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1:17

Hi, this is Imran Ahmed, founder and

1:19

CEO of The Business of Fashion. Welcome

1:21

to the BOF Podcast. It's Friday,

1:24

November 17th. In the world

1:26

of set design, Es Devlin is a

1:28

trailblazing, unstoppable force.

1:31

Her remarkable career has seen her craft stages

1:33

for global superstars like Beyoncé,

1:36

U2, and Adele, as

1:38

well as immersive experiences for fashion

1:41

brands like Louis Vuitton, Saint Laurent,

1:43

and most recently Gucci, which

1:45

brought its Cosmos exhibition to

1:47

London's 180

1:47

The Strand. But

1:50

to describe Es as a set designer only

1:52

feels somewhat reductive. She

1:55

is a deep thinker who approaches

1:57

her work like a creative philosopher.

1:59

examining critical questions about the world

2:02

through her work. Every

2:04

day when I collaborate, the

2:07

practice is to see

2:10

it through my own eyes, then see it through

2:12

my collaborators eyes, then finally

2:14

to see it through the

2:15

audience's eyes, and then

2:17

building on all of those

2:18

converging

2:20

and colliding sometimes viewpoints,

2:23

then do it again with another

2:25

layer

2:25

of viewpoints and you're constantly building

2:28

up this kaleidoscopic lens

2:31

of learning. I'm pleased to share

2:33

this mesmerizing conversation filled

2:36

with beautiful insights and observations

2:38

from one of the world's most talented creatives.

2:41

Here's Az Devlin on the BOF

2:44

podcast.

2:46

Well we have just been trying to perfect

2:49

sound for the last 40 minutes

2:52

because there's two perfectionists on

2:54

this. It turns out that me and Imran are

2:56

very similar in that

2:57

if we're going to dedicate any atom

3:00

of our energy to anything, we

3:02

want to most humbly do

3:05

it to the best of our ability. We do

3:07

indeed. Please excuse us for any

3:09

sound quality issues this week everyone. I'm

3:12

here with Az Devlin. We have been

3:14

anticipating this conversation with some time

3:17

because Az is amazing

3:20

and I'm so delighted to have her on

3:22

the BOF podcast this week. As

3:25

always, I want to talk about all of the exciting

3:27

stuff that you're working on now because every

3:29

time you and I see each other, whether that's at

3:32

a fashion show or in an airport somewhere

3:34

around the world, you always have so many amazing

3:37

things going on. Of course, you've just released

3:40

a book

3:41

which I have here which is incredible

3:44

and filled with so much of

3:46

your work. I wanted to start

3:48

by going back to where

3:50

it all began, an early life

3:53

with Az Devlin. To

3:56

be honest with you, I don't even know where Rai is. First,

3:58

can you just tell us a little bit about your work? bit about young

4:01

as Daphlin and what were you like

4:03

growing up?

4:05

So if you look at a map of

4:07

the British Isles, and you go

4:09

down to the bottom right hand corner, there

4:12

is a long sandy beach called Canva

4:14

Sands at the end of which is

4:16

a power station called Dungeones, which

4:19

is where Derek Jarman's garden and cottage

4:21

is. So if you wander along

4:24

Canva Sands and you go inland a bit, you

4:26

will find a small hill town called

4:29

Rye, and it's

4:31

made of cobbled streets. There's a church

4:34

at the top of it that you can see for miles

4:36

from the marshes around. And I lived on one

4:40

of those cobbled streets and it was called Mermaid

4:42

Street. And the bottom of the street

4:44

used

4:45

to be the sea. So I always

4:47

had that sense of the sort of

4:49

narrative shape of this street even,

4:51

that it was about a mermaid and it

4:54

came from the sea up to the shore.

4:56

Wow. Well, what the listeners can't see

4:58

right now is as you were saying all of that, you closed

5:01

your eyes. And it was almost like

5:03

you were taking yourself back to that

5:05

place. It sounds amazing. So when

5:07

you were growing up there, what

5:09

were you like growing up? I

5:12

guess

5:12

it was a time when

5:15

you had to make up a lot

5:17

of the architecture of your day and of your

5:19

time. There weren't so many things

5:22

on offer in terms of there, as you know,

5:24

there were three TV channels and they didn't start.

5:27

The TV didn't actually switch on till about

5:29

three in the afternoon. So generally,

5:32

I was one of four children.

5:33

And what I remember us saying

5:36

a lot to my parents was, we're

5:38

bored, what can we do? And of

5:40

course, like the famous Med Shop Boys

5:42

song, my mother would say, if

5:44

you're bored, it's because you're boring,

5:46

stop being boring and think of something

5:48

to do. So we spend

5:50

a lot of time going to the beach

5:53

every day after school, we had a small Diane,

5:56

a Citroen Diane, which is like

5:58

a two CV. kind

6:00

of straighter and it was bright yellow and on

6:03

the cobbled street where we lived in Winter

6:07

my mom had to put a hot water bottle under

6:09

the bonnet of the car So that the

6:11

car would start so the spark plugs

6:13

wouldn't freeze up and she would

6:16

point the car downhill to make

6:18

sure that if she really couldn't start it we could push it

6:20

and After school

6:22

every day in the summer we would go to the beach and

6:25

it was usually shitty weather because it was England

6:28

But we didn't care so it was quite feral.

6:30

It

6:30

was quite a feral childhood in some ways Were

6:33

you always creative?

6:34

Like did you know you were going to? Have

6:37

a career somehow doing creative things.

6:40

I probably didn't know what a career was I

6:43

was very lucky

6:43

and my mother was a teacher and my father

6:45

was a journalist who wrote about education

6:48

and they both care

6:50

passionately and Really

6:53

are very interested in education and school So

6:56

their focus for us was

6:58

how much can you learn and I think they

7:00

had a sense if we continued to learn We

7:02

would find our way so they didn't

7:04

put any pressure on us to consider

7:08

what our career would be and There

7:11

was a lot of emphasis on how to

7:13

show your love how to show your friendship

7:15

So we would make things as gifts

7:17

for people a lot of the time we

7:20

come from quite a big family So at Christmas

7:22

we would make gifts So

7:24

yeah, there was already a dynamic that

7:26

you could Use your skill

7:28

and your craft to show love

7:30

it sounds like an idyllic childhood

7:32

But I guess at some point you did start making Some

7:35

decisions about school and education,

7:38

you know, how did you go about? thinking

7:40

about those decisions

7:43

when I was at school, I Wanted

7:45

to do everything I was a bit like

7:47

that

7:47

character in Midsummer Night's Dream like bottom

7:49

the weaver

7:51

at once So I

7:53

was like well, I can do the music and I will

7:55

paint the scenery. I will write

7:58

it as well I was just curious and

8:00

eager in every direction. So when

8:03

it came time to choose

8:05

where to go at the end of school, I

8:08

really based my decision on my

8:11

friends and my who I considered my

8:13

people and the people

8:15

who were going on to do art were amazing

8:17

and brilliant and very sure I felt of

8:20

what they wanted to say and I didn't

8:22

feel that sure. I didn't feel I had

8:24

much to say when I was 18 and I thought it

8:27

was more important to learn. So I

8:29

went to university and I read for three

8:31

years. I just read my way from

8:33

Anglo-Saxon Beowulf all the way up

8:35

to Adrienne Rich, 20th century

8:38

American poet and then

8:40

I felt able to then be a mature student

8:42

at art school and I went to St. Martin's when I was 22

8:45

to do the sort of school

8:47

leavers foundation course and

8:50

that felt great because I took it really seriously

8:52

because I was a bit older.

8:54

You know it's interesting just now when you said

8:57

that as a young person you wanted

8:59

to do all of the things,

9:01

play all of the parts, play

9:03

all the roles, you know sometimes when I read

9:06

the way people describe

9:08

you in the press they talk about you as

9:10

a Renaissance woman, like

9:12

a person of many many gifts and many

9:14

talents and certainly in

9:16

my interactions with you over the years I felt

9:19

that but when you meet

9:21

someone now and you know if you were

9:23

introducing yourself to our listeners here

9:26

all over the world who might not be familiar with your

9:28

work like how do you even describe

9:31

what you do?

9:33

Do you know that's such a good question and

9:35

it happened to me the other day, it happens

9:37

all the time but I'm in a

9:39

room of people who I don't know and sometimes

9:43

I'm sat at a table between two people I don't know

9:45

and recently that happened and they said

9:48

oh what do you do and I

9:50

sort of dread that question a bit because there's

9:52

no shorter answer so I

9:54

had a copy of this book that I've just made and

9:57

it's called An Atlas of Ers Devlin and I did something

10:00

which is maybe a little bit obnoxious but

10:02

I found it quite helpful. I got

10:04

the book out and I put it on

10:06

their plate and I said, do you know

10:08

what? I'm going to go and get

10:09

my food. Would

10:11

you

10:11

just have a little look at this book and

10:14

then we can take it from there because

10:17

it's quite a complicated thing to explain

10:19

and the book I hope is a sort

10:22

of evocation of what I do.

10:24

So you put this book on their plate

10:27

and you leave to go get your

10:29

food and you come

10:31

back. What was their reaction?

10:34

I mean, because honestly, when I opened

10:36

the book, and by the way, the book is stunning,

10:38

I've never seen a book of this

10:41

shape made up this way

10:43

with so many, I mean, you can lose yourself

10:46

in this book. I can lose myself in

10:49

all of this work that you've done. But

10:51

our listeners don't have the benefit of

10:53

looking through this book. So like, I'm

10:55

still going to push you to try to describe

10:58

what it is that you do.

10:59

Okay, so in answer to your

11:02

first question, they didn't eat the book, which

11:04

was a relief because it was actually my gift to the

11:06

host. But what do I

11:08

do? So I do a number of things. I

11:11

consider myself to be an artist. I

11:14

make large scale installations

11:16

and public sculptures generally. Many

11:19

of the sculptures include projection,

11:23

light, sound, I often use my voice

11:25

as I'm using it now. And

11:27

a lot of the works are made

11:30

specifically to try and introduce

11:33

visitors to a way

11:35

they can shift their perspective, often regarding

11:38

the biosphere, climate in

11:41

a gentle and hopefully visually

11:43

stimulating way. I also

11:45

do stage design, and that

11:48

might be for theatre, for plays,

11:51

or it might be for opera or

11:53

for pop concerts, quite a lot

11:56

of large scale stadium concerts

11:58

and big public events

12:00

like Super Bowl or Olympics. And

12:03

then I also make environments for

12:06

fashion shows as well. And for

12:09

exhibitions, exhibitions maybe of my work, but

12:11

also to tell the stories of the

12:13

work of others. So that's why looking

12:16

at the book is easier

12:17

than listening it. Well,

12:19

that's how you and I met actually was, I

12:21

think you were giving me a private

12:23

tour of an exhibition

12:26

at 180 The Strand in London many

12:29

years ago. It was a Louis Vuitton exhibition.

12:33

And I just remember being kind

12:35

of enraptured in the way you thought about everything.

12:38

So when you think about the

12:40

why behind your work, like

12:43

the reason the kind of work you

12:45

do is important to all of those people that you

12:47

work with. And by the way, I think that's a common

12:50

thread through a great deal of your work. Even

12:52

the way of the book is organized is so much of

12:54

your work is collaborative. It's about working

12:56

with other creative people. What's

12:59

the why? Why is this work important?

13:03

Maybe the best way to answer that question,

13:05

which is such a good one, is to perhaps pick

13:07

up where I left off with the education, because

13:10

having done the

13:13

junior art school entry

13:15

level course at Central St. Martins, I then was a bit

13:18

stumped. People

13:21

were beginning to ask, will you ever

13:23

get a job? What will your practice be? And

13:27

I ended up walking into a room full

13:30

of set designers. And I didn't know that

13:32

I was interested in theatre. It wasn't that. I

13:35

just really liked these people. And

13:38

I would say in answer to your question,

13:41

I have spent the rest of my 30-year

13:44

practice walking into rooms,

13:47

feeling good about the people in the rooms and wanting

13:49

to stay in the room and make things with them.

13:52

And the book begins with a

13:54

series of 16 pages, each

13:56

of which has a whole cut

13:59

out of it. And surrounding each of the

14:01

holes are lists of names of

14:04

all the people that I've collaborated with.

14:07

And that's a sort of conjuring of

14:09

the brightness in a way in that it's been

14:11

a series of years of

14:13

looking through the lenses of others. And so

14:16

when you ask about the why, I

14:18

guess I have seen the best

14:20

way to use my time on the planet, which I consider

14:23

to be an immense privilege to have been

14:25

born into, is to learn as

14:28

much as I can every day, and

14:30

to see things through the eyes of

14:32

others, to make things with people

14:34

in ways I would not have made on my

14:37

own. Every day when

14:39

I collaborate, the practice

14:42

is to see it through

14:44

my own eyes, then see it through my collaborators

14:47

eyes, then finally to see it through the audience's

14:49

eyes, and then building on all

14:52

of those converging and

14:54

colliding sometimes viewpoints,

14:57

then do it again with another

14:59

layer of viewpoints. And you're constantly building

15:02

up this kaleidoscopic lens

15:05

of learning. And I think it's a very

15:07

helpful muscle to

15:09

learn just in living generally, the more

15:11

we can un-other,

15:14

the more we can cease to

15:16

judge another person's viewpoint

15:18

as being other, and start to unfold

15:20

it within our own and understand it. I

15:23

think that's helpful societally as

15:25

well.

15:26

Indeed. I mean, it's

15:28

so interesting because, like

15:30

I said, you and I first met through the lens

15:33

of fashion, and it was only then that I realized

15:35

that after we got to know each other

15:37

a bit about all the work that you've done with people

15:39

like you two, and Kanye

15:41

West, and Adele, and there's so

15:43

many collaborators. But obviously, this is

15:45

the business of fashion podcasts, and

15:48

events and experiential

15:50

moments have become such a big part of

15:53

how the fashion industry engages with

15:56

not just real life audiences, but

15:59

virtual audiences. and audiences that

16:01

maybe aren't physically present at an event,

16:03

but experience it on social

16:05

media. And so I'm curious

16:07

to learn, like, how did you first... When

16:10

did you first start engaging

16:12

with fashion? And what was your reaction or impression

16:16

to the way the fashion industry

16:18

approaches events? And what do you think kind

16:20

of the breadth of your experience enabled

16:24

you to bring to, like, fashion experiences

16:26

that maybe wasn't part of the landscape?

16:29

Well, this is such a lovely question

16:31

to dig into. So I can

16:33

tell you very specifically, I

16:35

was on holiday in August 2014,

16:41

and I got a phone call from a person

16:44

who's now one of my dear friends called Fay McLeod. Oh,

16:47

yeah. And she said, oh, yes, we're doing

16:49

a show. Can you help her? And she said, it's going to

16:51

be on October the 6th.

16:53

I said, but October the 6th, that's tomorrow.

16:56

How can we possibly do anything?

16:57

She said, no, don't worry. We already... I've

16:59

got this great colleague called Anselm. We've already

17:02

got some ideas. We've got a plan. Don't worry, you just

17:04

come when you get back from your holiday. I said, do you need me to

17:06

come? No, no, don't worry. And

17:08

I started to meet again a new

17:11

tribe of people. And I guess I

17:13

had been nervous. I was brought up to

17:15

wear the clothes that were handed down from my sister. I

17:18

had never stepped into a designer

17:21

shop ever. It would not have been something

17:23

we did. I generally wore clothes

17:25

that were secondhand. You know, I made

17:27

a bit of effort, but it wasn't... I didn't understand

17:29

anything about the world of fashion, to be honest. And

17:33

I was guided through it really carefully

17:35

by really lovely, quite spiritual,

17:38

humble, beautiful people. And

17:42

what I've learnt from that first

17:44

exhibition at 180 Strand to

17:46

now, where eight years later, we

17:49

have the Gucci Cosmos exhibition on at

17:51

the moment, is how

17:54

to

17:55

tell a story about the

17:57

history of a house through an

17:59

experience...

17:59

that an audience will walk through. And

18:02

you remember, because I walked you through that 180

18:05

strand exhibition, we were finding

18:07

our way. We were seeing if this was even

18:10

possible. And it's so joyful,

18:12

I must say now, to have built

18:14

again a bit of practice, a bit of muscle.

18:17

And the piece that we've made now with Sabatoa

18:20

desano, I must say, I really

18:22

do feel that when you arrive and

18:24

you step into this small red elevator,

18:28

you genuinely get transported back

18:30

into the why of how

18:32

Gucci happened. That's what interests me is why

18:35

did this house happen? What was the point? And

18:37

when you understand the story that

18:39

an 18 year old

18:40

Italian intern was

18:43

operating the first electric

18:45

elevator in London, seven

18:47

minutes going up, seven minutes going

18:49

down, people were scared,

18:52

people were nervous. He

18:54

either had to chat to them, maybe about

18:56

their horses and their cars and their country

18:59

houses, or he had to avert

19:01

his gaze while they were feeling sick about

19:04

to vomit. And he would just look

19:06

at their luggage, take in every detail,

19:08

seven minutes up, seven minutes down. And

19:11

it seems to me that that cyclical

19:13

journey

19:13

of going round and round

19:14

up and down in the red lift, I

19:17

think that's the origin moment, the

19:19

mythology, the origin beat of Gucci.

19:21

That was my conclusion.

19:23

You know, I was just in that lift a

19:25

few weeks ago, that there was a Diwali

19:28

party at the Savoy Hotel

19:30

and my partner and I got into that lift and we

19:32

saw the sign that said the first lift in

19:34

London. And you really got

19:37

a sense of, wow, like at

19:39

that time to

19:40

walk into a little room and

19:42

have the doors closed and for it to move

19:44

up and down in the way that we're

19:46

all 100%

19:47

accustomed to now, like that was

19:49

a real new experience. And

19:51

for Gucci or DiGucci

19:53

to be in that lift and have had

19:55

that experience and then to kind

19:58

of for a brand like Gucci's people. and

20:00

from all of the observations. Yeah, I mean, that's beautiful.

20:02

That's part of the story you're telling at

20:05

Gucci Cosmos. But you've done more than exhibitions

20:08

as like you've done a lot of fashion shows as well.

20:10

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I really enjoyed the

20:13

East St. Laurent and Morocco that we did

20:15

together

20:15

with Anthony Vaccarello. You

20:18

know, that's a classic case of I

20:20

had sort of drawn a few things, but I would never have dared,

20:22

to be honest, to suggest that in the

20:24

time we had, it would have been

20:25

possible to achieve

20:28

lifting this ring

20:30

of light out of the water. But

20:32

Anthony had this confidence. He just said, yep, yep,

20:34

we just lift it up. And sure

20:36

enough, it happened. And and

20:39

often what I really learned about the

20:41

fashion shows is how

20:43

emotional they can be with

20:45

the music. The fact that it only happens

20:48

once. People are gathered in

20:50

that place physically just for this moment.

20:52

You can't reveal a train

20:54

of thought more than once. And

20:57

I've really begun to learn that by spending time

21:00

with the designers, by them allowing

21:02

me into their thought process and Sabato

21:05

particularly on the Gucci

21:07

piece that we've just done, really

21:10

helping me understand what his

21:12

mission is, why that deep red color, where

21:14

does it come from? And it's very personal.

21:17

There's a lot of vulnerability exposed

21:19

in it. He describes the place

21:22

where he discovered

21:24

himself, he describes a place where he feels most

21:26

in love, most alive, a specific clock

21:29

in a specific town square in a specific village.

21:32

And that ability to be

21:34

so precisely personal and vulnerable

21:37

and yet know that the ricochet

21:39

from that very personal thing will express

21:41

itself globally. That's

21:43

very precious.

21:45

Yeah, I mean, as a creative

21:48

discipline, or medium

21:50

fashion has the ability to touch so

21:53

many people probably only rifled,

21:55

I'd say by music in terms of

21:57

its way of touching

22:00

people and reaching people everywhere. But

22:03

fashion is only just coming into its power

22:06

of influence and culture. And I think it's so

22:08

interesting that more and more

22:10

designers are thinking about fashion as a medium

22:13

to influence conversations

22:15

that are happening that are, you know, not necessarily

22:17

about fashion, just about everything that's happening

22:19

in the world around us.

22:21

I think that's so true. And when we

22:23

were in Shanghai, when we opened the Cosmos

22:25

exhibition, I had actually just fallen off

22:27

my bike and I was feeling a little discombobulated

22:31

because I cycle everywhere and I've never fallen off

22:33

before, touch wood. And

22:36

I said to my team, I said, listen,

22:38

I'm not sure I'm gonna be able to come. They said, please just come

22:40

and explain your ideas. We

22:43

wanna explain what the thinking is. So I

22:45

turned up, I went on this stage

22:47

and I was able to be really personal,

22:50

honest about what the ideas were. And

22:52

I said something which I had just

22:54

observed, which is the

22:56

houses. And I don't really love the word

22:59

brand. You know what I'm like in and about

23:01

words. I always like to look

23:03

at where a word came from. And

23:05

for me, brand comes from burnt. Brand

23:08

is like when you burn the skin of an animal

23:10

or a human to indicate who owns it. So

23:13

I don't love the word brand, but I do love the word house,

23:16

the sort of architecture of a company of

23:18

people, the house. So what

23:21

struck me is just how much a house

23:23

can determine what

23:26

my 16 year old daughter considers to be valuable,

23:29

desirable, and

23:32

how much with a small modulation, quite

23:35

a small number of people on the planet really who run

23:37

the houses could

23:39

alter what is valuable,

23:40

what is desirable, just with

23:42

a few bits of modulation. And

23:45

I saw just now that Gucci have done their new bag

23:47

that's all vegan with Betty Eilish. And that was really

23:49

exciting to see. And I think the

23:52

houses can be really bold in how they start

23:54

to shift people's perspective

23:56

in quite a conscious

23:57

way. I think that's exciting.

24:03

We'll be right back with more on the BOF

24:06

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24:09

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25:20

As you

25:24

think about the way, you know, you've now had a chance to get to know several

25:26

different fashion houses. You've mentioned

25:28

Anthony Baccarello. You've

25:32

mentioned Sabato Di Sarno at Gucci. You've

25:34

mentioned, you know, Nicolas Jasquier

25:37

at Vuitton. I mean, you've had a chance

25:39

to see inside fashion. As someone who's kind of comes from outside

25:41

fashion, but also understands more about

25:43

how the industry works, what

25:47

opportunities do you think the fashion

25:49

industry has in terms of the way

25:52

it expresses itself through experiences

25:55

that have not yet been realized? in

26:00

so many different disciplines from

26:02

theater to music and beyond. You know, what

26:05

more can this industry do? Because I feel like we're

26:07

only at the beginning of this experiential

26:09

design moment

26:10

in fashion. I think that's so

26:12

true. I think garments, there's

26:15

some beautiful poems about songs

26:18

stitched into the seams of garments. I

26:20

think the clothes that you wear can

26:22

carry so much meaning, so much poetry.

26:25

And I think this time, this moment in history

26:27

is an aberration, this moment in Western

26:30

cultural history. I think even

26:33

as recently as 300 years ago, people had

26:35

probably five outfits at

26:38

the max. Even people like you and I, you

26:40

wouldn't have had so many. And each one would

26:43

have had that much more meaning and value. And

26:45

if you look at a company like Patagonia,

26:48

who

26:49

create a community in which when you've finished

26:51

with a garment, you bring it in, it'll

26:53

get recycled into the next batch of garments.

26:55

And you feel like you're part of a story. Every

26:58

single piece of material that goes into

27:00

what you're wearing on your body will

27:02

go back into circulation and come back on

27:05

someone else's body. And that there's so

27:07

many stories to tell about that and to

27:09

help people experience that. There

27:11

are secrets

27:11

that you can weave

27:13

into the folds of

27:15

a garment. Those are the things I would

27:17

really love to emphasize. There was a book when I was growing

27:20

up called Mask Raid by

27:22

Kit Williams. And we all had it in

27:24

the 80s. And

27:27

it was a treasure hunt book. And

27:29

every weekend you would look at the book and try

27:31

and figure out where to start digging for treasure

27:34

because there was a literal piece

27:36

of golden jewelry that had been made and

27:38

buried somewhere in England. And

27:41

each weekend people would go out and

27:44

try and dig for this treasure. And then of course

27:46

one weekend after about three years, somebody found

27:48

it. But clothes can

27:51

indicate so much. When you talk about

27:53

experiential practices, the

27:56

act of putting on a second skin of

27:58

having something back closer. to your body that goes

28:01

everywhere with you, that is a kind of co-author

28:04

of your day. You might consider

28:06

that the jacket you put on becomes

28:08

the co-author of your evening. I

28:10

often feel that about my garments. They went out with

28:13

me that night, or my bag came with

28:15

me, experienced that meeting with me,

28:17

or that encounter, or that

28:19

kiss was experienced by me and what

28:22

I was wearing. And these shoes took

28:24

me to this place. I think the

28:26

stories we tell about what we wear

28:29

could be so rich in that way if we start

28:31

to treat our objects

28:34

and our clothes as protagonists and co-authors

28:36

of our day-to-day lives.

28:39

That's so interesting. I love that because

28:41

as I'm hearing you talk,

28:44

I was also thinking, you've

28:46

had the opportunity to work with these very big houses,

28:49

but so many of the most creative, most

28:51

innovative people working in fashion

28:54

are just starting out. There might be designers

28:56

who have their own small businesses.

29:00

For people who don't have the scale of budget

29:02

or

29:03

resources that some of these big houses

29:06

have, what advice do you have to

29:08

offer to younger creative

29:10

people just at the beginning of their careers on how they

29:12

can bring some of these experiential elements

29:15

about the stories that our clothes

29:18

tell to us or say about us into

29:20

the way that they express themselves

29:23

and kind of build understanding about that

29:26

new world, that new house that they're

29:28

just at the beginning of building?

29:30

I think it's a really good question. And I think

29:32

the advice I would give when

29:35

resources are tight is think

29:37

of the one gesture that

29:39

you want to make. Because you can

29:41

make a gesture with no resources. You can make

29:44

a gesture by picking a place and

29:47

turning all the lights out. You could make a gesture

29:49

by just doing everything

29:51

in one color, often using

29:54

limitation as a resource, restriction

29:57

as a resource, and saying, okay, I'm going to

29:59

do this. I have very little budget,

30:01

but I can take everything away except this. And

30:04

then the other thing is to really

30:06

consider how you talk about your work. This

30:09

is something that I think is not very

30:11

well taught at art school, particularly is

30:14

how you articulate your work in words

30:16

is also very important.

30:18

What is the text that

30:20

supports the images you're

30:22

creating or the gesture you're making?

30:24

I'm thinking of, is it Dora Atlantico? Is

30:26

that how you pronounce the name? I

30:29

think so. Forgive us if I mispronounce

30:31

the name, but I remember being really struck by

30:33

the gesture they were making by

30:35

taking, I think it was an old Prada

30:38

piece and maybe an old

30:40

Dior piece. I'm not sure what the two designers were, but

30:43

then just cutting them both down the middle and stitching

30:45

them together to recycle them

30:47

and to make something new out of something

30:49

that was dead stock. This recycled

30:51

dead stock idea. For me, I found that so

30:54

exciting that we can decide that this

30:56

is valuable. We can decide that this is

30:58

beautiful. We can determine what

31:00

we consider to have beauty.

31:02

Beauty can be

31:03

whatever we decide it is. But

31:05

that would be my advice really for anyone starting

31:08

out is have a very clear intention,

31:10

have a clear gesture and make

31:12

your limitation, be they

31:14

budget tree space, time, make

31:17

the limitation be the point, be

31:20

the advantage.

31:21

The last thing I want to quickly touch on today

31:24

as is this whole new phenomenon

31:27

of generative AI,

31:29

artificial intelligence. That's the

31:32

conversation around it, the

31:35

fears that have come as

31:38

a result of it, the opportunities

31:40

that it creates.

31:42

Most of the really creative people that

31:45

I know are experimenting with

31:47

AI and are trying to find ways of integrating

31:50

it into their creative processes.

31:52

Like how are you thinking about

31:54

AI and are you scared of it? We

31:57

began working with large language

31:59

models.

31:59

in 2016, but not because

32:02

I had a desire to work with AI. I

32:05

was invited to work with Hansel

32:07

Rick Obrist at the Serpentine Gallery.

32:10

I think you were there. You were part of this

32:12

experiment, Imran. Oh, yes,

32:14

I was. I remember that.

32:15

So I was invited

32:17

to help him make something with

32:20

Yana Peel as well at the Serpentine

32:22

for a party. And I didn't understand the invitation.

32:26

I said, I don't really understand what does this mean. And Hansel

32:28

Rick said, think of it as a social sculpture. So

32:31

I said, well, what if we make a collective

32:34

poem so that everybody who comes this

32:36

evening, you were there, Virgil

32:38

Abler was there, Rick Owens was there, a lot

32:41

of other people, Andrew Hagen was there,

32:43

a lot of people came that night. What

32:46

if they could all contribute a word to a

32:48

collective poem? And

32:50

it wasn't because I wanted to work with AI.

32:53

It was because large language models

32:55

were the way to do the thing

32:58

I wanted to do. I had a gesture I wanted to make.

33:01

And the technique, the tool

33:04

was in service of the gesture that I wanted to

33:06

make. And that's my

33:07

approach to technology generally

33:09

is

33:09

I think of the gesture and

33:12

then the technology I enlist

33:14

to help me make the gesture. And then of course, once

33:16

I learn about the technology, I have another idea

33:18

that might be born of that. So

33:20

we made the collective poem. It made

33:23

individual photographs of people with their

33:25

poem projected on their faces. I think yours was particularly

33:28

beautiful. It's still there. And

33:30

it's in the book, actually. Have you seen yourself in the book?

33:32

No, I haven't. You're in there. You're

33:35

in the poem portraits

33:36

page. Oh, my gosh, I remember

33:38

that picture. And I remember the poem,

33:41

but I had no idea that it

33:43

was using a large language

33:45

model.

33:45

It certainly was. So it was using a model

33:48

trained on 20 million words of Victorian

33:50

poetry. And that poem

33:52

that you were part of in 2016 is still being composed,

33:55

co-authored today. We've now

33:57

upgraded it to chat GBC for for

34:00

the Google equivalent of, which I believe is called Bard.

34:03

And we use it again at the

34:05

UK Pavilion at the World Expo in 2020,

34:09

where the whole front of the building composed

34:12

a new poem every 90 seconds,

34:14

and it could have composed it every one

34:16

second. We had to slow it down so

34:19

that humans had time to read it. And

34:21

for that, we were using a 2019 version of Chat GPT-2. So

34:26

we've been working with these models for

34:28

a while. And my instinct

34:30

has always been to teach

34:32

the models to learn

34:34

with us, be with us, make art. When

34:37

my son takes the piss out of Alexa at

34:39

my mom and dad's house, they have Alexa.

34:41

Sometimes my children say, oh, do you love me, Alexa?

34:44

They try and joke about her. And I say, don't take

34:46

the piss out of Alexa. I don't think it's a good idea. Make

34:48

art with her,

34:49

but don't ridicule

34:50

her. I don't think that's a good idea. I

34:53

mean, my approach generally is to

34:55

learn, to read as much as I can, rather

34:58

than speaking from a position of inaccuracy

35:00

or ignorance. So I've just read Mustafa

35:02

Suleman's book, The Coming Wave, which

35:05

I really recommend. He describes

35:07

the moment that AlphaGo did move 37, which

35:10

was the move that completely

35:14

floored Lee Sedol, the great Go

35:17

master, and led

35:19

to

35:20

the algorithm winning the game of Go,

35:22

which was thought to be impossible.

35:24

He describes that the way that someone

35:26

might describe discovering a new species.

35:28

And I think overall, here's what I think about more

35:31

than human intelligence, is that we've always

35:34

been surrounded by more than human intelligence

35:36

in plants, in animals, in the species

35:39

even that live inside us. And

35:41

I hope that this reverence and

35:43

perhaps fear, or certainly reverence and respect

35:46

for the more than human intelligence that we are, perhaps

35:48

being a midwife to now, comes

35:51

also with a respect and reverence

35:53

for the more than human intelligence that's always been

35:55

around us, that humans have never

35:58

been the

35:58

apogee of our lives.

35:59

on this planet. That's such a good way

36:02

to put it. And in fact, at this

36:04

coming BOF Voices, we

36:06

have a talk by someone

36:08

named Azaraskin, and

36:10

he's going to be talking to us both

36:12

about AI from

36:15

an ethical and moral standpoint,

36:17

but also about some of the opportunities

36:19

AI unlocks for us. He's part of this program

36:22

or project called the Earth Series Project.

36:24

I don't know if you know about it, but they've

36:26

been using AI to

36:29

decode non-human communication,

36:31

and it's absolutely incredible when you get a

36:33

sense of the intelligence, what you're calling

36:36

the non-human intelligence, that

36:38

exists all around us. So for everyone

36:41

listening, make sure you sign up to

36:43

join us for BOF Voices 2023, because

36:45

AI is a massive and

36:47

important focus for us this year. You know, to do exactly

36:50

what Azaraskin said, which is to learn

36:52

about it, because so many of us are

36:54

still operating

36:56

from a point of not ignorance

36:58

necessarily, but just not full understanding

37:01

or fully grasping what the potential

37:04

is here. And as one day,

37:06

I would love to create

37:08

a moment or an opportunity

37:11

at a BOF event to bring that original

37:14

community poem to life

37:17

at one of our events, because if you're still creating

37:19

that poem, that would be a really beautiful thing to do

37:22

at one of our events.

37:23

We should definitely do it. And I think

37:25

one of the things I've really learned from my

37:28

exposure to your world, to the

37:30

world of fashion, also is just the

37:32

number of humans that

37:35

work night and day to make exquisitely

37:37

beautiful things. You know, I remember

37:39

visiting Anya and seeing

37:42

grandmothers, grandchildren, great

37:45

grandchildren, all generations

37:47

crafting items,

37:50

you know, with absolute pride, and

37:52

taking time and the way that time gets

37:55

woven into the seams of these objects and actually

37:57

making the book, it is a

37:59

really

37:59

time consuming, handcrafted exercise.

38:03

And I've actually started to film the people

38:05

who are making my book in China. And

38:08

it makes me think of Anya, they are each

38:10

day hand gluing, hand

38:12

sticking, hand stitching. So

38:14

I think the book definitely draws

38:16

upon what I've learned about how

38:19

much human love and compassion and time

38:21

and hours go into making something

38:23

that is precious and hopefully will

38:26

bring enjoyment to a lot of people.

38:29

Well, it is so precious. And

38:31

I had no idea it was all being made by hand,

38:34

but it makes sense now that I look back

38:36

at it. So thank you as for your time

38:39

today. I always so enjoy

38:41

our conversations. I can't wait till we can

38:43

catch up again. Thank

38:44

you so much, Imran. Thank you. It's been lovely.

38:47

Bye-bye.

38:48

Bye. The BOF

38:50

podcast is edited and produced by

38:52

Emma Clark and Eric Bria

38:55

in the BOF Studio team.

39:03

This episode is brought to you by Progressive.

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