 that I did a stage design.
- [15:51]
Devlin
Wow.
- [15:52]
EZ
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 theatre 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 a extraordinary energy to it. So I. I did the course because I wanted to be in that room.
- [16:14]
Devlin
Yeah.
- [16:14]
EZ
That was the only reason.
- [16:16]
Devlin
I know it sounded a bit like going to. Walking into a restaurant cafe and thinking, yes, I'm at home here and I could eat here. I can have a good feeling about myself.
- [16:29]
EZ
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. 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. I 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. 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. 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.
- [17:30]
Devlin
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.
- [17:49]
EZ
I 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 gonna 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. 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 Ghesquiere at Louis Vuitton in 2015. And 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 Nicolas Escia wearing June shoes. I said, well, the only shoes I've got. And he went up to the cupboard and he found these literally 1 pound karate shoes. Like with the brown plastic sole.
- [19:27]
Devlin
Oh, yeah.
- [19:28]
EZ
And the black canvas upper. And they had. I think I bought them from like Pearl river or something that. Or anyway, you know, Chinese karate shoes.
- [19:37]
Devlin
I love those.
- [19:38]
EZ
He said, you'd be better off wearing those. I said, okay, I'll wear those.
- [19:42]
Devlin
So clever. He's so right.
- [19:46]
EZ
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, 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 Nicolas Esquier and he said, oh, I just want to ask you about working with ez. And Nicola said, yes, it was extraordinary. She came to meet me and she was wearing these $1 karate shoes. It's the first thing he said.
- [20:28]
Devlin
So funny.
- [20:31]
EZ
So, yeah, I should make more effort. 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. I think for now I'm somewhat in that phase where anything to do with food or clothing, I try to, you know, limit choices, eat the same thing and wear the same thing. I know it's a bit boring.
- [21:04]
Devlin
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 Nicolas Cheskier noticing that, obviously with admiration, is so. It's fascinating. And hats. You mentioned hats.
- [21:30]
EZ
Oh, yeah. I went through a hat phase. My daughter says to me, she said, I missed that year's mum.
- [21:38]
Devlin
That's so sweet.
- [21:40]
EZ
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. It might hang around for ages. I was like, I'll put a hat on. So. But then my mum said, as you can't keep wearing. That looks pretentious.
- [22:10]
Devlin
Oh, really? Gosh. So your mum's quite sort of on your case.
- [22:16]
EZ
She was about the hat. She said, the hat years are done. I still do wear the hat occasionally. I certainly wear a hat and, you know, 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.
- [22:53]
Devlin
Oh, that would be good. Yeah.
- [22:56]
EZ
I, 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, you know, 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.
- [23:40]
Devlin
And 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?
- [23:54]
EZ
I think it comes from joy. Each. 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. Used to be 20 minutes, I've just upgraded it to half an hour. So now I set the alarm at 7 and I don't have to get up till 7:30. And 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 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. 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. So 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. And 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. It's as simple as that.
- [27:20]
Devlin
So good.
- [27:21]
EZ
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. And 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.
- [28:30]
Devlin
And you talk a lot about drawing and 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?
- [28:45]
EZ
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. And 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. 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?
- [29:36]
Devlin
Yeah.
- [29:37]
EZ
And when I asked you, why do you think that drawing was abandoned? I think you said to me, well, perhaps it was all that he needed to know for then, for that part, and he got from it what he needed and could move on. I 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. 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 didn't know what would come out of my hand. Yeah, 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. Yeah, I was nervous because I. 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, that keenness to please I certainly became aware of which I think was probably not very interesting.
- [31:50]
Devlin
Well, I 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?
- [32:39]
EZ
I probably start with my hands.
- [32:41]
Devlin
Really?
- [32:45]
EZ
Yeah, I probably start with my hands and rings. I really like wearing rings and I have quite a lot of them. I do lose them quite a lot or I break them. Yeah, I break them quite a lot because I do a lot of clapping. So I have beautiful rings that are broken from too much clack. That's kind of nice then. Yeah. I guess the next point would be color. And you know, there are certain days I can wear pink. I really like pink, but they're quite soft days. I guess what I do when I'm getting up in the morning, deciding what to wear, I map through the whole day in my mind and it's. I'm normally cycling, so if there's to be some kind of event at the end of a day where, where I have to look kind of smart, it's a kind of piece of mathematics in my mind. How can I go around all day on my bike and then look smart enough to not offend anyone?
- [34:02]
Devlin
Do you have extra, I mean, do you bring a pair of shoes to change into? Do you ever do that?
- [34:08]
EZ
I've only got kind of these shoes. I've got like 10 pairs of these shoes but they're all slightly different. But they're all Converse, lace up boots. And the other shoes I'VE got are Crocs. So the other day when the UNHCR said, you're going to meet the High Commissioner from the union, and we're going to meet at this club where you have to, like, you won't be allowed in the door if you're wearing trainers and if you're not wearing business attire. And they knew me quite well, these UNHCR peeps, and they said, you know, we'll bring something for you because we know you're going to mess with. But I really made an effort. I wore, you know, my McQueen jacket, these new black trousers, and I brought. In the end, they didn't make me change my shoes, but I did bring a pair of boots, some. I think they might be back. I don't know, they might be a Louis Vuitton boot that I've got. But, yeah, I'm up through the day and then what I love doing is when I get home, I take everything off that I've been wearing and put on my painting gear, which is just covered in paint. And it's an old pair of blue. Sorry, Topshop again, an old pair of blue Topshop kind of tracksuit bottoms, a random denim shirt that's covered in paint and Crocs, and that's it. That once I've put that on, that means I'm in my studio and I might paint or I might not paint. I might just clean some brushes, but I know that I am allowed to be completely filthy.
- [35:42]
Devlin
Yeah. And you talked a lot about the film Orfe, the Jean Cocteau film, which is also one of my favorite films, and that moment where he goes through the mirror. And that's always. I'm always looking for the moment to go through the mirror. The progression of, I suppose, going through the fear mirror, mostly. And I loved how you talked about that and how a void is something to be filled with art. And, I mean, my questions are often tinged with kind of melancholy, which doesn't seem to apply to you at all. So I was going to ask, is there anything that's evaded you, but I feel like nothing is evading you.
- [36:28]
EZ
So.
- [36:31]
Devlin
Is there a feeling of anything that you want to find going through the mirror?
- [36:37]
EZ
It's funny, I have a dear friend called Robert Chavara who's an opera director, and I remember he said, oh, can you just stop being cheery heirs for a minute?
- [36:49]
Devlin
I wouldn't say that.
- [36:51]
EZ
You're cheery and magnificent. And I guess I really value that image that Cocteau made for us. And I refer to it Most days, I would guess in some way and in most work that I've made this aspect of creating an architecture and putting all one's love and energy into making the architecture and then realizing that the real truth of the next step is to break it and to disrupt it and to move to the next piece of architecture that you need to make. Yeah. To gain understanding. And I think what's so beautiful about the gesture we're talking about is it's also fraught with so many layers of illusion in that you need to believe that a sheet of glass mirror is solid. You need to all agree to believe that all of the laws of gravity will apply and the laws of physics will apply to this solid sheet of glass mirror. Everybody needs together to commit to that collective piece of agreed truth, greed, shared understanding. And then the minute. The minute that the actor's hand touches the glass and it shimmers and we realize it's water, immediately in the space of a split second, every single viewer has now all agreed to believe the opposite is true, that now this thing is not glass, now this thing is water. And now it will behave like water behaves. And this immediacy of pivot collectively is what I kind of live for, I guess, in that when you sit as an audience and whether you are in a tiny theater or a fashion show or a stadium or an art gallery, you sense to a fraction of a second the moment where everybody changes their mind.
- [39:19]
Devlin
Yeah. God, that's so interesting.
- [39:21]
EZ
And if we can all change our mind together about a thing like whether something's made of glass or water and whether the rules of physics apply in this way or that way, whether the earth is sitting in a vertical or horizontal plane in relation to the viewer. If we can all agree to change our mind that quickly, to me, that leads me to the possibility that we can all agree to change our mind about what quality of attention we're paying to the planet and to the world.
- [39:52]
Devlin
God, I didn't ever realize or I never thought of that moment in Orfeh as it turning to water. I just thought it's the power of will that if you go towards something with the expectation that it won't stop you, somehow you can go through it. So next time I watch it, my expectation will be completely different. And in fact, there was something in particular that you did when you did the set for the Saint Laurent Menswear in the Moroccan desert. And I remember it's always exciting when this, you know, fashion weeks and things, seeing what's what, and then watching Online. What happened during this show with the set you made? And it was just the most. It was one of those moments that you just described that somehow this orb that came out of the earth with this kind of atmospheric intensity and it was somewhere. It was almost like space age and prehistoric. I mean, I just fell madly in love with that and became obsessively interested in everything you do and how you approach it. And there's something in particular about how you work with fashion because a lot of directors get sidetracked by fashion and you always remember to tell a story. What do you kind of look to access yourself when you're working with fashion in particular?
- [41:31]
EZ
I mean, this object coming out of the water in the desert, this was a miracle, I have to say, and I can't take credit for it. I had drawn this shape and I had drawn it sitting at this angle above water with my colleague in my studio and I had drawn it in various stages and we said, wouldn't it be extraordinary if it could come up? But we didn't think it was possible. We didn't think anyone would be able to pull off this. It was barely touching the ground, this thing. It was hinged at a point that was literally about 30 centimeters wide. I mean this hinge was nothing to lift up this 12 meter diameter object. And it was actually Anthony Vaccarello who just said, oh no, it has to do that. This would be the whole point. It has to lift up like this has to. And I was like, okay, well let's see if this amazing agency can pull it off. Verobatek, pull that off. I have to say the engineers there and they had no time. I mean, I think the drawing of that and Anthony saying it must do this was about three weeks before it actually happened. And they made the engineering work and they were also really careful about the water because it's. It was such a sensitive thing to do that there a really parched place. So they were really careful. They found an olive farmer. All the water went to them to water the olives. You know, it was carefully considered. But in terms of your point about the story and, and oneself in fashion, I really didn't understand it. Going from, you know, showing up with little karate shoes to actually doing the first fashion show which was in the basement of the newly built Fondation Louis Vuitton in24 October 2014 I think it was. And I didn't understand the question, but I was like, but what's the text? I had always worked with the text. There was a play script, or there were song lyrics or an operetto or there was an idea, there was a book that I'd read or something. But I had never worked without a text. And it wasn't even that the clothes were the text because I didn't see the clothes, you know, I hadn't seen the collection.
- [44:00]
Devlin
Gosh. Really?
- [44:01]
EZ
So the text of that first show was an extraordinary photograph, or even might be a lithograph of light shafts pouring in at Grand Central Station. Shafts of light coming through high windows. And it was that one image. Nicolas gave that to me and said, that's the show and we're in a basement of this brand new building that doesn't even exist yet. That we went round it in hard hats, that Frank Gehry was making this kind of billowing ship made of glass in the forest of the Bois de Blogne. It turned out that that basement space was actually very low in the end. It had been created, I think really to make fashion shows, but it was actually quite a low space. Once you'd put all the rigging in for the lights. I just felt the space needed some medicine and the medicine would be a lot of mirrors. And we stretched mirror over LED screen, which I hadn't done before. I don't know if anyone else had.
- [45:07]
Lifelock Sponsor
Wow.
- [45:07]
EZ
And if you do that, if you put two way mirror over LED a telly, basically wherever it's black, the mirror will continue to behave like a mirror. So you'll see yourself wherever you put image. The image will win over the mirror.
- [45:27]
Devlin
Yeah.
- [45:27]
EZ
And you'll see the image. So when we had big films of faces, they seemed to be suspended in midair because everywhere that wasn't face seemed like a continuation of the space. So it looked like the faces were hanging in midair. And then we had these shafts of light. So the text, actually there was a text which Nicolas wrote about his taking over of Vito at that time. He quoted from the beginning of June. And I think the line went, the beginning is a very delicate time. So he was speaking of delicacy under the weight of this building.
- [46:08]
Devlin
Gosh.
- [46:09]
EZ
We then moved out of the building and started making work almost like an observatory at the side of the Fondation Louis Vuitton. We were at the side of it, sort of running a parallel course to it. And then we made a show in Palm Springs at the John Lautner Bob Hope house. And I remember saying to Nicola, who. Who is the girl? Who's the person? Because I thought that would help me understand what the story was. And he was able to describe precisely to me. He said, well, this is what she does in the morning. She walks out of this house, she walks upstairs, she's got a telescope, she looks through the telescope, she makes notes, she comes downstairs, she goes for a swim in this lake. And he gave me the whole script of this person. And that's when I began to understand that this little miniature, for me it seemed 12 minute haiku of an art form of a fashion show is actually a three act opera condensed into 12 minutes. And that the 50 or so looks to me started to feel like overlaid sketches of one person seen through 50 different lenses or a kind of unfolding train of thought. Like one of those et al. Adnan unfolding books. Yes, that it's one train of thought that leads to the next, that leads to the next. And that these looks, women that emerge in these looks, are actually an expression of an unfolding conversational train of thought. And that helped me understand what the text was of this event. That can only happen once. Yeah, this reveal.
- [47:52]
Devlin
Gosh, that's so interesting. I mean you really get clothes and I wondered if you fancy someone and they're wearing something that you don't like, does it kill your attraction?
- [48:07]
EZ
Yeah, I have to make alterations like give them something better or undo the top button or you know, change the parting or whatever it is. Yeah, you know, a little bit guidance.
- [48:22]
Devlin
Yes, it is very disturbing. And when it happens, I must say, because it's like that person suddenly becomes someone else and it's like being stuck in a repeat, like a record that has a scratch on it, just keeps going over and over again until something can be adjusted.
- [48:42]
EZ
It's really important though, because those ticks that irritate you, I think they're probably about a clash of geometry or a clash of line. I think it's all about, you know, what one, what someone considers to be a good line and someone else to find abhorrent. This line is just offensive. So if there's a garment or a look that you finding, you know, angular, obtrusive, offensive in someone else, it's probably a symptom of a person's attitude towards agency, control, all of those things probably. And then it's a case of how much you want to accept as a difference and other. And I think as I've grown older, I'm so much more accepting and loving of otherness than I was when I was younger. I was much scared of otherness. And now when someone wears something that I really would never choose, or if someone has an idea in a collaboration and says, why don't we do it like this? And I think it's the worst idea in the world. I am now interested in it because it's not my idea. Yeah, because it's different. Because it's an other point of view. And I. As. The older I get, the more I love something that's unexpected and other to me. And I know I will grow and learn if I run with that horrible choice of clothing. And even when someone gives me something to wear and I think it looks really horrible, I sometimes go, okay, cool. You know, let's do this. You know, I trust you. Let's do it. Let's, you know, just to learn, just to grow, to not be scared.
- [50:23]
Devlin
I think I'm always afraid of it. I want that person to be. I want to be able to like them. So I don't want anything to interfere with that. And it panics me so much if someone I do like, especially romantically, wears something I find really unattractive. And I have to do all these sums internally to just kind of place them. My dislike or my kind of shock or my panic at really, is this going to change everything? I mean, it sounds an extreme reaction, but like you, I find the more aware I am of where all these weird reactions come from, the more unthreatened I am by them. And I can allow. And like you, I agree. I want to love more. And that's part of it, overcoming those kind of, you know, those disturbances. And when you were talking about congregation, the installation with all the 50 different drawings you did of refugee community, and you have an innate. You have this glamour that you make everyone part of. And whether it's a refugee community or a Harold Pinter play or Beyonce, and it brings so much dignity to everyone involved and so much energetic force. And where does that vision stem from?
- [52:07]
EZ
Such a beautiful question. And I want to just finish saying one last thing about the last question as well, if I may, because your concern about what someone's wearing and how that could actually be fatal for the possibility of a connection I feel about place. So if somebody thinks that a certain lighting condition in a room is good when I know it, for me it's not. That would be, I think, a parallel to what you experience. You know, for me, the room is the garment. In answer to the second question about dignity, it's a word I. I consider a lot the older I get as well. And force of energy and dignity are. I mean, it's really interesting you chose those two words because they are probably the reason for me doing most things, it's interesting, I'm often. My instinct is to involve many, many people. This sense of wanting to involve many rather than do things alone and wanting then to question, you know, what then is the status of the many who are involved and knowing that the work won't have any resonance or value unless every person involved. Yeah. Is involved with a sense of dignity in their involvement. If I break it down, I went with you to the National Portrait Gallery. I saw these portraits. I happened that day to be on my bike going to meet the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, UK group.
- [53:51]
Devlin
I remember very well.
- [53:53]
EZ
And I didn't have a plan. I just knew that those two things were on the same day, had no plan. I had set up the meeting to try and force myself to have an idea because we'd done a zoom, we'd done another zoom and they had said, will you do something? And I said, yes, but I didn't have an idea at all. So I thought, if I do a meeting, maybe I'll have an idea. And I was on my bike cycling from the National Portrait Gallery along The Strand, past St. Meredith Strand Church, on my way to Moorgate, which is where their office is. And I didn't think about the church, I just cycled past it. And by the time I got to Moorgate, I found myself observing the words come out of my mouth saying, why don't I make 50 portraits?
- [54:43]
Devlin
Amazing.
- [54:44]
EZ
And only because of association. Just allowing space to let an association in the mind form, which I think is so much of our work, isn't it? Yeah, it's just allowing space for an association to happen. And then the complication of what will this community of strangers to me be in this work? And of course, how would they retain their dignity? How will their dignity be actually increased by partaking of this work. They can't be muses or subjects. That doesn't feel correct. But could they be co authors? And how could they be co authors? So all of those questions started to be asked in my head and, you know, choices of asking each person to hold an empty box and to consider what their gift was in. It only came about because, having said, let's do portraits, the next question was where to do the work. And probably because I'd cycled past the church, it had cemented itself even further in my mind than it. It already was. And I sat in it. I managed to go to the church for a concert in January and I thought while I was sitting in there of the May the Magi the three kings bringing gold, frankincense and myrrh. And again, thinking about the word dignity, I didn't like instinctively, I didn't like the word refugee. Yeah. So I wondered if we could use the phrase bringers of gifts and ask the person to co author that gift. So all that is is a little story of association. Yeah, I think that's what it's about.
- [56:31]
Devlin
It's so good because dignity comes when we all have it, you know, you can't bestow it on anybody. And I loved that installation. I went a few times and just the way everything. You included everything, the music and the different things that happened. And also it was so lovely to. I was thinking how I somehow wanted you to be in my life. And I then had this appointment to go to the archives and I'd made it months ahead and then I thought, yes, I can invite you, we could go together. And it just felt like something that, you know, to make a plan of, something like you described, not really knowing where it would lead to, but that was the going through the mirror moment of having this germination of something. And then you went on to make portraits. And I wondered if you ever make self portraits.
- [57:32]
EZ
I do. I did especially in preparation for that work because I was nervous that I would not be able to draw. I mean, I draw a lot, but I hadn't done a portrait probably for like 10 years in the lead up to the first portrait of this community of people who've made London their home. I practiced first on myself. And I had those sketchbooks of your father in my mind. And I knew that I wanted to because I think I gasped. I probably did it quietly so you wouldn't hear. But there was one moment where the conservator, the curator was turning the page and it felt like light had been caught between the pages. I think it was chalk on a mid ground white pastel bodying forth. It was like a cheek bodied forth from the page. It was like the Turin shroud. It was as if the light of that person had been caught in those pages. And that's what I wanted to capture the light.
- [58:38]
Devlin
Yeah.
- [58:38]
EZ
And so I practiced on myself. I had these different. Actually my eyesight's not that great these days after many bright lights and lots of computer and close work. So I bought this magnifying mirror, enlarged my face massively so I could see. One eye was giant. And I thought I might do these portraits huge in the first place. So I put a piece of paper on my wall that was probably about 2 meters by 3 meters or something. I made this massive portrait of myself, but I couldn't ever see one bit at the same time as the other bit in this magnifying mirror. So all the bits are kind of contorted.
- [59:21]
Devlin
God.
- [59:22]
EZ
And then I made a smaller one, and then I made a medium sized one. So I did three rehearsals on myself, and I had them on the wall the whole time. They got more and more myself. It was quite interesting. Myself got more effaced by these new portraits. So by the end, I was hidden. I was just peering through and I actually had them. When I showed all the portraits at Somerset House, I put those self portraits up.
- [59:46]
Devlin
Well, it was the most wonderful thing, and it's been wonderful talking to you today. And thank you so much. As for coming on Fashion Neurosis, it.
- [59:55]
EZ
Was such a pleasure. Thank you so much for having me sa.