Before I climbed on to Eurostar to interview Dame Vivienne Westwood in Paris (where she was showing her Gold Label collection for spring/summer 2013), various parameters were set out for me by email. (You cannot interview anyone these days without parameters.) One parameter was Vivienne's new designs of fine jewellery made from a new metal called palladium. Not a new metal as such, but newly hallmarked (in 2010) by the Assay Office as a precious metal.
The other parameter was Vivienne's passionate involvement with climate change, which she is fighting off with her own Climate Revolution. She launched this at the Paralympics closing ceremony and at her Red Label show for London Fashion Week. Also, she wanted to talk about 'Cool Earth, the environmental charity, and about other campaigns close to her heart'.
READ: Vivienne Westwood spring/summer 2013 review
So would I please take a look at Vivienne's blog, activeresistance.co.uk , which includes all the activism she's currently working on? I duly looked. She has put up the picture of her wearing shorts, her own Climate Revolution T-shirt (which, I noticed, had a little outing on Lady Gaga recently) plus some very worrying make-up, thick black lines, which she calls 'non-Smiley face', which is apparently how she appeared at the closing ceremony.
She's very brave, Vivienne. She could have worn her sacque-back Watteau dress, and looked mind-bendingly lovely, instead of a penny-for-the-guy outfit. I have to say that joining the climate revolution is not one of my overweening desires but of all Westwood's hobby horses this is currently her best beloved. She tells interviewers that she wants people out on the streets, importuning their governments to stop global warming.
READ: Westwood declares 'I am Julian Assange' as she visits WikiLeaks founder in Ecuadorean embassy
She tells them the most important person on the planet is James Lovelock, the 94-year-old 'climate change revolutionary' and author of the Gaia theory. In headline terms (the only way I ever read it, I'm afraid), his message is: 'Billions of humans will die before the end of this century' and 'Only a few "breeding pairs" will survive - in the Arctic region'.
So my position, as I detrain from Eurostar and head towards the British Ambassador's residence, is to somehow wriggle out of debating fracking shale gas with my heroine Vivienne Westwood. I am too in love with the memory of her shocking brilliance in the 1980s and early 1990s to want to hear a harangue about how to cool the earth.
IN PICTURES: Vivienne Westwood spring/summer 2013 collection
Outside the residence there is a queue like an execution, with exotically dressed fashionistas shuffling passports past security and gunmen guarding the gate. But once in the courtyard, as ever in Paris, the heart lifts. The British Ambassador, Sir Peter Ricketts, is in a tremendously good mood - as anyone might be who lives in a palace bought by the Duke of Wellington for George III from Napoleon's sister. Also, his house is heaving with half-dressed models who are practising their entrances and twirls before strutting off in a great winding zigzag through the staterooms and twin pavilions.
Georgia May Jagger is not modelling in the Westwood fashion show as such, but she is starring as the 'face' of Vivienne's palladium-jewellery launch. So she is drifting around in proper make-up, a massive great tiara and necklace that look like flowers made of frozen lace and a blizzard of flashlight when she passes the massed photographers.
Georgia May Jagger in Westwood t-shirt and tiara
She's a lovely girl, I say to Vivienne, who immediately answers: 'Ooh, she is! She's so sexy, Georgia! Such a sexy little thing. I've always thought so. From when she was only a very little girl there was something very sexy about her. She'd look at you and you'd think, "Ooooh."' I look at Georgia May with new eyes and can see exactly what Vivienne means. Blimey, I think.
READ: Georgia May Jagger for Vivienne Westwood jewellery
You just can't say stuff like that now, can you? But Vivienne Westwood speaks as she finds. There's a massive clarity in her discourse. She'd make the world's worst politician: it's all out there, open and en clair. (Tiny example: she tells me about her body hair, which is 'very fine. I've got nothing under my arms at all.' I've known women for 30 years who wouldn't tell me about their body hair.)
Even in the anything-goes world of fashion, it took a fair old time for Vivienne Westwood to reach the sunlit uplands. Her punk decade, when she was living an exciting and merrily subversive life in a council flat in Balham with Malcolm McLaren, took up the entire 1970s.
Westwood and Malcome McLaren in 1981
They ran a scary King's Road shop. First called Let It Rock, then Too Fast to Live, Too Young to Die, then Sex with (a very big sign in squashy neon-pink), which I barely dared enter: the stock was so off-the-wall, it looked dangerous - and the staff, my dear, the staff were terrifying. Then it became Seditionaries. I can remember that Sex sold a T-shirt with two naked men on it, showing the full flaccid.
Then the 1980s arrived; she split from McLaren and began to be taken seriously, eventually, as a designer. Mostly because she was copied so enthusiastically by mainstream designers. I mean 'referenced' , not copied, of course: Lagerfeld's shredded hems, Lacroix's mini-crinis, Gaultier's cone-shape bras worn on the outside, all paid homage.
Back in the 1980s, when her great collections were thundering through the press, Vivienne Westwood occupied a singular position in fashion: she was a woman (which in her trade was rare then, and is still), she was British (not only rare but risible, alas, especially for regular readers of tabloids) and she was one of the most innovative fashion designers of the century.
1987 catwalk show
I worked on Tatler and Harpers & Queen then, so went to grand, post-show fashion parties on foreign soil. Mostly I wore outfits from Gianni Versace (he was a most tremendous giver of gifts), but the belle of any ball was always Romilly McAlpine, dressed from top to heel-and-toe in Vivienne Westwood.
She towered above me and most of the men in her 10in super-elevateds and accepted compliments all evening from the emperors of Italian fashion (Armani, Valentino, Versace), who moved round her purring brava, che bellissima, you are brilliant advertisement for British fashion, etc etc.
Gold Label spring/summer 2013
She was. She had an establishment life as wife to Margaret Thatcher's party treasurer, Alistair (later Lord) McAlpine, and was flying the flag fabulously. Karl Lagerfeld told Romilly that Westwood was a brilliant designer.
When the show is over, we go upstairs while Vivienne gets her picture taken. 'We' is the woman in charge of talking about palladium, the woman in charge of hearing Vivienne talk about climate change, the twinkly ambassador in charge of champagne, the young photographer and Andreas Kronthaler, Vivienne's partner, who is in charge - momentarily at least - of getting the breath of life back into Vivienne, who is in that zonked, wiped-out state that you see in most designers post-show because they haven't slept for days and have been running on adrenalin instead of sustenance.
The photographer sits her at a table and points his camera at her for what seems like 40 minutes. She is tiny, fragile-looking, very white-skinned, with slender ankles and a neat body. The crazy dress is what she wore for the show. He doesn't talk to her or try to animate her or change her position. He looks up at her, he looks down. She doesn't move a hand, and if she does he puts it back.
I worry about the picture but, now I see it, it's terrific. She is 71, this woman. She doesn't look 50. Aeons pass. Then she says, 'Can we stop, please? I've been sitting here a long, long time not moving and I'm tired and you just keep taking the same picture again and again.' He stops. Clever boy.
Andreas half-carries her towards the sofa and snuggles her into his arm. He is 25 years younger than her and about three feet taller, with long dark hair and a beard. They met in Vienna when she did a stint as professor of fashion at the Vienna Academy. I get palladium out of the way first by asking Vivienne how she worked with it to design the jewellery and she says Andreas designed it. 'Tell her, pet.' He says the lustre is very special and looks different under artificial light. 'You can make a massive piece of jewellery and it's feather-light to wear. It's so attractive, so beautiful, so effective.'
I've never known if they are married or not. 'We've been married for nearly 20 years or something, me and Andreas,' says Vivienne. 'We got married at Wandsworth Town Hall.' Me: Wandsworth! So romantic. 'Yes, nobody knew.' Nobody did flipping know; I didn't know. Vivienne says: 'We probably wouldn't have done that except Andreas couldn't stay in the country because Austria wasn't in the EU at that time.' Gosh, I'd forgotten that.
Jemima Khan, writing for the New Statesman in the spring, asked her if she was an antifeminist, so I thought I'd check out how consistent her views are: is she a feminist? She says not, because she doesn't see why women in 'the privileged world' need to be. She can't see the point of fulminating and agitating in order to prove that you are as good as a man. 'Another reason is because I live in the privileged world I would never accept the idea that somehow I am a victim of society. Just by being born a woman!' But she definitely feels that 'women in - other cultures, let's call it - should be supported. And in our culture if they are somehow in the position of victims. But I think men are victims just as much really and I think in our society it would be really scary to be a man.'
She's interested in sociopolitical issues, but not in party politics, or politicians. 'I hardly ever read the newspapers. I wouldn't recognise these people if they came into the room. I would recognise David Cameron, I would recognise Ed Miliband - they're both equally delayed.' Delayed? 'They don't live in the real world. They are totally behind the times, they haven't a clue what's happening in the world, either of them. They just want to keep their jobs and somehow people are telling them what to do and they're doing it. And they don't know what's going on.'
Did she meet Tony Blair? 'Oh, yes, I did. But I only met him once when he first got in and I didn't know who he was. I actually thought it was - who's the other one, who died - Tony… erm? He was minister of defence for a bit.' I realised on the train back who she meant. Tony Banks, the scourge of hunts and huntsmen. I ask her if there is a sword involved when a woman gets damed. Because every knight I ever met gets swoony about being knighted (the Queen is a little woman, but it's a pretty big sword she uses for dubbing).
Vivienne takes the bananas question seriously. 'No, there's no sword. Not like being a knight. And the worst thing is,' she says energetically, 'if you're a knight, your wife is a lady, and Andreas would quite like to be something, wouldn't you, Andreas? But there's nothing.' Andreas makes a modest 'Moi?' kind of a face.
Westwood with her husband Andreas Kronthaler
'But we like being married. I do, and I know Andreas does. Makes things more sort of clear - makes "until death do us part" more clear. It's nice. D'you know what? I was saying to Andreas I would like to keep on living because I think the climate revolution is so important and I would really like to know what happens. And if I live for the next 20 years I will definitely know whether we've managed to do anything or whether we've had it. Really, I will know that and I want to know.'
I tell her: Three words, Vivienne. The. Queen. Mother. Think about her. Keep her in your head.
'But then I want another 10 years,' she said, with great seriousness. 'I want to learn to speak Chinese and practise Chinese calligraphy because I think it must hold the secret of the universe.'
The Queen Mother died at 101, Vivienne. Do the maths.
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