The Great British Sewing Bee’s Esme Young on sewing for the stars
The fashion guru talks to Hannah Stephenson about sustainable fashion challenges
She’s best known as the pint-sized judge of The Great British Sewing Bee, opposite her loftier pal Patrick Grant – but together their chemistry has proved a hit with viewers.
Esme Young, 73, may seem a slightly stern figure when she picks faults in contestants’ work, but her memoir Behind The Seams reveals a colourful history – from partying with the likes of David Bowie and the Sex Pistols, to creating the bunny outfit worn by Renée Zellweger in Bridget Jones’s Diary.
After an illustrious career in the fashion industry, from launching Swanky Modes, a cool designer collective in Camden Town in the Seventies, to designing costumes for film stars including Leonardo Dicaprio and Grace Jones, Young came to TV late in life. But loves being part of The Great British Sewing Bee, which sees amateur sewers compete to become Britain’s best seamster.
“Sewing Bee is such a positive programme,” she says. “Nobody who stops me in the street because they recognise me has ever been negative. And it’s not that I am that recognised.”
She says she has no problem being in front of the camera and chuckles recalling how during the first show, she commented that a garment being displayed by a model ‘fits really well under her arse’, which the producers called a ‘spitting out your tea moment’.
Her colourful language is matched by her colourful life, from making her first piece of clothing – a gathered skirt – aged seven, to living in London squats with pals in the Seventies, partying with pop stars and punks, and designing clothes for the rich and famous.
“The only celeb I’ve ever felt starstruck about – and I think it’s to do with my age – is Dustin Hoffman. Initially I was slightly speechless, but I soon got over it,” she recalls.
They met at a costume fitting for the 2008 film Last Chance Harvey and she was then invited to the wrap party, where she turned up, hair teased into a beehive.
“The two of us were a frenzy of music and energy and I think we must have cleared the dance floor with our crazy moves. My beehive was not the same after that experience,” she writes.
Away from the spotlight, the fashion designer and teacher, whose mother Patricia adored clothes, was brought up in a sewing environment at a convent boarding school run by nuns.
“We were taught cross stitch, darning and mending, knitting and crocheting. Sewing was the way of the world. Girls were taught sewing at school. It was just something that was done, but it isn’t nowadays.
“It’s a shame, because particularly nowadays in this age of computers, you are being creative with something you can actually touch and feel. It’s really good for your mental health. You become part of a little community of people who sew.”
The daughter of an RAF pilot and a clothes-loving mother, as a young girl she was influenced by Biba, Mary Quant and Ossie Clark.
● Behind The Seams: My Life In Creativity, Friendship And Adventure by Esme Young is published by Blink Publishing, £18.99. Available now.
● A new series of The Great British Sewing Bee starts on BBC1 tomorrow, 8pm