TALES FROM BELLA'S WORLD...

I got back from Paris a few days ago after the kind of two day fashion trip that people assume designers always have, but in fact rarely do. This Paris experience was thanks to the generous...

A friend was telling me about her first attempt to get off hard drugs in the late 70’s - before Rehab as we now know it. This place was an addiction unit in a Victorian...

Browsing through my Instagram a few months ago, I saw a message from a young woman saying she had found some photos of my mother, taken by her father in the 60’s. I...

John Richardson was a friend of my father’s originally, but he became my friend too. John was an art historian and the author of a biography of Picasso which stretches over four volumes....

This picture was taken when I was 15. It sits propped against the wall on a corduroy covered bench at the end of my kitchen, alongside other stuff including a photo of me...

I’m staying with my sister Esther in Suffolk. She has a photo of our mum sellotaped to a cupboard door and I was struck by how alike we look. My mum was hard...

My mother was scornful of Mother’s Day. I was ashamed that I secretly liked the idea of it but I kept my feelings hidden. Our family attitude was born out of being untraditional:...

There is a huge Leigh Bowery exhibition just opened at Tate Modern. It is hard for anyone to capture the brilliance and originality of Leigh – such was his uncategorizable and unquantifiable talent,...

Valentine’s Day has held an exaggerated significance in my life. Probably because of my ‘bohemian upbringing’ which mostly just means messy. My parents were not married; my mother never married. The corny traditional...

‘Do you remember when we lived at The Old Laundry and we were allowed half a Redoxon tablet when we were off school sick?’ I was talking to my sister Esther about a...

I first met Marianne Faithful when I was 20. I was invited with two friends to a dinner party on a Chelsea Embankment houseboat where she was the honoured guest. I don’t remember...

When I was 5 my mother decided we should become vegetarian. I was excited about this new family policy though sorry to lose the sausages. What happened was that my Irish grandmother had...

I found an old diary once with a list of new year’s wishes. At the top of the page it said ‘No more problems with my Italian backers.’ Not long after writing the...

When I was 6 my mother invited a spiritual guru to come over to our flat in Tunbridge Wells. There was a lot of excitement about it among the grownups and my younger sister Esther and...

This is a photograph of me and my dad. I wish it wasn’t so blurry, but it is immediately recognisably me and him. Funny to think of dad in a yellow jumper. I...

Today I received a letter – a rare occurrence. This one arrived in a pale grey envelope with elegant spidery handwriting. It reminded me of being at school and the intense relationships between...

My early memories of getting to know my father took place mostly in restaurants. As a tiny child I remember mum taking my sister Esther and I to meet him in Marine Ices...

When I was a child and living in Marrakech, my sister Esther and I entertained ourselves with obsessions about certain words. We settled on Hideous and Kinky as the favourites. We would chant them,...

I have always found that clothes in films are the key to bringing a character, especially a heroine, into the focus of thought provoking fascination. People’s gestures and actions, the small details of how they...

‘Where do you get your ideas from?’ The screen in my mind shows a desert. An uninterrupted undulating horizon of nothingness. The question of where do I get my ideas prompts the fear...

Once, when I was in Paris for work in the late 90’s, I arranged to have breakfast with my friend Christian Louboutin. We ambled down the Rue de Rivoli and wandered into a smart-looking...

In 1999 I did my last catwalk show. I had shown every season since soon after I launched my label, always up for nights in a row before the shows. It was such...

When I reached the age of 25 I gave up alcohol and drugs and I have stayed that way ever since. Without these stimulants to regulate my thoughts and feelings, I turned to...

Here is a picture of my mother Bernardine, my sister Esther, and me. We had just returned from living in Morocco for two years. Even though we were ‘home’ everything was hard to...

I only have one photograph of my mother and father together. This image is from when dad had taken my mother to the South of France, I think a few months after I...

I don't remember when I started to be someone who was late for things but it became a signature, a horrible one, which I both dreaded as inevitable, and on some level relished. It is ironic...

Here I am striking a pose in a room full of Nan Goldin prints at the Victoria and Albert museum. This room is part of an amazing selection of Sir Elton John and...

When I worked for Vivienne Westwood in the late 80's we occupied the attic floor in a grungy building in Camden Town. It had a long hallway with small rooms branching off, housing...

My birthday falls on April 17th. Most years it coincides with the Easter holidays when I or everyone else is away. As a child in the 60's and 70's we didnt have parties...

When I was 21 I fell madly in love with a man 36 years older than me. He was a Roman prince, infamous for his decadent ways and legendary good looks and charm....

We Brits seem to be obsessed with dressing up. Fashion aside, we have pioneered some die hard identities: Punk, Goth, New Romantics... okay I’ll stop. But whenever the dress code of a party...

Father’s Day. A day to think about fathers. My father was the most exciting man I’ve ever met. I didnt grow up with him and I always had that slight formality - like...