Bella Freud’s fashion inquisition

Sometimes the mind needs to take a break. And I can’t think of a better stopping-off place than the soothing, gloriously bonkers discussions on the Fashion Neurosis podcast, hosted by the British fashion designer Bella Freud. Its premise is that Freud, daughter of Lucian and great-granddaughter of Sigmund, encourages guests to recline on her couch and talk over any and every aspect of their relationship to fashion.

Her mellifluous, affirming manner is much more soft soap than steel wool, but this is not territory that requires a serious broadcaster, and the concept proves a surprisingly fruitful route into family history, personal stories and high-grade gossip. The pool of guests is a commendably eclectic one: they have thus far included Nick Cave, Kate Moss, Cate Blanchett, Zadie Smith and the Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgård.

Alongside the audio of each interview, there is a little video of Freud and her subject talking: the fact that interviewees are lying down somehow renders them more innocent and unguarded than usual, like rambling children at bedtime. Even those who favor low-key apparel reveal moments when fashion has delivered a notable thrill or anxiety. Knausgård, who exudes a thoughtful melancholy, arrives clad in his out-there-meeting-people outfit of black jeans, black T-shirt, black shoes and, for winter, a black sweater. In his early teens, he said, he annoyed his father by shaving his head and getting a cross-shaped earring in each ear. When his father saw the new look, “He said, ‘Well, you look like an idiot.’ And that was kind of what I wanted to achieve, I think.”

Still, his father delivered his own visual disturbances. As a local teacher and politician, he had once dressed “like a proper, proper adult” in tweed suits with elbow patches, an authoritative costume which the ten-year-old Karl Ove found “safe.” Then when his parents got divorced, his father started drinking heavily, inviting people over, and adopted a new, almost hippieish style which, ominously, involved “tunics.” To the late-teenage Karl Ove this sudden parental flamboyance signaled not liberation but a scary disintegration of the known order. Perhaps that’s why he prefers his own clothes to speak quietly. This was, he said of the interview, “my first therapy session ever.”

To others, such as Kate Moss, the dress-up box was always a reliable source of unalloyed joy. Moss lies on the couch rocking a carefully chosen combo of sheer tights and towering Vivienne Westwood heels, and reminisces dreamily in her sexy little croaky voice about outfits she has known. The curtain gradually goes up on her world of likeminded glamour addicts, and their zest in costuming themselves.

The model and Rolling Stones muse Anita Pallenberg used to come round to her house, she says, and “We would spend all night in my wardrobe, doing ‘looks’.” You can tell when one of the guests here is immersed full-time in fashion, because they freely deploy the verbal construction I call “the fashion singular”: unlike sartorial civilians, you’ll hear them speaking of “a red lip” or “a platform heel,” as though the concept is already reverentially placed on a designated plinth in their minds.

Perhaps my favorite guest was Nicky Haslam, the interior designer and playful arbiter of good taste, who is more fun than ever aged eighty-five. When asked what he is wearing, he immediately says, “Head to toe Primark!” and then he’s off, gamely admitting to everything, including tinting a quiff on his head and his pubic hair with eyelash dye, having a facelift — “God, yes!” — and calling Jean Shrimpton “gangly and hideous” before she became a star model and one of his best friends. He remembers the Duchess of Windsor, whom he adored, and “poor Marilyn” (Monroe) answering the door just a few weeks before she died, clearly troubled and “an absolute wreck.”

I’m looking forward to hearing who comes on the show next, but if Fashion Neurosis ever has a spin-off, I think Haslam alone could probably sustain at least one interview a week.

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s April 2025 World edition.