“You have to keep taking risks and never stop learning, you won’t feel old if you’re always trying something new”
The Great British Sewing Bee’s Esme Young has spent over 50 years at fashion’s cutting edge. Karen Dunn learns some of the secrets to a life lived collaboratively and creatively
Esme Young is a party animal. If you only know her as a judge on The Great British Sewing Bee, where she is always calm and collected, serious in her criticism, but nurturing with her advice, you may not realise it at first. However, the statement necklaces are a secret giveaway to her more rebellious past throughout the 70s right up until the present day.
FINDING YOUR GANG
While most of us TV-watchers have only recently made her acquaintance, Esme has been happily carving out her own niche for many decades. She initially made her name in the fashion industry as part of Swanky Modes, a collective of four female friends. The collective was born of a desire for self-expression not being served by the existing fashion industry: “We wanted to wear whatever we wanted, so we made the clothes to match.” If a fabric could be cut up and turned into an outfit, they did it. The results were often ground-breaking: their first show-stopping creation was a see-through mackintosh. They showed it on a naked woman, photographed by Helmut Newton. As you might imagine, it caused quite the stir. They went on to use Lycra before anyone else was, creating their infamous body-hugging ‘amorphous’ dress (as displayed at the V& A Museum).
“It was always about the pursuit of fun and taking risks – trying to do things in a different way,” explains Esme. “Because we were a group, we were braver. We were a gang. We were a sisterhood. We looked out for each other, looked after each other’s children, had the most amazing parties and worked really hard together.” It’s an experience that has stood Esme well over the subsequent years. “Finding your gang is the most important thing you can do. Surround yourself with the right women and you can do anything,” she believes.
FIRST STITCHES
The second of five siblings, Esme was sent off to Catholic boarding school at the age of five where, after a few years, it was discovered that she was both partially deaf and dyslexic. “I was always in my own happy world, drawing, painting and making things,” she says. “I do think my teachers just thought I was thick at first, which was hard, but I think being in my own little world actually helped me. I did more creative activities and enjoyed time by myself. Going away to school made me very self-reliant.”
While these experiences may have helped shape her creative side, Esme believes her rebellious side comes from her father, Brian, who became an RAF pilot against his parents’ wishes. “He always said to me, ‘ You must do what you want to do’ and he always encouraged that, which gave me a kind of confidence,” she explains. “Being a rebel and doing rebellious things gives you a real freedom to do it more.”
Esme’s mother was less keen on Esme doing rebellious things – especially when she took scissors to her dresses (eventually putting a lock on her wardrobe to put an end to the ‘alterations’). Undeterred, Esme
continued to turn secondhand finds into avant garde looks and – unaware fashion could be a career – set off to Saint Martins college in London to study graphics and illustration. Throwing herself into studying and partying in equal measure, it’s here she met her collaborators that were to become Swanky Modes.
SAYING YES
When, post-college, Swanky Modes opened a shop in Camden, London, money and business experience may have been lacking, but confidence was not. “I always think, ‘ Why not? Let’s give it a whirl!,’” she says. “It’s important to say yes and not feel fearful.”
Never in it for the money, Esme, like her brothers, began living as part of the vibrant squat community in London at that time, an experience she describes as “extraordinary”, with squat mates including firemen, musicians, journalists, city workers, and “a guy who kept reptiles so there were baby crocodiles in baths!” It wasn’t forever – when squat living began to change in the early 80s, Esme was homeless for a while, before moving into social housing for single people, in central London where she still is today – but she sees it as a formative experience: “Living like that makes you open and less judgemental, everyone should try it!”
In fact, it seems crocodiles in the bath were some of the least extraordinary things happening in Esme’s life at that time. While Swanky Modes were appearing in »
fashion magazines and on TV, and creating outfits for bands and film stars throughout the 70s and 80s, Esme was also out racing her motorcycle – her gang were known as Club Degenerate (of course, she made their T-shirts) – and partying with everyone from David Bowie to the Sex Pistols to Grayson Perry (The Clash’s Joe Strummer was once on hand when she fell off her motorbike). “Things just happen around me,” says Esme. But her philosophy is not about being passive
– it’s about going for it. “You learn by your mistakes, so don’t be frightened to make them. And then if you mess up, you’ll never do that again,” she laughs.
Swanky Modes went out on a high and, as the
90s began, it was time for something new as Esme embarked on a freelance career creating costumes for films as diverse as The Beach and Bridget Jones’ Diary (Esme created the iconic bunny girl outfit). Alongside her freelance work, Esme came full circle and returned to Central Saint Martins as a lecturer, thanks to her former assistant at Swanky Modes, Louise Wilson, who’d become a professor of fashion. Despite struggling at school, Esme was now in her element and working with students helped crystallise her love of learning, describing it as a two-way process: “They learn so much from each other, more than from us teachers, which is how it should be, and we learn from them, too. It’s accepting people and encouraging them.”
Esme also believes that surrounding herself with the next generation of creatives goes a long way to feeling younger than her years. “Being around younger people keeps you creative. I know you can disappear as a woman as you get older, but like many women it only feels like 20 years ago that I was 20 – although, of course, it isn’t. But I’m comfortable with who I am and I always have been.”
KEEP DANCING
That quality of being comfortable in her own skin is clearly evident on The Great British Sewing Bee: “I know what I’m talking about so there’s no reason not to be confident,” she says, simply and truthfully. This latest unconventional turn of her career is becoming a well-known face in her 70s, as a judge on the BBC show. In fact, she jokes, applying for the show was the first
time she’d ever had to compile her CV.
While being creative is clearly a part of who Esme is, she insists everyone can find their own bit of creativity every day. “People should always make things whether it’s sewing, baking, gardening – make your own creative environment. It’s good for your mental health because you’re learning all the time and get a sense of achievement. I still draw all the time, sew myself clothes and I go to Greece every year.”
And another bit of wellbeing advice that Esme is keen to share: keep dancing! “I’ve always loved a party, and I love to dance and hope to never stop. I’m always the last on the dancefloor – still!” she insists. And she’ll take advantage of the opportunity whenever she can. Just a few weeks ago she describes being outside her local pub, “and these young men invited us to go to their Student Union bar, and there was a jazz band on the stage playing, I got up and danced and then everyone else did, too. They must have thought, ‘If she can do it, so can we!’ You have to lead the crowd!” Esme’s new memoir Behind the Seams: My Life in Creativity, Friendship and Adventure by Esme Young (Blink Publishing) is out now.
“People should always make things, whether sewing, baking or gardening. It’s good for your mental health”