She may be the daughter of the artist Lucian and great granddaughter of the psychoanalyst, Sigmund, but Bella Freud has made her own name. Here, the fashion designer talks Palestine, famous parents and why she’s no longer working for a sociopath.
Bella Freud is towering above me when we first meet. Buzzed into the fashion designer’s townhouse in London’s fashionable Ladbroke Grove area, I come face-to-face with a winding wooden staircase and Freud staring down at me from the top.
She has on a structured blue shirt, khaki pants that taper into a cuff and stripy socks peeking out of thick, open-toe wedges. She is very thin, with a white belt holding up the trousers on her tiny frame, and it’s quite a shock to consider this vision of quirky, quality cool will turn 50 next year.
She shakes my hand, walks me through to the sitting room and then disappears to make some tea, leaving me to drink in the eclectic surroundings. The carpet is pea green, the mirrors ancient and tarnished, the couches old and worn, the lamps from another era, and the walls full of etchings by her famous father, the artist Lucian Feud. It’s higgledy piggledy, and as far as you can get from modern minimalist chic, but exactly what you’d expect from someone as creative as her.
If you didn’t know Bella Freud’s background, you might have a totally different perception. So often featured in the party pages of magazines like Harpers Bazaar, you could be forgiven for thinking she’s simply another society girl, given her famous lineage (her grandfather was the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud).
In fact, she is anything but. Along with being a renowned designer and writer in her own right, she’s also a close companion and constant support to her legion of up-and-coming and established creative friends (hence the parties), not to mention a tireless campaigner for charity.
Just recently, she returned from her latest visit to Palestine where she wangled her way into the heavily restricted and war-ravaged Gaza Strip. Freud has been increasingly involved in the region since 1993 when she really became aware of the difficulties faced by Palestinian people since 1948, when Israel was created and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were forced to leave their homes.
"The whole issue is portrayed as something too complicated to understand. And that distracts people from the simple truth. There is a military occupation in Palestine. There’s nothing ambiguous about that"
"I was conscious that in any other country, if there was a disaster or extreme difficulties, there would be all these appeals, but there was nothing for Palestinians. The whole issue is portrayed as something that’s too complicated to understand. And that distracts people from the simple truth. There is an occupation there. There’s nothing ambiguous about that."
In 2003, she set up the Hoping Foundation with her friend, the Oxford academic, Karma Nabulsi. It gives support and encouragement to Palestinian refugee children across the Middle East with grants that give children the opportunity to play, build their lives creatively and express themselves through art, music, theatre, dance and sport.
They have a special alliance with UNRWA (the United Nationals Reliefs and Works Agency). And last year, to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the agency, together they came up with the idea of a virtual yearbook for the 50,000 Palestinian refugee children attending UNRWA schools across Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, West Bank and Gaza Strip - home to 4.7m displaced Palestinian people spread across 59 registered refugee camps.
In November, each leaving child was asked to record a 30-second video message for the online yearbook. Now, they’re fundraising for computers to install in each of the 400 schools involved, so that the children can log in, look at their videos and send messages to one another.
"The whole idea is to create cross border communications, nurture children’s self-expression and have something fun and interesting and educational," explains Freud. "Each child said their name, their interests and then their hopes and dreams for the future. To listen to their stories and aspirations felt like such a huge privilege."
Freud is used to improvement coming at snail pace in Palestine, but it’s a world away from life back home in the UK. A fashion designer for almost three decades, she has operated at break-neck speed for years, first under Vivienne Westwood where ‘I really learnt everything’, and later at Jaeger and Biba.
Over the past few years though, she’s stepped back from what the fashion industry expects, and followed her own path - particularly since stepping away from Biba in 2008. She had been tasked with reviving the cult 1960s label just the year before, but shudders at the memory of it now, admitting her exit was down to the ‘impossible’ individual in charge, which she variously describes as ‘unreliable’, ‘a sociopath’ and ‘totally nuts’. Strong words from the normally soft-spoken Freud, but undoubtedly true given the label went bust last year.
These days, Freud continues designing clothes collections, just on a much smaller scale. "My work is as a fashion designer, that’s my job and what my identity is creatively, but I like to manage it in a way which leaves me free to do other creative projects. And I like that I can have time to spend with my husband (the writer James Fox) and son (aged 9). I would be really desperate if I couldn’t."
"When you design a collection it's always important to have a moment where you breath the life into it and then it has its own life after that"
She has long ago shrugged off any expectations of showing her collections in the traditional way. "When you design a collection it’s always important to have a moment where you breath the life into it," she explains. "I didn’t really enjoy showing very much, I felt I wasn't able to show myself in the way that I had it in my head." So instead of the sending models down a catwalk, she’s more likely to do a photoshoot with the likes of Sam Taylor Wood, a short film or a quirky collaboration.
Freud has always done things differently. After an unconventional upbringing in Morocco, which her sister, novelist Esther Freud, wrote about in Hideous Kinky, difference was positively embraced. After a rebellious few years in boarding school in the UK, and even a stint where she contemplated joining the circus ("They were going to train me to dance on an enormous ball!"), fashion eventually became her focus.
These days, having a famous last name doesn’t bother her, though starting out, she was adamant about achieving success on her own merit. She does feel for the children of famous parents these days though. "My family were not on TV. I think it’s much harder for someone who comes from families that are."
She won’t be going down that road, no doubt to her son’s future relief. For her, supporting friends, doing her small quirky clothing collections and continuing to push change through with her charity will always be enough.
For more information visit Bella Freud’s designs. Read more about UNRWA's yearbook project or donate to the Hoping Foundation.
By Barbara Walshe
