“We have a little room and I’m on the sewing machine playing my music while he’s doing work.
And the chemistry between herself and fellow judge Patrick Grant remains.
THE ADVENTURES OF BUNNY POP SERIES
A new series of Sewing Bee starts soon, she keeps in touch with former host Joe Lycett and gets on well with new presenter Sara Pascoe. I never felt an urge to get married.”Ī self-confessed workaholic with no thoughts of retirement, her career is still keeping her busy. I mean I like children and in a way their children were my children too. Fellow designers, friends and family went on to have spouses and children, but Young never did. While she had a few relationships – and a reputation for partying – in those early years, Young has never settled down and remains tight-lipped about her private life. She could hardly sit down in it because it was so tight.” She really wanted a cleavage, so the costume pushed her breasts up. “Renee wanted the bunny outfit to be tighter because her character wasn’t skinny. Young branched out into costume design, designing a cheesecloth shirt for Leonardo DiCaprio for the film The Beach, along with swimwear for Tilda Swinton, and the famous Bridget Jones bunny outfit. Kids can’t do that any more and it’s not because they are not creative.” I squatted, we opened a shop but the rent wasn’t huge. Now, for young people, doing something in London is impossible unless you are really rich. Of those early years, she reflects: “We were really lucky.
She also has a beach hut in Kent, which she goes to as often as she can for a break. She moved a few times during her squatting years, and even now still rents a flat with the Peabody estate housing association, which she first moved to in 1983. Most of the squatting that was done was in council places, not private houses.” “At that time in London it was a real creative community on all sorts of levels that we were all part of – artists, musicians, designers.”Ī post shared by Esme Young some time she shared a squat in Maida Vale, west London, with other creatives. They welcomed Toyah Willcox, rock singer Bette Bright (who is married to Suggs of Madness) and Jasper Conran through their doors, among others. That was really unusual and we probably just got the zeitgeist.” Obviously there were boyfriends and husbands but in the business it was women. “What was very unusual about Swanky Modes was that it had been set up by four women. Their clothing appeared in Vogue and was photographed by edgy snappers of the day, including David Bailey and Helmut Newton. It soon became became cool and celebrities would travel great distances to visit the shop – and party on the floor above it. In her early 20s, Young was one of the founders of Swanky Modes, a collective run by four women.
People shouldn’t be buying so much and manufacturers shouldn’t be making so much.” “They were saying bamboo was sustainable, but once you start having to produce a lot, it is no longer sustainable. But they’ve got to be sent to you, you’ve got to send them back, and they’ve got to be dry cleaned.
For instance, I know this website where you can hire clothes so you are not buying them and you send them back. She was surely ahead of her time, but feels the issue of sustainable fashion is complicated. You become part of a little community of people who sew.”Ī post shared by Esme Young daughter of an RAF pilot and a clothes-loving mother, as a young girl she was influenced by Biba, Mary Quant and Ossie Clark, but she preferred to adapt and transform second-hand clothing into something unique. “It’s a shame, because particularly nowadays in this age of computers, you are being creative with something you can actually touch and feel. It was just something that was done, but it isn’t nowadays. “We were taught cross stitch, darning and mending, knitting and crocheting. My beehive was not the same after that experience,” she writes.Īway from the spotlight, the fashion designer and teacher, whose mother Patricia adored clothes, was brought up in a sewing environment at a convent boarding school run by nuns. “The two of us were a frenzy of music and energy and I think we must have cleared the dance floor with our crazy moves. They met at a costume fitting for the 2008 film Last Chance Harvey and she was then invited to the wrap party, where she turned up, hair teased into a beehive. Initially I was slightly speechless, but I soon got over it,” she recalls. A post shared by Esme Young only celeb I’ve ever felt starstruck about – and I think it’s to do with my age – is Dustin Hoffman.