The fashion designer Bella Freud launched Fashion Neurosis a little over a year ago with Rick Owens as her first guest. The show, available in both audio and video formats, immediately set itself apart from other fashion podcasts by the sense of intimacy Freud cultivated in unguarded conversations with her high-profile visitors— Cate Blanchett, David Cronenberg, and Rosalía among them. She joins Nicole Phelps on this week’s episode of The Run-Through to discuss the origins of the show, including its now-iconic setup.
“I was playing around with ideas before lockdown, and I was working with a friend, a filmmaker, and he said, ‘You need some props,’” she recalls. “And I thought, Okay, they can lie on the couch. I’ll be on a chair. And I thought, You know what? Someone’s gonna do this. And if it’s not me, I’ll be so annoyed that I had a false modesty about using a Sigmund Freud–style thing.”
The designer—who, yes, is the great-granddaughter of Sigmund Freud and the daughter of the painter Lucian Freud—also discusses her first steps in fashion: She was liberated as a teenager by Vivienne Westwood’s clothes while working at the Seditionaries store—and later by Westwood herself as she worked alongside the legendary designer. “I was so green, I didn’t know anything, but the clothes just gave you this guise, and it really struck me, what clothes could do for you,” Freud recalled. “When I put these clothes on, people were afraid of me, and no one had been afraid of me. And I thought, This is great.... I saw that clothes had power.” Listen to their conversation below.
