“People talk about ‘effortless style’ but effortless is so far away from any of my experiences of that sort of thing. [Steph Wilson]’s not a celebrity stylist, which seems to be a very different breed of person, but my stylist is a big reason I am able to cope with events. We affectionately called [the tiered Stella McCartney gown she wore on the 2016 Olivier red carpet] the lampshade dress. It was a complete risk, and a risk that I’d been told again and again and again not to take. ‘Don’t go there, you’re not well known, you’re not famous, unless you’re famous you shouldn’t wear things like this.’ I just said, ‘I want to dress like the artist I feel,’ and that was that.” - Zawe Ashton
“Zawe is an absolute delight to work with, as she loves the more artistic side of fashion. Zawe likes to feel ‘punk’ whenever possible, so she opts for interesting shapes and styles, rather than conforming to the ‘norm’. Zawe’s style needs to reflect the strong, modern creative that she is.” - Steph Wilson
“I love dressing up. My mum was a huge maker of clothes, especially fancy dress. Some of my happiest memories are of being a sunflower - or Henry Vlll.” - Zawe Ashton
“[Your poem]’s so beautiful on the page, and it’s so profound to hear it vibrate through you as a performer as well. And of course, that is something that sets you and so many other poets and writers apart from the poets that we learned about at school perhaps, is there is this element of performance. There is this incredible physical reclaiming of the art form and of your narrative and of the words.” - Zawe Ashton to Caleb Femi for Why Poetry Belongs To All Of Us, with Caleb Femi and Zawe Ashton: Lit in Colour Penguin Talk
88th Annual Academy Awards at Loews Hollywood Hotel in California (2016) European Gala screening of Captain Marvel at The Curzon Mayfair in London (2019) Ninth Breakthrough Prize Ceremony at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures (2023)
"The iPod, like the Walkman cassette player before it, allows us to listen to our music wherever we want. Previously, recording technology had unlinked music from the concert hall, the café, and the saloon, but now music can always be carried with us. Michael Bull, who has written frequently about the impact of the Walkman and the iPod, points out that we often use devices to ‘aestheticize urban space.’ We carry our own soundtrack with us wherever we go, and the world around us is overlaid with our music. Our whole life becomes a movie, and we can alter the score for it over and over again: one minute it’s a tragedy, and the next it’s an action film. Energetic, dreamy, or ominous and dark: everyone has their own private movie going on in their heads, and no two are the same….Theodor Adorno… called this situation ‘accompanied solitude,’ a situation where we might be alone, but we have the ability via music to create the illusion that we are not."
from How Music Works, by David Byrne (via entirely)
I went to a hospital in London recently, I’m sure you’ve done this Tom, but they screened Infinity War for the children who were in hospital who hadn’t been able to see it.
‘I make Fairy houses out of gourds, with the furniture and landscaping made of gourd scraps, twigs, bark, pods, seeds and other natural materials. I display them in my art studio where people are utterly fascinated by them. As an artist, what more could I ask?’
Thank you to the artist for giving me permission to post her photos!
