This week I go on a Style journey with Philanthropist, Designer and mother of 5, the wonderful India Hicks. India is the daughter of the celebrated interior designer David Hicks and Lady Pamela Mountbatten, a lady in waiting to the late Queen.  She is a god daughter of the King, was a bridesmaid to Lady Diana Spencer and resides in Harbour Island, the Bahamas with her husband David Flint Wood and their 5 children…
 
We chat about being a Royal bridesmaid (obviously), what it meant to grow up in the creative world of David Hicks, being inspired by her grandmother Edwina Mountbatten (Countess of Mountbatten of Burma) and the process of choosing a dress for getting married for the first time in her 50s and so much more…  
 
I first met India in the early 90s when the young aristocratic model walked in one of my early shows.


Her peripatetic lifestyle is beautifully, and articulately, documented on her Instagram feed @indiahicksstyle.

Season 2 - Style DNA: India Hicks

Join Amanda Wakeley as she is joined by a different celebrity guest each week as she uncovers their very own Style DNA.Guests include Trinny Woodall, James Blunt, Sophie Ellis-Bextor, David Furnish, Yasmin Le Bon, talk about their best and worst fashion moments as well as answering the question, 'What Do They Wear In Bed?'.New podcasts every Thursday.

Society & Culture

Personal Journals

History

Philosophy

Places & Travel

Documentary

In this episode I go on a style journey with the Creative Director Lucinda Chambers. Lucinda has worked in the fashion industry for more than three decades…as Fashion Director of British Vogue for 25 years she certainly shaped the face of fashion and inspired the wardrobes of millions of women. She has worked as a creative consultant and stylist across both high street and luxury brands from Prada and Marni to H&M, River Island and Warehouse.
 
We reminisce about her early days as a fantastically creative stylist at Vogue, in the pre-internet days she used National Geographic for her location inspiration…taking her to Ladakh in northern India on her very first location shoot…with Cindy Crawford and the photographer Patrick Demarchelier…sleeping in tents and drawing sticks to get the last few seats on the plane out…so naively brave…
 
She talks eloquently about creating the story which has inspired the images…how for her image making was all about the narrative and I use the opportunity to ask about one of my favourite images of Linda Evangelista wearing Wakeley…
 
Her journey in fashion has been a long and fabulous one …starting at Vogue as the secretary to the petty cash lady but her talent and creative vision took her the whole way…she is a phenomenally optimistic creative, making the most of every situation stating that it’s never a crisis it’s an opportunity...whether that was all the clothes for a cover shoot with Emma Watson being stolen from the luggage compartment of the Eurostar, to arriving to shoot in Miami as a hurricane had just flattened it… but always improvising and coming back with the shots.
 
Since her well-publicised departure from Vogue when the then new editor Edward Enninful ushered in a new era and a new team… she has flourished creating her revolutionary shopping platform Collagerie with her ex-Vogue colleague Serena Hood. Expertly curating the best in fashion, interiors, beauty and lifestyle, the brand celebrates shopping at every price point, bringing you an innovative way to discover inspiring, and at times unexpected, designs.
 
Thank you @lucindachambers for being such an open and generous guest …it was lovely to reconnect x

Season 5 - Style DNA: Lucinda Chambers


This week's Style DNA podcast episode is with the Irish chef, TV presenter, cookbook author and resident chef on This Morning - the wonderful Clodagh McKenna.
It was such a treat to open the door to a joyful Clodagh who arrived carrying a freshly baked carrot cake which she proceeded to ice herself before we started our recording ... I can honestly say her carrot cake is the best I have ever eaten and it took serious will power on my part not to dig in during our conversation!
Clodagh grew up in Cork and she paints a beautiful picture of her childhood family rituals including baking bread and prepping food at the weekend for the week ahead. 
Eating home cooked food around a lovingly laid table with fresh linen clearly influenced her appreciation of the importance of mealtime. Her mother would always tidy herself and apply lipstick before her husband came home from work which is a charming custom that Clodagh has adopted herself.
Her passion for baking was ignited when a young Clodagh went on a French exchange, and she returned to Ireland able to make a cracking Tarte Tartin but also with a flavour for Gallic style which still influences her dress sense to this day.
Clodagh is one of those individuals whose passion for everything she turns her hand to is infectious - she trained at the legendary Ballymalloe Cookery School. When she felt she had learned everything she could in Ireland she moved herself to Turin, Italy to immerse herself in Italian food and culture... before finally moving to London in her early 40s when she started opening up her kitchen to do dinners for guests ... a charming custom that she still does to this day. 
We talk about discovering her style DNA, which she feels didn't really happen until coming to London. Her formula, which clearly gives her confidence,  involves a lot of denim, white shirts and tailoring.  We laugh about last minute wardrobe changes on the set of This Morning when the all-male crew realised her top was just a little bit too revealing (let's just say totally see-through) for the viewers...and how being led by an overly enthusiastic stylist for a book launch shoot left her feeling totally lost...all good lessons learned and all stories told in a way that inimitable Irish way... 


Season 5 - Style DNA: Clodagh McKenna

This week’s Style DNA guest is the 90s British supermodel, turned entrepreneur, TV personality, author AND pub landlady … the awesome Jodie Kidd.
 
We first met in the 90s, it was Jodie’s first London show season at the tender age of 15. She had been encouraged to give modelling a go as a way to pay for the new horsebox she wanted as she was a competitive show jumper at the time. I remember my casting director being so excited to get Jodie in my show…but I also have a vague recollection of Jodie having to cram her feet into the shoes that I had designed for the show …at 6’2” with size 42.5 feet my show samples were a full size and a half too small… but she just did it, and as you will hear…she just carried on doing it with an incredible career trajectory walking for all the great houses doing the shows from New York to London to Milan to Paris and then on to the couture shows in between …until the pace of it all left her completely burned out, very underweight and crippled by anxiety. At which point she dramatically quit the modelling world…literally walking off a catwalk in Milan mid show.
 
Being a country girl at heart she found solace in nature and home grown food, and then returned to her first passion, horses. However, Jodie never does anything by halves, within no time at all she was playing polo for the country, and her need for speed then saw her set a track record on Top Gear which in turn got her noticed by Maserati, who she then went on to drive for professionally in Italy…
 
Jodie’s career has twisted and turned …she is a true force of nature…whatever she turns her attention to she throws herself into 150%. Perhaps, because of her varied careers she is wise beyond her years but she shares her experiences and insights very openly. Her views on the mad world of fashion are initially through the lens of a very young country girl who came into the industry almost accidentally. She has warmth and charisma in spades.  I hope you enjoy this episode.

Season 5 - Style DNA: Jodie Kidd

In this episode, I go on a sartorial journey with designer, businessman, author, and TV presenter Patrick Grant. Perhaps best known for his role in the TV show “The Great British Sewing Bee,” Grant is a man who has a lot to say about clothes: how many we buy, how we value them, what they’re made from, and importantly, who made them and where.

Patrick Grant has an engineering background and he has applied this knowledge to his fashion journey. I find myself going down a rabbit hole with Grant on the provenance of our clothes… on elastane and polymers and microplastics. We travel on with his journey of rebuilding the Savile Row tailor Norton & Sons and then on to 2015 when he bought the ailing Blackburn clothing manufacturer Cookson & Clegg, saving the factory from closure and the potential loss of all the skills of the team, not to mention their jobs. Grant has a passion for skilled British craftsmanship and in 2016 he created his campaigning clothes brand Community Clothing, which supports local clothing and textile manufacturers across the UK… just brilliant.

As you can probably tell by now, Grant is a man on a mission. His recently launched book “Less: Stop Buying So Much Rubbish: How Having Fewer, Better Things Can Make Us Happier” makes for pretty sobering reading. As he says, “We used to care a lot about our clothes. We didn’t have many but those we had were important to us. We’d cherish them, repair them, and pass them on. And making them provided fulfilling work for millions of skilled people locally.” This is something we have totally lost sight of in our quest for more and cheaper… a fast fashion dopamine hit. He goes on to say, “Today the average person has nearly five times as many clothes as they did just 50 years ago. Last year, 100 billion garments were produced worldwide, most made from oil, 30% of which were not even sold, and the equivalent of one bin lorry full of clothing is dumped in landfill or burned every single second. Our wardrobes are full to bursting with clothes we never wear so why do we keep buying more?”

On a lighter note, we touch on some of his worst fashion moments… probably in the 80s, living in San Francisco… but, he was wearing a sarong before David Beckham famously did!

Patrick is a fabulously knowledgeable guest, and he really gets you thinking about the beauty and importance of just having LESS. I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did.

Season 5 - Style DNA: Patrick Grant

In this episode I go on a style journey with British born international visual artist Sophie Tea. Sophie has recently come onto my radar…her work is defined by her vibrant use of colour, energetic drips and signature splats – it champions inclusivity, self-acceptance, accessibility and strives to make women feel just a little bit nicer about themselves… a resounding YES to that!
 
Sophie’s subject of choice is women…naked women. She is fresh off the back of her Send Nudes Live show at The London Palladium in which 50 naked women are painted for a live catwalk show, her 6th to date. She had a staggering 10,000 applications from women to walk in the show so she is clearly onto something. We talk about how when she was growing up she had never felt comfortable with her body shape, how the role models of her childhood were very stereotypical and how as a result of this she wants to celebrate the female form in all it’s wonderful variations.
 
Sophie’s mission is to make art more accessible… she is open about her commercial approach to this, using social media to reach her customers and offering payment instalments to her young audience who may be too intimidated to go into a gallery… she is brilliantly entrepreneurial and certainly breaking the traditional gallerist mould.
 
We discuss how as human beings we bond through our clothes, we sometimes connect with people simply by what we are wearing and being in a similar style tribe. We talk about how our clothes can often tell stories…Sophie undoubtedly has a passion for fashion, it’s definitely a hobby for her… be it thrifting (in “posh areas”), to buying full-on designer pieces, to the joy of choosing yet more cowboy boots at the mecca of cowboy boots that is Allens in Texas… not to mention something we are both guilty of… “milestone” shopping.
 
I hope you enjoy this episode…thank you @sophieteaart for being such a great guest …let’s go thrifting!

Season 2 - Style DNA: India Hicks

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