This is the second of a two-part interview with Justine Picardie, the distinguished British biographer, novelist, and fashion historian. 

Returning to Unpaused’s most persistent themes, Justine describes her career evolution, from her early days as an investigative reporter in London to her surprise move to the pages of fashion journalism, where she rose to become long-term editor-in-chief of the prestigious Harper’s Bazaar UK.   

Since then, Justine has achieved both critical and commercial success with biographies of Coco Chanel and the Diors, Catherine and Christian, and she has collaborated with some of Europe’s most revered curators and prestigious museums. However, the demands of serious biography have not been without cost and the profound impact which Justine experienced while researching the life of French Resistance heroine, Catherine Dior, is tangible still. 

This is an intimate portrait of both Justine and her celebrated subjects, and reveals an accomplished woman, who speaks movingly about navigating the landscape of loss, and who - like her subjects - finds solace and inspiration in the natural world. 

Show Notes

Instagram @justinepicardie

Justine Picardie’s books include:

Fashioning the Crown: A Story of Power, Conflict and Couture

Miss Dior: A Wartime Story of Courage and Couture

Coco Chanel: The Legend and The Life

If The Spirit Moves You: Life and Love After Death 

My Mother’s Wedding Dress

// Hosted by Judy Stewart 

// Produced by Caroline Hughes for Feast Collective

// Sound Engineer: Jason Millhouse

// Instagram: @_unpaused // Website: www.unpaused.net

This is the first of a two-part interview with Justine Picardie, the distinguished British biographer, novelist, and fashion historian. 

Justine talks to Judy about her new book, Fashioning the Crown, a study of British royal fashion in the twentieth century.  While the sartorial choices of Wallis Simpson (‘you can never be too rich or too thin’), including the notorious Lobster Dress designed by Schiaparelli with Salvador Dali, were so provocative and newsworthy, it was Queen Elizabeth (wife of George VI, later known as Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother), whom Hitler was said to have labelled “the most dangerous woman in Europe” after she wore white - the colour of freedom - on a visit to France in 1938, immediately before the war began. 

This first episode examines how the sartorial choices of the House of Windsor projected power against the backdrop of two world wars and the abdication crisis, and contributed to a national re-evaluation of the legitimacy of the sovereign, and the family more generally, at the apex of the constitutional order of the United Kingdom. 

Show Notes

Instagram @justinepicardie

Justine Picardie’s books include:

Fashioning the Crown: A Story of Power, Conflict and Couture

Miss Dior: A Wartime Story of Courage and Couture

Coco Chanel: The Legend and The Life

If The Spirit Moves You: Life and Love After Death 

My Mother’s Wedding Dress

// Hosted by Judy Stewart 

// Produced by Caroline Hughes for Feast Collective

// Sound Engineer: Jason Millhouse

// Instagram: @_unpaused // Website: www.unpaused.net

Polly Leonard is the founder of Selvedge, the world’s leading magazine about the culture of cloth. It’s a one-word cipher about textiles with a cultural edge, who makes them, and how. Polly talks to Judy about why she believes cloth is central to civilisation; she says “fibre may look like fluff, but it carries the weight of human history”. She shares the steps on her creative journey - starting with her art student days in Glasgow and New York - and her relentless pursuit of the highest standards. The pair also discuss the tension between making on one hand and disposable, fast fashion on the other, and why Polly believes art and craft should be a more valued part of the school curriculum.

And for those who don’t already know, Polly will reveal what the selvedge on a piece of fabric is!

Show Notes

www.selvedge.org

@selvedgemagazine

// Hosted by Judy Stewart // Produced by Caroline Hughes for Feast Collective

// Sound Engineer: Jason Millhouse

// Instagram: @_unpaused // Website: www.unpaused.net

Judy enters the monastic world of ÁBBATTE, where traditional Spanish artisanal techniques are used to create exquisite handwoven textiles.  Project founder Elena Goded Rimbaud talks about transforming the ruins of a 13th century monastery in Segovia into the ÁBBATTE workshop and reviving the region’s handmade textile traditions there. Then, speaking from ÁBBATTE’s Madrid store, Elena describes the pieces they make - alpaca wool throws, textured carpets and silk scarves - in colours rendered with botanic dyes from the magical ÁBBATTE garden. Working alongside her art director daughter, Elena says ÁBBATTE strives to create textiles with a contemporary aesthetic while being grounded in the techniques of the past.

Show Notes

https://www.abbatte.com

@abbatte_

// Hosted by Judy Stewart // Translation by Marcella Echevarria

Produced by Caroline Hughes for Feast Collective

// Sound Engineer: Jason Millhouse

// Instagram: @_unpaused // Website: www.unpaused.net

Photographer and magazine founder, Ruth Ribeaucourt, talks to Judy about her creative collaboration with cult French interiors and homewares brand, Antoinette Poisson.  

After photographing ‘A Year in the French Style’ for the brand’s founders, Vincent Farelly and Jean-Baptiste Martin, Ruth was invited to collaborate with them a second time on a range of wallpapers and fabrics, based on their shared love of historic French textiles and patterns.  

Ruth recounts how visiting flea markets and collecting antique textiles as a novice collector, first helped her to learn the language and assimilate the culture of her adopted home when she moved to Provence from her native Ireland, and talks about FAIRE, the magazine she founded, to take her readers inside the creative lives of artists, artisans and curators from France and around the world.

You can listen to Judy's previous conversation with Ruth in Episodes 14 and 15 of Unpaused. 

Show Notes: 

Ruth Ribeaucourt

Ruth Ribeaucourt Instagram

Faire Magazine

Antoinette Poisson

Antoinette Poisson is known for reviving traditional paper dominoes—beautiful, repeat-pattern domino prints. With a cheeky nod to French history, they were named after King Louis XV’s favourite mistress, better known as Madame de Pompadour.

'A Year in the French Style: Interiors and Entertaining with Antoinette Poisson’ by Vincent Farelly and Jean-Baptiste Martin

// Hosted by Judy Stewart // Produced by Caroline Hughes for Feast Collective

// Sound Engineer: Jason Millhouse

// Instagram: @_unpaused // Website: www.unpaused.net

Judy steps inside the wondrous Madrid atelier of Ana Lamata, maker of exquisite bespoke hats and a world many may have thought was a distant memory. 

Surrounded by hat boxes, hand dyed ribbons, linings and trims and her collection of traditional millinery tools, Ana tells Judy how her love of wearing and collecting hats first inspired her to leave behind a promising career as an art historian to become a professional milliner, learning her craft from millinery legend, Rose Cory, milliner to the late Queen Mother.  

This is a wonderful tale of reinvention told through the lens of a true 21st century artisan.

Her deliberate change of career direction speaks to Ana’s belief in the power and eloquence of clothing and specifically, headwear to address the social history, art, and culture in which they were created in their very own way. In this sense, every Ana Lamata hat is an important artefact, not just for the wearer but for the connoisseur and historian. For Ana, every hat tells a precious story. 

Show Notes: 

Ana Lamata

Ana Lamata Instagram

// Hosted by Judy Stewart // Produced by Caroline Hughes for Feast Collective// Sound Engineer: Jason Millhouse //

// Instagram: @_unpaused // Website: www.unpaused.net

Welcome back! In this new series, Unpaused is changing direction. No longer about corporate women reinventing corporate careers, the new Unpaused will be about women who broke with their careers and found a new calling by making something important with their hands. Judy has tried to bring the visual into the realm of the podcast to better convey these transformations in both colour and texture so have a look at Unpaused’s new website and Instagram page for more.

To ignite this new chapter, Judy delves into the story of the renowned Australian desert artist, Emily Kam Kngwarray. One of the most significant painters to emerge in the late twentieth century,  Kngwarray's monumental canvases and vibrant batiks immediately conjure her life as an elder from the Utopia region of Australia. Remarkably she only found her calling in her 8th decade, beginning a career as an artist that lasted until her death at 86 or thereabouts.

Emily's international renown has been fostered, in part, by gallerist D’Lan Davidson of Dlan Contemporary in Melbourne.

In this interview, Judy speaks to D’Lan and the Head of Research at D'Lan Contemporary, Vanessa Meloni, and joins with them in an exploration of Emily’s remarkable late-life awakening.

Show Notes

D'Lan Contemporary

National Gallery of Australia

Tate Modern

// Hosted by Judy Stewart // Produced by Caroline Hughes for Feast Collective//Sound Engineer: Jason Millhouse

// Instagram: ⁠@_unpaused⁠ // Website: ⁠www.unpaused.net

Coming very soon: a brand new season of Unpaused with Judy Stewart.

Unpaused is changing direction. No longer about corporate women reinventing corporate careers, the new Unpaused will be about women who broke with their careers and found a new calling by making something important with their hands. 

In new episodes, Judy will look at the creative lives of makers, artists and designers from around the world, including an extraordinary Spanish hat-maker and an expert on French textiles, inspired by the mistress of a King. 

In her first episode, Judy will look at the work of renowned Australian artist Emily Kam Kngwarray, whose career blossomed, remarkably, in her eighth decade.

There is much to inspire on Unpaused's new website and Instagram page in the lead up to the new season, so have a look there and then listen when Unpaused returns to your feed, fortnightly on Thursdays.

Earlier this year, Judy chanced upon meeting Carolina Guthmann, who, with her husband (former Italian television journalist Piero di Pasquale), are the creative forces behind Manima World in Palermo; a digital atelier of fine, hand embroidered home linens and ready to wear.

If there are two words that make my heart beat faster, they are hand embroidered. When Carolina told me it was her mission to preserve and empower the embroideresses of Sicily, I was in.

Listen to Carolina discuss the history of Sicilian embroidery, her big career change and her passion for working with local women sustaining centuries-old skills, on Unpaused now.

Show Notes:

// Hosted by Judy Stewart // Produced by Leonie Marsh // Sound Engineer: Jason Millhouse //

// Instagram: ⁠@_unpaused⁠ // Website: ⁠www.unpaused.net

This episode is split into two parts; first up Leonie Marsh solo as she records her feelings on the final night of her family's twelve week caravan trip. Then Judy catches up with Leonie again after a few weeks post trip, safely home. This is the final episode of Leonie Goes Caravanning - we hope you've enjoyed it!

Show Notes:

// Hosted by Judy Stewart // Produced & Edited by Leonie Marsh

// Instagram: @_unpaused // Website: www.unpaused.net