frame 24 June 2022
An Interview with Bella Freud
by Clare Conville
We are honoured that the inimitable designer Bella Freud has curated a vitrine for our exhibition, entitled 'Champagne for my Real Friends'. To celebrate her contribution, and the fact that we're selling her fabulous 'Hello Cunty' T-Shirts in our pop-up shop, joint director of CHEERIO Clare Conville spoke to her about glamour, Francis Bacon's style and why there was something fantastic about the way he wore his clothes.
Bella Freud
Clare Conville: Francis Bacon was not traditionally good looking but as a young man he had a strange beauty which developed into a kind of irresistible glamour in later life. Do you think glamour is innate or is it something that can be acquired or accumulates?
Bella Freud: Like anything to do with style and glamour, nothing is set in stone. Some people seem to be weirdly glamorous without even noticing it, and others work hard at it and that is also incredibly thrilling. Being unselfconscious can be glamorous, and being extremely shy but with a good eye for clothes can result in dazzling glamour. I find it intriguing the way Francis Bacon wore only a few looks but it was as if he had completely invented style - as though there was no such thing as style until he wore a black turtleneck, and a mac. His intelligence and irreverence were at the heart of his glamour.
Bacon by John Deakin
CC: Looking at photographs of Francis we see an incredibly strong sense of personal style coming through. Is this something you can define for us? What are the key elements?
BF: FRANCIS had a brilliant eye and a knack for choosing clothes that really suited him. He didn't have a perfect body and he dressed in a way that made you obsessed by him instead of scrutinizing him for his faults.
CC: As a designer, you must know how somebody wears the clothes you make, can make a huge difference to how that person comes across and how they look. What do you think are the personal qualities or characteristics that Francis brought to the wearing of clothes?
BF: There was something fetishistic about the way he wore his clothes. He inhabited them. He had a great eye for the simple things he wore, but he wore them in a particular way- most of all the way he pushed the sleeves of his black sweater half way up his biceps, showing us an expanse of shapely white arm. There is something very arresting about the way he reveals himself. It sets off all sorts of unnerving thoughts. How clever of him to do this.
Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon
CC: We can hide as much as we can reveal in the choice of what we wear. Much of Francis’s life was lead in a very private manner. In the age of rampant social media this is almost impossible to imagine. As an expert designer what does his sense of style reveal to you?
BF: His superb style makes you think about his EXCEPTIONAL intelligence and what he was driven by. His clothes are worn so lightly but so purposefully.
CC: In the famous self-portrait, Francis is wearing a wristwatch. Wristwatches offer a practical solution, but we also know inexorable time is a theme in his work. Can what we wear convey a similar message?
BF: Style is a code of some kind, how we choose how we want to be seen or what we want to conceal.
And finally, a cultural recommendation...
Francis Bacon was fascinated by these birds - they formed the subject of many of his paintings and A Natural History of Owls from the 1980’s was one of the books found at Reece Mews after his death. We feel sure that he would appreciate the recently published, THE BOOK OF THE BARN OWL by best-selling author, Sally Coulthard, which beautifully illuminates the unseen world of this nocturnal bird - the most ghostly and mesmerising of its species.