burnt but escaped by parachute. He landed
behind British lines but the British assumed
he was German and shot him, putting a bullet
through his arm and two into a leg. They
then threw a grenade, “exploding a hole
in the side of his body”. Eventually, he made
it to the military hospital in East Grinstead
that specialised in reconstructive surgery.
There he met Patricia, the woman he would
marry, who was doing her bit for the war
effort as a nurse. However, she had been an
excellent diver and, had her father allowed
it, she would have joined the Olympic team.
Why doesn’t that surprise me?
Her father recovered but, “His hands
were burnt and his eyes were burnt and
my mother said he would scream and shout
in the night when they were first married.”
Esme was the second of their five children.
She only learnt later that her mother had
suffered from postnatal depression with every
birth, which is why Auntie Sheila would come
to stay, or why the latest baby was farmed out
to Auntie Queenie.
Her mother, she says, loved practical jokes
and Carry On films but was, she writes in her
memoir, “far from easy”. What do you mean
by that? “She wasn’t very maternal. She did
struggle to show her emotions and be loving
towards us.” She then adds, “And she didn’t
like me.” She didn’t? How did you know? “She
wouldn’t walk down the street with me, for a
start. And she always criticised what I did, or
my boyfriends. She was always putting me
down. She was a snob, basically.”
Did she expect you to have a career? “I’m
sure she’d have liked me to marry a duke.”
She always handmade her mother’s Christmas
present but one year ran out of time so gave
her a vase instead. “At last, a real present,” her
mother cried. But it’s important to add they
did become “really close” later in her life and,
“I was with her when she died.”
Esme was dispatched to boarding school
at five. Five! It’s what that generation did- her brothers went to Ampleforth “because
my father had once played cricket there and
liked the pitch” – and also it made sense
because, “My father was in the RAF and my
mother had her troubles.” She went to the
Convent of the Holy Ghost in Bedford, housed
in a gothic-style mansion with no heating, “so
we always got dressed under the blankets”.
You write, I say, that being sent away at
such an early age did make you “self-reliant
and emotionally detached”.
“You had to find a way to cope. It wasn’t
a conscious thing but you had no one to
confide in or cry in front of. It definitely
made me detached and self-reliant.”
Is that why you’ve had boyfriends down
the years (Phil, Colin, Mervyn) but settling
down was never on the cards? “I just never
felt broody. I think if I did I would have...
Well, who knows? Of the five of us only two
have had children.” Perhaps your mother
never felt broody. “Perhaps she didn’t. Very
good point.” Perhaps she just had five children
because women were expected to have
children at that time, rather than become
Olympic divers. “Definitely.”
She learnt to sew because every Friday
evening the laundry came back and if a hem
needed taking down or a button had to be
reattached you were expected to do it yourself.
She thinks she made her first full outfit – a
gathered skirt – at around seven years old.
She was otherwise always sketching and the
nuns who ran the school were wonderfully
progressive and into art, so she was generally
encouraged. She went from school to
Saint Martin’s School of Art, which meant
coming to London, living in squats, buying
a motorbike, partying – “I love to party and
didn’t really slow down until the mid-Eighties”- and mixing with the fashion students, which
is how she met the three fellow designers with
whom she set up Swanky Modes.
Their heyday was in the Eighties, “when
the phone rang off the hook” and they hung
out with David Bowie. Their collections were
photographed not just by Newton but also
David Bailey and Nick Knight. Grace Jones
wore their “padlock dress” and when she first
caught sight of it she “screamed with pleasure”.
And, as we know, their “torpedo tits” were well
ahead of their time.
But it drew to a natural conclusion in the
early Nineties when the other women went
off to have families. “There was never any
acrimony and we never had a man running
things. We didn’t make money, but we didn’t
care.” After that, she taught pattern cutting at
Central Saint Martins, and still does, and
made costumes for films.
And Sewing Bee? She says she was at
a party (of course) prior to the first series
where she met one of the producers who
asked her if she’d be interested, but then
nothing happened and May Martin (sewing
instructor for the Women’s Institute) was
cast. But three years later she was approached
again. She had to submit a CV and had never
written a CV, “So my brother Christopher
did it for me.” She was interested in seeing
the first episode she appeared in but, not
having a television, she went round to watch
at Suggs’s house. (She didn’t break in. He
is a friend.)And has the show made a financial
difference? “Yes, it has. I don’t have loads of
money. I’ve never had a car. I’ve never had
a mortgage or anything you need money for.
But it has made a difference, yes.”
You can splash out? “No, there’s nothing
I really want,” she says, but she did go to
Japan, “and that’s splashing out for me. And
I now take my brothers out for meals when
they always used to take me out. Chris always
paid for me when we went on holiday because
I couldn’t afford it. He even bought me my
first washing machine.”
She moved into a one-bed rented Peabody
flat, between Old Street and Barbican, in the
early Eighties and has stayed to this day. It’s
“teeny weeny”, she says, “and very crammed.
I’ve had to get rid of a lot of books because
I had more stuff to put on the shelves.” She
has a busy life. She still loves to party. And
dance, coming home at 4am. Benders with
Joe are a regular feature in her diary. She
loathes housework. Sometimes she will
watch programmes on “my computer”. Crime
dramas, mostly. It used to be the Scandi ones
but, “With lockdown I couldn’t watch them
so I started watching old ones like Midsomer
Murders. It’s soothing, not challenging
or violent, and you always know who is
going to be the murderer as it’s the one who
is least likely.”
She may say she’s “emotionally detached”
but, at the same time, she appears to have
many meaningful relationships in her life. She
is close to her siblings and “wonderful nieces”
and still close to her Swanky Modes partners
and now their children. She tries to visit her
favourite Greek island (Sifnos) at least once a
year and she’ll always take one of the kids.
We talk for a while longer. Who have been
the best pattern cutters, to your mind? “John
Galliano was good at cutting and so was
Alexander McQueen.” We remember defunct
shops: Chelsea Girl, Snob and Biba. We talk
about how she is sometimes mistaken for
psychotherapist Philippa Perry, wife of
Grayson, the artist. He’s a friend and she went
with him to the V&A summer party one year.
“People came up to me, asking how
I was, and I was thinking, but I don’t know
who you are. And then I realised: they think
I’m Philippa.”
And lastly I ask if she’d mind turning up
my shirt sleeves, which, typically, are far too
long. Look, I’ve had to roll the cuff up three
times. She says, “I could put a tuck in them.”
But then adds, “I don’t think I have the right
colour thread.” Honestly, it’s not as if she
has better things to do. But then I remember:
chances are, she has. nBeyond the Seams: My Life in Creativity,
Friendship and Adventure by Esme Young is
published on Thursday (£18.99, Blink Publishing)The Times Magazine 69HER MOTHER ‘WAS
A SNOB, BASICALLY.
SHE’D HAVE LIKED ME
TO MARRY A DUKE’
HAIR AND MAKE-UP: ALICE THEOBALD AT ARLINGTON ARTISTS USING TRISH MCEVOY AND BUMBLE AND BUMBLE