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Swinging again
[FONT=arial,helvetica,sans-serif]Hendrix, the Beatles, the Stones ... they all wore Celia Birtwell's prints. Now a whole new generation can follow suit, says Jess Cartner-Morley[/FONT]
[FONT=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]Saturday April 8, 2006
The Guardian
[/FONT]Celia Birtwell's Notting Hill sitting room is painted the rich crimson of a jewel box's silk lining. Around the walls, on which original Hockney drawings jostle cheek by jowl with old postcards and family snapshots, are three pictures of Marilyn Monroe: one on an old birthday card tucked into the frame of the overmantel mirror; one propped against the bookshelves; another among a pile of treasures on the coffee table. They look very at home there, because there is something of Monroe's aura about Birtwell, 60s textile print icon, wife of Ossie Clark and muse of David Hockney. Like Monroe, Birtwell exudes an air of innocence that has survived against the odds. During her marriage to Clark, Birtwell was at the centre of the swinging 60s party scene; through Clark, who descended into drug addiction and was killed by a gay lover in 1996, she has certainly seen plenty that could have soured her. But like Monroe, who maintained a charmed and childlike glow while entangled in a troubled and distinctly adult life, Birtwell seems somehow unsullied by the places she has been and things she has seen. Even now, in her mid-60s, Birtwell, with her pale blue eyes and heart-shaped face, seems less jaded than most fashion designers half her age.
This month, vintage Birtwell prints that graced Clark pieces in the early 1970s have been revived and used as the basis for a collection of dresses, blouses and accessories at Topshop. The prints are classics of their era - one, entitled Mystic Daisy, which appears on a blouse in the collection, was immortalised as the print on Ossie's collar in Hockney's famous portrait of the couple, Mr And Mrs Clark And Percy. Nonetheless, the project is a departure for Birtwell, because it presents her work in a new context and to a new audience. For every fashion student who makes the trip to Topshop in homage to Birtwell's heritage, there will be a dozen teenagers to whom the name means nothing. Birtwell is thrilled with the collection, and full of praise for the Topshop designers who "have been very sympathetic to the look, but also brought it up to date", she says. For instance, the silk scarf prints have been redrawn to suit the current vogue for long, thin scarves.
For those of her generation, however, Birtwell will always be thought of in the same breath as her ex-husband. Some would find this suffocating, Birtwell insists she doesn't let it bog her down. "The thing is that they don't grow on trees, people like Ossie. So it doesn't bother me at all to be associated with him, because I'm very proud of our work. He was a master cutter - what he could do with the female figure was quite something."
She seems to have made peace with the tendency of a personality like Clark's to loom larger than life, even in death. When I ask her about the difference between the fashion world now and in the past, she talks about the time in the late 1960s when "there was a kind of explosion, and everyone went a bit bananas. And it was really good fun, but it could also be terrifying because the boundaries were down, there were no limits and so many distractions, things to swallow or whatever ... so there were victims. People who thought they could have everything. Which you can't." Yes, she nods, she's talking about Ossie.
While she reminisces about a bygone fashion world as being "so innocent, slightly hopeless and charming ... we never cared about money, or worried about mortgages or any of that stuff", she also says that fashion has become more democratic - Topshop being a great example - and that this is "something I'm proud to be part of".
Birtwell was born in Bury, Lancashire (a hint of an accent survives) and studied textile design at Salford School of Art. On graduation, she did some teaching work - including, memorably, cake decoration - before moving to London. She took a job in the wig department of the Aldwych Theatre - "I hated it, actually. I was used to having such a great gang at art school, and theatre people were just ghastly" - until eventually she sold a print design to Heal's, and embarked on designing textiles in partnership with Clark, whom she married a few years later.
It was a heady era, when the prints she drew were transformed by Clark into clothes worn by, among others, the Rolling Stones and the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix and Marianne Faithfull, Bianca Jagger and Talitha Getty. Their marriage and partnership ended in 1975; in the early 1980s, Birtwell set off on a new tangent, designing fabrics for the home. Moving away from fashion gave her space to be a designer distinct from her work with Clark. "The home thing was all to do with me, whereas working with Ossie, everything tended to be to do with him."
Besides, she says, "I like homes." Since the late 1980s, she has shared her house with her partner Andrew Palmer, a builder; a highchair in the kitchen attests to frequent visits from her thirtysomething sons by Clark - Albert and George - and her six grandchildren. She retains many close friends from her years as Mrs Clark. "Ossie liked parties a lot, and I didn't really. A lot of my best friends I met through him - he'd pick them up somewhere, and then get a bit bored of them, so he'd drop them off at our house to have tea with me and he'd go off to another party."
When she does go away, it is often to visit her great friend Hockney at his house in Bridlington, where he is currently "totally into" painting Yorkshire and English landscape. There is a deep mutual attachment between the two. Hockney, says Birtwell, has been "a damned good friend to me"; the catalogue of the Hockney retrospective now in Boston, which will come to the National Portrait Gallery in October, quotes the artist saying that he chose Birtwell as a muse because of her "beautiful face, a very rare face with lots of things in it... like her intuitive knowledge and her kindness, which I think is the greatest virtue. To me she's such a special person." The exhibition includes portraits of Birtwell, her sons and grandchildren. The day before we meet, Birtwell had been invited to a sale at Christie's of Clark's clothes. "I was going to go, and then I thought - do I really want to? And I realised I didn't. The things that happen to you when you are young feel powerful, because it's all new, but you can't keep lurching back to the past. I've lived on without Ossie Clark for a very long time, in my mind."
from the guardian today
[FONT=arial,helvetica,sans-serif]Hendrix, the Beatles, the Stones ... they all wore Celia Birtwell's prints. Now a whole new generation can follow suit, says Jess Cartner-Morley[/FONT]
[FONT=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]Saturday April 8, 2006
The Guardian
[/FONT]Celia Birtwell's Notting Hill sitting room is painted the rich crimson of a jewel box's silk lining. Around the walls, on which original Hockney drawings jostle cheek by jowl with old postcards and family snapshots, are three pictures of Marilyn Monroe: one on an old birthday card tucked into the frame of the overmantel mirror; one propped against the bookshelves; another among a pile of treasures on the coffee table. They look very at home there, because there is something of Monroe's aura about Birtwell, 60s textile print icon, wife of Ossie Clark and muse of David Hockney. Like Monroe, Birtwell exudes an air of innocence that has survived against the odds. During her marriage to Clark, Birtwell was at the centre of the swinging 60s party scene; through Clark, who descended into drug addiction and was killed by a gay lover in 1996, she has certainly seen plenty that could have soured her. But like Monroe, who maintained a charmed and childlike glow while entangled in a troubled and distinctly adult life, Birtwell seems somehow unsullied by the places she has been and things she has seen. Even now, in her mid-60s, Birtwell, with her pale blue eyes and heart-shaped face, seems less jaded than most fashion designers half her age.
This month, vintage Birtwell prints that graced Clark pieces in the early 1970s have been revived and used as the basis for a collection of dresses, blouses and accessories at Topshop. The prints are classics of their era - one, entitled Mystic Daisy, which appears on a blouse in the collection, was immortalised as the print on Ossie's collar in Hockney's famous portrait of the couple, Mr And Mrs Clark And Percy. Nonetheless, the project is a departure for Birtwell, because it presents her work in a new context and to a new audience. For every fashion student who makes the trip to Topshop in homage to Birtwell's heritage, there will be a dozen teenagers to whom the name means nothing. Birtwell is thrilled with the collection, and full of praise for the Topshop designers who "have been very sympathetic to the look, but also brought it up to date", she says. For instance, the silk scarf prints have been redrawn to suit the current vogue for long, thin scarves.
For those of her generation, however, Birtwell will always be thought of in the same breath as her ex-husband. Some would find this suffocating, Birtwell insists she doesn't let it bog her down. "The thing is that they don't grow on trees, people like Ossie. So it doesn't bother me at all to be associated with him, because I'm very proud of our work. He was a master cutter - what he could do with the female figure was quite something."
She seems to have made peace with the tendency of a personality like Clark's to loom larger than life, even in death. When I ask her about the difference between the fashion world now and in the past, she talks about the time in the late 1960s when "there was a kind of explosion, and everyone went a bit bananas. And it was really good fun, but it could also be terrifying because the boundaries were down, there were no limits and so many distractions, things to swallow or whatever ... so there were victims. People who thought they could have everything. Which you can't." Yes, she nods, she's talking about Ossie.
While she reminisces about a bygone fashion world as being "so innocent, slightly hopeless and charming ... we never cared about money, or worried about mortgages or any of that stuff", she also says that fashion has become more democratic - Topshop being a great example - and that this is "something I'm proud to be part of".
Birtwell was born in Bury, Lancashire (a hint of an accent survives) and studied textile design at Salford School of Art. On graduation, she did some teaching work - including, memorably, cake decoration - before moving to London. She took a job in the wig department of the Aldwych Theatre - "I hated it, actually. I was used to having such a great gang at art school, and theatre people were just ghastly" - until eventually she sold a print design to Heal's, and embarked on designing textiles in partnership with Clark, whom she married a few years later.
It was a heady era, when the prints she drew were transformed by Clark into clothes worn by, among others, the Rolling Stones and the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix and Marianne Faithfull, Bianca Jagger and Talitha Getty. Their marriage and partnership ended in 1975; in the early 1980s, Birtwell set off on a new tangent, designing fabrics for the home. Moving away from fashion gave her space to be a designer distinct from her work with Clark. "The home thing was all to do with me, whereas working with Ossie, everything tended to be to do with him."
Besides, she says, "I like homes." Since the late 1980s, she has shared her house with her partner Andrew Palmer, a builder; a highchair in the kitchen attests to frequent visits from her thirtysomething sons by Clark - Albert and George - and her six grandchildren. She retains many close friends from her years as Mrs Clark. "Ossie liked parties a lot, and I didn't really. A lot of my best friends I met through him - he'd pick them up somewhere, and then get a bit bored of them, so he'd drop them off at our house to have tea with me and he'd go off to another party."
When she does go away, it is often to visit her great friend Hockney at his house in Bridlington, where he is currently "totally into" painting Yorkshire and English landscape. There is a deep mutual attachment between the two. Hockney, says Birtwell, has been "a damned good friend to me"; the catalogue of the Hockney retrospective now in Boston, which will come to the National Portrait Gallery in October, quotes the artist saying that he chose Birtwell as a muse because of her "beautiful face, a very rare face with lots of things in it... like her intuitive knowledge and her kindness, which I think is the greatest virtue. To me she's such a special person." The exhibition includes portraits of Birtwell, her sons and grandchildren. The day before we meet, Birtwell had been invited to a sale at Christie's of Clark's clothes. "I was going to go, and then I thought - do I really want to? And I realised I didn't. The things that happen to you when you are young feel powerful, because it's all new, but you can't keep lurching back to the past. I've lived on without Ossie Clark for a very long time, in my mind."
from the guardian today
