How To Fail With Elizabeth Day - Bella Freud - Learning To Trust Herself

Starting point is 00:00:00 Celebrity doesn't guarantee any success in design, because it has to be good. I was called rude, fiend, fraud, quite a lot. I mean, in some ways, I think if I had joined the circus, I might still be in it. And then at a certain point, I just thought, no more psychics. I realised probably around 10 years ago or more, what's going to happen is what I make happen. So get on with it. Welcome to How to Fail. this is the podcast where we take failure, we flip it on its head, and we consider it something

Starting point is 00:00:32 to learn from rather than something to feel shame over. Before we get into this particular episode, please do remember to follow and subscribe so that you never miss a single conversation. Does anyone really know what hormones do? There is so much talk about women's hormonal health, but most women are left even more confused about what it means for them and what to do about it. This confusion ends now. Hormone Harmony is a game changer for women struggling with hormonal imbalances that leave them exhausted both physically and mentally. It contains science-based ingredients that bring back comfort, energy, clarity, confidence,

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Starting point is 00:02:56 up for your £1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com.com.uk slash fail. Go to Shopify.com.com.uk slash fail. Hear your first this new year with Shopify by your side. Since establishing her eponymous label in 1990, the designer Berra Freud has created in multiple forms, from clothing to interiors to perfume making, films and podcasting. In doing so, she has redefined what it means to be a modern designer. Her playful clothes, the iconic 1970 jumpers, the masculine tailoring with an elegant twist, have garnered a loyal following from the likes of Zadie Smith, Kate Moss and Little Sims. And now her podcast, Fashion Neurosis, has become a cult hit,

Starting point is 00:03:50 featuring weekly guests lying on a couch being interviewed by Freud about what clothes mean to them. Everyone from Kate Blanchette to Nick Cave has been asked about their sartorial inclinations. It's a witty nod to Freud's own heritage. Her father was the artist Lucian, her great-grandfather, the psychoanalyst Sigmund. Freud's childhood was one of emotional flux and financial uncertainty. She was one of Lucian's 14 children with different women, and when she was six, her mother took her and her younger sister Esther to Marrakesh on the hippie Trail, experiences later recounted in Esther's book, Hideous Kinky.

Starting point is 00:04:32 At 16, Freud moved to London and ended up working for Vivian Westwood in the 1980s, where her fashion apprenticeship started. Freud was a frequent sitter for her artist father until his death in 2011. Of this experience, she has said, sometimes I'd watch him being really turbulent the painting not going well or maybe something else was going on in the background but I'd see him go on doing it I think that was the best most useful thing I've ever learned Bella Freud welcome to how to fail

Starting point is 00:05:09 thank you Elizabeth it's so lovely to be sitting opposite you I apologize for not having a couch you are upright in the seated arm chair. I really, really adored that quote you gave about sitting for your father. Why do you think it was the most important thing you learned, seeing him in the struggle but continuing? I think because certainly in fashion or really in anything, there are always challenges and the success is to be tenacious, to persist. But I think watching him, watching him, not abandon the work, that was something that went in somewhere. And my tendons,

Starting point is 00:05:58 you know, I'm sure I'm not alone in wanting to, you know, change subject. And but I realize that's the worst thing I could do. And often, even when I'm in the middle of something that's going, well, I think I'll just go and make the bed or do something else because it's so attempting to leave, but the key is to stay and finish, and then the whole level of reward is so much greater. Your father drew the Belafroyd logo. Is your designing in a way a means of being in conversation with him still. What I like is to think that he's somehow in everything or on everything because the logo he drew, I turned into all sorts of, you know,

Starting point is 00:06:55 an embroidered little dog or printed and knitted. It's there all over the place. And I liked the feeling that somehow his art, which, couldn't be more further away from fashion. So I often go through his books and think, oh, there must be something I can somehow appropriate in some form. And the only thing that really works as a design is a thing that he did for me as a design.

Starting point is 00:07:29 And it's nice to have him there. your podcast is this wonderful and unique thing how has it been for you has it taught you something about yourself the act of asking other people what clothes mean to them well i've always known that that was what i was interested in how the power of clothes and and i noticed how designers weren't ever asked about the background to it or anything to do with how our work as a designer, any nuance to it or any depth or sort of, it's always the same thing. And because fashion's more visible in reality TV, there's still a sense of if you watch enough TV, you'll end up on TV but the making aspect is still a vagary and you see people like drawing or sticking things together

Starting point is 00:08:42 but it's like watching Blue Peter. There isn't, you don't see the process, I hate that word, the process, but the process is so enormous and it changes all the time. I really believe that people were more interested and influenced by what they were than they even know and that if they knew they would find that kind of fascinating. How frustrating then do you find it? Because you and I've spoken in the past about how hard it is to run a design business and how much graft it requires. So how frustrating is it if you see someone like Molly Mayer Haig releasing. Like a celebrity releasing a fashion line. Would I say Victoria Beckham in this context? I don't know. Would I? Is it frustrating?

Starting point is 00:09:37 I just think, oh God, good luck to you, you know. It's a hard business and celebrity doesn't guarantee any success in design because it has to be good, has to be wearable. If there isn't something in it, then it doesn't mean a thing. I mean, I've no idea who Molly, what's the name is. Molly Mayhay. There may be some good ideas in the beginning, but it's when you go on that you have to have a vision, you have to have the next stage and the next stage, and that's more than ever.

Starting point is 00:10:17 You know, it's so hard, it's hard enough for designers who have made their whole world about the story that goes on, on and on and the identity in the handwriting, I don't have any cynicism, but it doesn't particularly go in any. And when someone does it well, like Victoria Beckham did, you know, certainly in her start, you felt that's really reflects this part of you that we haven't seen and it's really cool. Yeah. And I like that. I love what you say there because being creative is artistic, but it's also a craft. It's also about building the wall

Starting point is 00:11:02 and putting one brick on top of the other and I feel like that about writing books as well. And just to answer your question, Molly Mayheig was a run-a-up one season of Love Island, which I'm imagining is not regular viewing in the Freud household. I probably said what, but I haven't. On fashion neurosis, you ask your guests

Starting point is 00:11:23 certain repeat questions. And one of them is always, what are you wearing today and why did you choose it? So I'd like to ask you that question, and then I'd like to ask myself that question. Yeah. What are you wearing today, Beth? Well, I probably should have thought more that this was also filmed because I was thinking about my brain and talking to you. And I decided to wear tailoring because I like tailoring and it makes me feel a bit more engaged as a professional. professional. And it's really cold, so, and I feel the cold a lot. And I wore this white

Starting point is 00:12:06 turtleneck. I love a turtleneck. And then a dark jumper, this one has bored and beautiful written on. Every now and then I realize I need some new clothes and luckily I've made some. Go and make them. You are one of the coolest dresses I know. and you create clothes that I absolutely love. The amount of pockets that you put in to garments is a sort of radical act of feminism, I think. And I'm wearing a 1970 Belafroy top that is one of my favourite items of clothing

Starting point is 00:12:42 and it has a whole history behind it. So it was the first piece of Belafroid that I owned and I asked my ex-husband for it when we were married for Christmas one year. So he got me this top. it's I think the only item I have kept from that marriage but I couldn't let it go Bella and it still carries such good energy for me

Starting point is 00:13:07 despite the end of that relationship and I wear it when I want to bring colour into my outfit but not in a way that feels overly aggressive and I wore it here's the twist I actually wore this top on the day that I met my now husband. How amazing. And it was partly because I'd been to see a psychic who had said, you need to wear more

Starting point is 00:13:34 colour, because I was going through a phase of sort of beages and black and greys. And I still had this top. And the next day I had this date with this guy from Hinge. I was like, OK, I'll wear my favourite colourful top. And I met Justin wearing this. Wow. So thank you. That's so interesting.

Starting point is 00:13:49 The idea that clothes would stay in a past relationship. and not in, not follow through and that this was the one that was the bridging. Definitely. Yeah, I like that. Because I think I dressed in a different way when I was in my first marriage for various psychological reasons,

Starting point is 00:14:08 which we don't need to get into because this podcast is actually not about me, it's about you. But I did want to do that and to say thank you for making the clothes that you do. Let's get onto your first failure, which is being late. Yes.

Starting point is 00:14:23 Tell me how, How you started being late. Where does your relationship with lateness stem from? God, well, I remember asking my shrink why I'm late. And he said, I think it's a love test. Because the whole process of being late is having this plan to meet someone. Being late, having this disastrous, adrenalineized journey. arriving, wondering if they'll still be there, they're there, and winning them back,

Starting point is 00:15:02 and then realizing how demoralizing it is and how I noticed the pattern of this thing. And also thinking, if I leave now, I could have 10 minutes more work, which I didn't normally do, what a waste of time to be on time was some sort of awful subliminal thing that kept me being late and my mother used to be late for me every time and it got worse and worse and worse and I hated it so much and my father was really punctual one of my extreme latenesses was I'd asked, I'd managed to get Lord Rothschild to give me an hour of his time for business advice. And this was maybe 20 years old. I don't know, anyway, maybe it was the beginning around 2000.

Starting point is 00:16:14 And I arrived an hour late. And his face was just like this smile of absolute derision. And I had five minutes left. Did you have a chance to say anything? I wished he'd not seen me at all. I had really abused something that was on offer. And it sort of was hitting me what I'd done in this ridiculously kind of self-sabotaging act. It was a really bad moment.

Starting point is 00:16:53 but it was good that he saw me because I felt really bad and that's exactly what I should have felt. I messed something up badly. It was just shocking how little power I seemed to have over this thing that I had total power over. And then somehow or other it started to change and I got less late and then I got invested

Starting point is 00:17:27 I suddenly saw the kind of fun of being on time and now I'm punctual and sometimes I'm early and I absolutely love it because I have total agency I don't have I realize I was so addicted in a way to the winning of things

Starting point is 00:17:47 that I created this scenario in my life where I had to double prove myself by nearly losing the thing I wanted and then seeing if I could just grab it back and it was a sort of horrible buzz. That is fascinating. And as you're talking, it's as though I can feel how upsetting those experiences were for you of extreme lateness. And actually what I'm hearing is potentially someone who didn't feel she was worth another person's time and that internal narrative being confirmed again and again. And I'm interested in whether that version speaks to you. I mean, it was both a kind of abjectness and an arrogance because there were

Starting point is 00:18:42 people that I felt like, you know, if I'm late, it doesn't, I don't care. and that was fairly sort of unrewarding in itself. It's an incredibly aggressive thing to do. So it's all mixed up in that sense of am I worth it? And then the ordinariness of being on time creates this massive universe which I have access to. because there's so much work it's like you know being miserable is a full-time job and it was an element of that the ordinariness of being on time what a phrase i want to come back to it but i'm very aware of the intimidation i feel um talking to sigmund freud's great-granddaughter and i'm now about to say

Starting point is 00:19:38 something, which Freud would be rolling in his grave over. But how much of this do you think stems from your childhood, Bella? In terms of the chaos that I mentioned in the introduction of the inconsistency of your mother, and I say that with love, but being trailed off to Morocco at such an early age and experiencing periods of abandonment and never knowing whether someone not only was going to be on time, but be there at all, do you think, can you talk to us a little bit about that and those experiences and how they shaped you? Everything sort of comes from that. And my sister Esther is very punctual. She's like my father and always a bit early. And I often feel that where the flip side of the same coin,

Starting point is 00:20:34 she's early, I'm late, but it's for similar reasons of control. I used to be very, very sort of focused and disciplined as a child and made all these weird tests for myself. And then when I got to puberty, they suddenly turned and I became chaotic. I created chaotic systems in my life and was self-destructive and that felt like my agency. but it was of course the world became very tiny I do think it it does come from that I think when I was very young I managed life because it was essential I knew how to cook when I was six and seven and I knew what to look out for I knew what was dangerous

Starting point is 00:21:30 so I was on red alert the whole time and then I just switched into this messiness and being late came from that I think was your rebellion I think so yeah because there was a period of time where your mother left you for several months with strangers when I was in Morocco I she went to Algeria and I said I don't want to come and that was that that was never revisited and we never talked about it. it ever. It was just off the table and so she went to Algeria and there was no phone. I didn't know where she was and she didn't know where I was because the couple who I stayed with they said they wanted to go travelling and I said I'm not coming. But they did organise for me

Starting point is 00:22:29 to stay with somebody in Marrakesh and then I didn't like it there and I ended up staying. with this woman who ran a, she was a nurse and she ran, had a little place where children who'd had polio would, she would do rehabilitation, they lived there. And then eventually she said, why don't you just come here? And bizarrely, I go to Pilates and I have been doing so for 25 years. and there was this young man there who was teaching in the studio and he was her son who hadn't been born then because when I met her she was only in her early 20s everyone was so young and I was seven

Starting point is 00:23:15 and then yeah my mother came back and found me there it was a weird time and I think it created a bit of a gulf between us and I was sort of horribly aware of how vulnerable my mother was a young woman alone in Morocco because I spoke and understood Arabic and so I could hear what people said about us and I mean people were so kind to us they were amazing but I was much more aware of the danger of wandering around knowing nothing you know If you know me and my podcast, you'll know that I'm a big advocate of therapy and have done a lot of work on myself over the years. But something I always found difficult

Starting point is 00:24:13 was finding the right therapist for me. I know firsthand how hard it is to find someone you click with who has availability at a convenient time for you. And I wish I'd known about Ruler, the healthcare company back then. Ruler is on a mission to make high quality mental health care easy and affordable for everyone. They take most major insurance plans and the average co-pay is only $15 per session. You can now get the quality care you need, when you need it, at a price you can afford. Thousands have already trusted Ruler to support them on their journey toward improved mental health and overall well-being. Head on over to Ruler.com slash HTF to get started today. After you sign up, they ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them that our

Starting point is 00:25:00 show sent you. Go to ruler.com. That's rula.com slash ht f and take the first step towards better mental health today. You deserve quality care from someone who cares. This week on lipstick on the rim, we sat down with the one and only Rachel Zoe and wow. This episode is a ride. We talked about everything. Motherhood, divorce, finding herself again, joining real housewives literally overnight. And then she said this. Can I tell you a true story? In COVID, in the darkness of COVID, I had a cat eye every single day where nobody saw me, not one soul. And when I had COVID, not even my ex-husband saw me or my children. And you know what I did? I went into my bathroom, I did a black liquid liner, put on lashes, black liner in the water line, a full

Starting point is 00:26:03 lip, did my hair, and sat in my bed. And that is what I did. And I looked at myself and I said, you are not a well person. I said, are you fucking okay. You have 104 fever. You are like, you are like contagion right now. If you love fashion, beauty or bravo, this Rachel's O' episode is a must. It's out now. You say now that you've discovered the joys of punctuality, when did that change occur? About 10 years ago, quite a while now. I remember noticing and it was like watching a dial, you know, an oxygen dial go up, thinking, God, oh, this is kind of exciting.

Starting point is 00:26:54 this thing is happening and I seem to be arriving almost on time and this thing that felt like evaded me was suddenly within my means to see how I could get it to the next stage and and then I find now that I get ready to leave with time to arrive there whereas before I just constantly mismanaged I sort of fantasized it would take me ten times. minutes to get from Labyrinth Grove to Hoban or whatever, because maybe it could. And now I don't do that, and I, it just gives me such a kick. So what was happening for you 10 years ago that prompted this, do you think? I did this thing called EMDR, which I sort of,

Starting point is 00:27:54 of did it for something else that just haunted me and just wouldn't go away in spite of all the other therapy I'd done. And that really had a good effect on me. And I noticed it seemed to sort of these catches went off in other areas of my life. This decision-making process improved dramatically, and that was one of the outcomes. So EMDR is eye movement desensitizing reprogramming? Something like that. It's the tapping thing, isn't it? Well, it's different things.

Starting point is 00:28:36 What it does is it does with the eye movement, it changes your fight, flight and freeze responses, your neural patterning. And then I sort of had the sense of the charge was slightly going out of it. Yeah, it was really sort of mysterious, but very effective. And when I went for my first meeting with this practitioner,

Starting point is 00:29:09 when I came out, I felt like I was going to faint. I felt so, I felt like I had an enormous, 20 stone man sitting on my chest and taking away my breathing ability, my kind of panic could feel it there. And it took me a while to go back. And then when I went back, we did this thing. And it was over some months, I felt things changing. And the thing that I'd specifically gone for, which haunted me. And I thought about intermittently every day, 20 times or more. It was like a Bermuda triangle that gradually closed. Wow, that's so powerful and so fascinating that eyes, ears, of course, these are sensations that take in so much and carry so much. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:30:09 That aren't necessarily easily accessed. I'm so glad. it worked for you. Can I also ask you because both your parents died in 2011, is that right? Within a month or within a week. Within a week of each other. My father was dying of cancer and we were all expecting him to die. And then a week before he died, my mother went into hospital for some tests and she'd come and stayed with me, which she didn't do very often, but she'd been to stay with me a few months earlier and said she'd forgotten her painkillers and she wasn't someone who took painkillers and I noticed that and thought,

Starting point is 00:30:53 God, that's strange and she said, I've had some pain in my back or something. She went into hospital, they did some tests and then they said you've got a week to live. And she did die a week later and my father died on July 20th and she died on 24th. so it was so strange that must have been horrendous

Starting point is 00:31:17 yeah it was it was so abstract that it and in a way because she was she knew she was going to die and this doctor had told her exactly what you know what would happen and it was very it seemed to be very peaceful and I remember and also it made it possible to to ask her things or say things like ask her if she had a will say things like I'm going to miss you and not and that was completely normal I remember saying that to her and she said I feel strangely detached from what's happening to me it was kind of wonderful in a way because there's nothing I mean I don't suppose anyone else would want a long, prolonged death, but her more than anyone. She was a very immediate person and she'd had, they discovered she had cancer in three places and it was completely everywhere. You know, we made our peace and I thought we were going to be at the beginning of some

Starting point is 00:32:30 other phase in our lives of begrudging acceptance of each other. And we sort of were and then she, that was. it she was gone it was like a racehorse and outside a horse streaking to the front and and and she said oh I'm sorry I'm just sorry I won't be able to come to dad's funeral and then we just laughed and it was it was great in in some ways you know even though it was unbelievably shocking I'm so sorry for what you and Esther must have gone through at that time did you have an opportunity to say to either of them I love you

Starting point is 00:33:13 or were you not that kind of family? I did say to my father once I'd done some sort of self-help course and I said oh this is the bit where I tell you I love you and we just laughed

Starting point is 00:33:27 and I think it it was really nice and I'm sure he appreciated that and I tried that a bit with my mother and in a way it was more about gestures and I was so glad that she'd come to stay with me

Starting point is 00:33:45 because we kind of wound each other up. And we had a really nice, she stayed for two or three nights and we had a really nice time together. And I remember we went, because she lived in Suffolk and we went to the Latitude Festival, and we went to see Nick Cave, and then we went to see Blondie. and when we were sort of rocking out we looked at each other

Starting point is 00:34:14 and I thought, yeah, this is, you know, this is where she just was like a rebellious teenager her whole life and when I was together with her and that, we got on really well. And we had things out and some were successful and some much less so. I suppose there was some kind of acceptance of each other before she died which was a peaceful thing

Starting point is 00:34:48 did your father say I love you back no I don't think so he didn't really use that language but he showed it in many ways so that didn't matter at all I wasn't, I was, my intention was to say something that was potentially embarrassing, but I wanted him to know anyway. And so he knew. Well done you for your courage in navigating your relationship with your mother.

Starting point is 00:35:23 Your second failure, seamless link, is not joining the circus. Oh, God, yes. So was this actually an opportunity? Yeah. Okay. Tell me this story. I think I was 19 and I wanted, I was going through a phase of trying to be an actress or vaguely entertaining, like being in a band or being an actress, being a performer of some kind. And I used to get the stage and look at the adverts and I saw there was an advert for something or other.

Starting point is 00:35:57 I don't know if it said Anyway I went for this meeting And it was in the middle of Shepherds Bush Roundabout where there was this circus And I was going for a job It transpired of being the girl that dances on a ball You know when they'd have an enormous ball And there would be someone who somehow stayed on it

Starting point is 00:36:18 And I I went for the audition And I got the job And then Wait so in the audition did you have to stand on the wall? No, no, she just sort of checked me out. How old were you?

Starting point is 00:36:32 I was 19, I think, 18 or 19. It was the first part of the job I'd have to go and live in Birmingham in a caravan on the site, and I wouldn't be paid for anything at all, no living costs, no food. And then after a month, I think, or it was it, I would then get my living costs. and then when I was in the circus I would get a sort of minimum wage and I just didn't do it and I stayed home

Starting point is 00:37:08 and I always regretted it and I actually I mean in some ways I think if I had joined the circus I might still be in it so in some ways I'm glad I didn't do it because my life took me in a different direction

Starting point is 00:37:23 and it was one of my fantasies as a child to be in the circus. I loved all the people in it. I always love people in that type of world. And outside, you know, an outsider life with a lot of pride. And it's something that I still think, oh, God, you know, I winked out. You do look like you'd be a great addition to any circus. I mean, that was a competition.

Starting point is 00:37:52 Yes, no, I'd take it as that. You mentioned there that when you were younger, so six, you were the one who felt you had to be responsible in the absence of adult responsibility. Yeah. And then in your teenage years, that switched. And I wonder how that affected your relationship with your younger sister Esther, if at all. Yeah, no, it did. Because when we were children, she was the person I trusted. And I don't know. if it's an oldest child syndrome that she was so important to me, but I also felt like, you know, I was looking out and she was behind me. So she gave me this moral support, but I was the soldier on the front line. And I mean, whether I was or not is neither here nor there, but it's, and I don't

Starting point is 00:38:54 know if other eldest children have that feeling of slight loneliness of we're the ones we also get the love because we're the first one but then we lose it and we get the first where the ones that are the experimenters as it were she just was such a great ally and she always believed in me and believed me more than anything and you know as a teenager people are it's the time where you get dismissed and very much so in the 70s and she believed me and that was such a big thing I was always grateful and still am for that yes what's it like today that's more important than ever. There's some kind of thing in some, I can't remember how it exactly goes about resilience and it's something to do with trauma when it's not witness is a catastrophe, but trauma

Starting point is 00:40:08 when there is some sort of witness, i.e. someone believes what happened to you, makes it much easier to recover from and when your experience is denied it's just this kind of you can get stuck in this thing for your whole life of proving or just disappearing because what everyone saw you're being told didn't happen to have that information so that it's not dismissed and notice it in other people. Thank you. It's so rare, I think, that we talk about sibling relationships. And it's rare on this podcast too.

Starting point is 00:40:57 And I really value having the chance to talk about it as one of two sisters myself. And I'm the younger sister. And I completely agree with you, by the way. I was so grateful to my older sister, Catherine, for being the experimenter, the kind of bowlwalk, the first defence. and it's just a very interesting relationship that completely shapes who we are in our character and I really appreciate how much attention you pay to family

Starting point is 00:41:26 when you do your podcast fashion neurosis you do it sitting on a chair that was your father's chair in his studio this sort of battered beautiful painterly armchair and of course the act of what you're doing is psychoanalytical as your great-grandfather was the founding father of it. And I just wonder what your relationship is with the Freud name.

Starting point is 00:41:51 My whole relationship was with my father. He never talked about his grandfather. There was no reference hardly at all. He made a few jokes about him. And it was really about what you do yourself. and he was the model for that so we didn't we didn't use that as a kind of blanket

Starting point is 00:42:21 I felt that would be a bit tacky to just you know in the end if I don't do a good job of whatever it is I'm doing then who cares if I then use that some sort of magic carpet that's the worst thing I can imagine so we were never brought up with a thing about Freud at all but my father there he was he was everything to me and I just

Starting point is 00:42:57 worked you know he was just such a powerful person in my life and he was and I looked up at him and how he dealt with life and he seemed to deal with life by painting through any problems. And also, when I was growing up, no one had heard of Freud apart from intellectuals. So when I was a child, it was just an unpronounceable name for a really long time.

Starting point is 00:43:29 And then Clement Freud was on TV. He did these adverts for dog food. And he was on just a minute, wasn't he? Yeah, but. Yes. But when we were growing up, we didn't have a TV. So sometimes people would say, oh, something about it. And that seemed quite exciting that someone we were related to that we didn't know was on TV. And then also my father's paintings, people were quite freaked out by them. When I was younger at school, no one knew what it meant. I was called frude, fiend, fraud,

Starting point is 00:44:16 quite a lot. And then when I moved to Italy, when I was 22, everyone was obsessed with Freud. And that was quite funny. I remember the man in the dry cleaner saying, oh, can you tell me? I just thought it was hilarious. By that time, I'd got much. more, you know, I realized that it was really down to me if I was going to be ambitious for making my way in the world. It was got to be about being good at my work. Maybe it's just a phase you're going through. You'll get over it. I can't help you with that. The next appointment is in six months. You're not alone. Finding mental health support shouldn't leave you feeling more lost. At CAMH, we know how frustrating it can be trying to access

Starting point is 00:45:09 care. We're working to build a future where the path to support is clear, and every step forward feels like progress, not another wrong turn. Visit camh.ca to help us forge a better path for mental health care. Have you ever been to a psychic or a clairvoyant who has communicated with Sigmund? No, I did used to go to psychics all the time, and now I'd never go to one again. because I would sort of, instead of thinking what should I do, I'd see what they thought I should do. And I'd often do it, you know, ridiculous, stupid things, always to do with romantic relationships. Like when there were obvious red flags and I'd think, but they said this was the one or something. And then at a certain point I just thought, no more psychics.

Starting point is 00:46:01 but I remember going to this medium who actually gave me some quite brilliant advice. So I went back again and she said, oh, your grandfather's trying to communicate. I mean, this wasn't Sigmund, this was aunt's my father's father. He said, I think he likes ice cream. And I thought, okay, that's enough. Well, I wonder if you stop seeing psychics

Starting point is 00:46:28 around the time that you stopped being late. Maybe you felt you had your own agency again. I realized I was just deferring, you know, kind of giving my intelligence to someone else instead of using it. And I have no temptation whatsoever now. And it's much more exciting actually like that instead of waiting for this thing that doesn't really quite make sense. You know, that thing of, I wonder what's going to happen. I realized probably around 10 years ago or more what's going to happen is what I make happen. So get on with it. Stop messing around with all this rubbish.

Starting point is 00:47:12 I mean, I don't not believe in it, but I don't want to be part of that anymore. I love that for you. Your final failure is another near-miss, it sounds like. So we go from the circus to auditioning for Bow Wow with Malcolm McLaren. So to bring the listener and the viewer up to speed, you have not joined the circus, but you did get a job with Vivian Westwood. And you ended up as her assistant.

Starting point is 00:47:37 So it does it date from this time in your life? It was the 20s. Yeah. Because I first worked for Vivian in her shop, seditionaries, when I was about 17. And then I left and I did all stuff and lived in other places. And when I came back, Malcolm said, asked me if I wanted to audition. And I was trying to be, I played music.

Starting point is 00:48:05 And I'd always played, I always played music. And but I remember going to this audition. And Bawa, wow, wow, were amazing. And they had all had a fight. And Annabella had left, I think. She was, yeah. she was and I'd seen her I'd seen them play and they were so amazing and I remember going and sometimes Malcolm would sort of take me up or he did take me up and she sent me for singing

Starting point is 00:48:39 lessons and I went to this audition I remember feeling really not at my best and like I a bit groggy and and there was another girl there this gorgeous girl called Pearl and I sang with them and she sang with them and then they all huddled around her and I thought this isn't going very well and it was really really embarrassed I felt so embarrassed

Starting point is 00:49:14 but in a way it's good to go through extreme embarrassment. It doesn't matter that much. And I knew it didn't work. I knew I wasn't right. But I'm glad I tried because this whole thing about failure of course is that you can fail and try again is a really important thing because you realize you're not going to die of shame or about it.

Starting point is 00:49:44 It's good experience. and it kind of makes you more conscious of what you can or can't do. But what I didn't know at the time was that just wasn't my time to be a performer. And I became a designer where I felt comfortable being behind the scenes and shaping things. embarrassment is such an interesting sensation because I think a bit like you were saying with fashion at the beginning it can often be dismissed as trivial or absurd or funny and actually I think it can go incredibly deep

Starting point is 00:50:28 and listening to you speak about your embarrassment in this instance makes me think about how closely connected it might have been to fear for you because you also talked about being able to speak and understand Arabic and so you could hear what people were saying about your mother and there was probably an element of embarrassment there of not wanting to stand out too much because you wanted to protect what you could there's embarrassment and the shame

Starting point is 00:50:56 which is about just hating your very essence and I realised I'd done something that was very on that spectrum and I thought you just got to live with this and there are other things where I it felt much more

Starting point is 00:51:18 extreme I can't and more privately mortifying about myself and oddly enough that wasn't one of them it you know it's a

Starting point is 00:51:36 story I'd totally forgotten I was racking my brains the thing to think, you know, what failure am I prepared to talk about? And it was sort of like, in my fantasy, oh, I'll be a pop star, there is a job waiting that this brilliant girl has just left her a bit. In fact, I think she came back because they couldn't find anyone. There was her and she was the right person. and this other girl got, as it were, the job,

Starting point is 00:52:08 but she wasn't in the band in the end. And I realized that this failure of not getting this job was part of the journey of learning. So drawing this session to a close, do you feel that you are living rooted in the truth of who you are? I feel like I'm having the time of my life. It's amazing to get to this age. I feel like, I mean, I've always done things and I've always been very driven,

Starting point is 00:52:45 but I haven't been able to enjoy my life as much as I'm enjoying it now. So that's the most incredible feeling of excitingness and fun and sort of, you know, self-consciousness isn't such a, doesn't have such a, grip on me. I'm not so afraid of, I don't have so much self-doubt. I don't have hardly any, I mean, I do, but it's not self-doubt. It's being discriminating about what's good and bad. It's really fun. You're in your 50s. I'm older than that. You make aging so exciting for the rest of us. Thank you, because not only in the way you make us feel in your clothes,

Starting point is 00:53:38 but in the example you give us in how to live. So thank you for that. And thank you so much for coming on how to fail. Oh, thank you, Elizabeth. That's so lovely to be here with you. And I have such high regard, and I love what you do. And I love the happiness. you have in your life. It's such a beautiful thing. It's wonderful. Thank you so much. I feel very

Starting point is 00:54:06 seen by you. Any time we have met and it hasn't been that many, but I feel very seen by you. And I think that's a gift that you give. Well, you give that too. You make that possible. Thank you. Well, this 1970 jumper has seen me through so much. So thank you. Please do follow How to Fail to Get New Episodes. as they land on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts, please tell all your friends. This is an Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment original podcast. Thank you so much for listening.

How To Fail With Elizabeth Day - Bella Freud - Learning To Trust Herself

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