GOLD LABEL SPRING-SUMMER 2013

"What have we got here? Global exotic.

No matter where you start a collection you absorb the world around you and carry it onto your projection. We began with influences which seem to be quite arbitrary but nevertheless through the process

of applying them you evolve a vision, a projection. We are always designing for a parallel universe because we are making something different, a bit new. (All designers do this). It's a world where people look good -- interesting people who lead a better life.

We started...A kind person sent us a little book on beatles "for inspiration". Coloured markings and patches, iridescence, wing cases and wings, hard articulated bits, antennae. We interpreted the patches as holes filled with ruched self-fabric which puffed up but pulled and stretched and because these patches didn't fit very well they left little corners and lumps sticking up around where they were inserted. These insect cuts talk about human bodies. Then -- because we had visited the Prado -- there is the influence of costume in Velasquez; slashed clothes had evolved into great bands describing large silhouettes.

Also for a print I took and coloured and elaborated the drawn pattern which was covering a box of Chinese tea. This print is somehow global -- exotic; it could be Indian, Asian, Russian, African (I was reading "Sinbad the sailor" at the time). I took advantage as always of my squiggle print which is also a universal -- exotic print -- printed on our clompers (my name for our recent platforms) looks tribal. I wanted a tribal feeling (always exciting) but also an alien feeling -- for this I said to hair and make-up I want hairstyles of different tribes and make-up which is all the same -- almost nothing done, but strange.

I think the greatest single influence on art and the way we see the world happened at the beginning of the 20th Century and carried on and ramified throughout. I mean the Ballet Russes and Diaghilev its creator. Romantic, fairytale, folk, myth interpreted through the eyes of modernity. Influenced: all the musicians, Matisse, Picasso, Chanel, Yves Saint Laurent, you and Andreas and me.

Really the only connection with the collection and the Climate Revolution is the title but I want to remind you that it has begun, that we must all act fast, that our first line of attack is the economists who still insist on keeping separate the mutual cause of climate change. Their ignorance is driving into economic and environmental misery. Economists must face the truth and join the Climate Revolution.

Please read my blog (diary) 'Vivienne Get a Life' for further information."

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