Professor Louise Wilson OBE, Course Director of the MA Fashion course at Central Saint Martins is regaling me with tales from the raucous farewell party CSM threw (hosted by Katie Grand, a former student) to celebrate the move to the £200 million
Professor Louise Wilson OBE, Course Director of the MA Fashion course at Central Saint Martins is regaling me with tales from the raucous farewell party CSM threw (hosted by Katie Grand, a former student) to celebrate the move to the £200 million complex in Kings Cross this summer: “I never left the office! I thought the office was going to be a relaxed room where people would just pop in. But there were 150 people in here all night – we were trying to play our own music in here but the next day the computer with our entire archive got stolen.” We are sitting in her office on the first floor of the dreary Charing Cross branch – the paint is peeling off the walls which are stripped bare and there are 26 blue plastic boxes stacked on top of each other in the corner. The surroundings may be unprepossessing but it is still a chance to savour the end of an era before history re-writes itself. After all, it was along these crumbling corridors that Hussein Chalayan, John Galliano, Alexander McQueen, not to mention the Sex Pistols and Lucian Freud all walked. Not that Wilson ever looks back: “I wasn’t for the move to Kings Cross and I’m not sure about it now but I can recognise that it’s a brave move. It is an epic space. You can’t take away from it. I would much rather stay at Charing Cross but it’s investing in the future.”
The story of how a farmer’s daughter who grew up in the highlands of Scotland went on to mentor the likes of Gareth Pugh, Christopher Kane, Giles Deacon, Phoebe Philo, in the process being awarded an OBE and named as “the most influential person in British fashion” has been recounted elsewhere but remains remarkable for the person at the centre of it – self described as “bitter and maladjusted with no work-life balance.” Wilson is in fine form today – peppering her rants with expletives and then later terrorizing our photographer when he suggests shooting her in a garden. She smirks, “Imagine me in a garden!” She’s typically dismissive of her accomplishments: “I’ve been the spokesperson at Saint Martins by accident. CSM is the vessel – it really is. I’ve got a personality and I speak out of turn. But it doesn’t matter – it’s about the individuals.” What’s on her mind is the rise in tuition fees from next year. “I don’t even want to discuss it. You don’t need my voice on how do I see that changing. It’s obvious. It’s too frightening. They’re very dozy about education in this country. We have the finest art school system in the world but it’s been tampered with a lot lately. It’s changed fundamentally. There is a whole industry coming out of it. If there are no young designers, who are you going to write about, blog about or support at shows? I think it’s time for people to wake up.”
The hour I spend in her company has been entertaining, educational and just a little terrifying. As a parting shot I ask her, but what is the future of fashion? On this she is emphatic, “The future of fashion is investing in creativity and to understand what it brings to the industry. No matter how big you are you cannot sustain yourself without creative input. I would hope the future of fashion is education – without the fundamentals of education, we’re all a bit fucked. So creativity is the future.”
Suggested Reading: Discover Louise Wilson's favourite fashion books here.
