Amanda Harlech
Amanda Harlech
Amanda Harlech is a creative consultant and writer with a long association with the couturiers John Galliano and Karl Lagerfeld. She was named to the International Best Dressed List Hall of Fame in 1997...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionWriter
fashion party artist
I think fashion, mishandled, can be quite toxic. It becomes about image and the cult of celebrity. I think when an artist is seen at a lot of parties as a celebrity, I find that worrying. I think it can limit them.
art purple orange
I do quite a lot of art, with a small 'a'. I guess that is how I was dredged up, with paints and crayons. Even when I was at nursery, I knew instinctively how to mix colours, how to make purple or orange.
artistic clarify feeling front process sitting
I think the artistic process comes from disorder. When you are happy, it's not always a feeling that you can identify. It's like a dog sitting in front of a fire. Pain isolates you, but it can also clarify things.
eye past passing-moments
We have to keep an eye on the future with a sense of the past in every passing moment of the present.
memories childhood jars
My earliest childhood memory is watching the sunlight through a jar of amber full of wasps.
home wind silence
At home, I love reaching out into that absolute silence, when you can hear the owl or the wind.
thinking stories bits
I'm interested in stories. I think I'm a bit of a pathfinder.
fashion style trends
Style is anti-fashion; it's not about following trends,
children
I don't think I am a proud person, but I think my children are incredible... I think I am part of that.
closed dismissed
Contemporary culture is like the weather - we have to be open to it. I don't like the way it is dismissed or closed down.
biggest children failure happened haunts love
I didn't want to get divorced, but at the point where your children are part of it, you have to do something. I would really love it not to have happened because it haunts you, it will never go away, and it is probably the biggest failure, and I have to live with that.
cult dress happiness life tied wonderful
Our idea of happiness, some of it, is very tied to the cult of celebrity: there is this golden, wonderful life that I want, and if I dress like that, I'm on my way there.
fear people
I think the most destructive thing is fear: when people don't want to say what they think.
attention goes les love power wear
Couture has a power that ready-to-wear can never have; the attention of les petites mains as they sew; all that love and belief goes into the cloth. That's what you feel when you wear it.