Bella Freud

I think I remember those caps because were they like little riding hats?

And you're the most successful milliner in the world.

And you've worked with the biggest designers in existence, including five different creative directors at Dior, from John Galliano to Jonathan Anderson.

And you've been awarded an OBE.

And you said your family hated the idea of you going into hat making.

Why was that?

How wonderful that's such a...

How incredible to have that moment also that you made the effort to have some kind of exchange even though you were expecting him literally not to be able to speak.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Because your mother took you to art galleries, and I wondered what the first painting you were drawn to with a good hat in it.

I love the things that stay in one's memory that are completely... But then they sort of generate...

the memory of the art as well, even though the thing that is so enticing is the carpet.

And when I was thinking about asking you what was the first hat you'd seen in a painting, and I had a poster, a Toulouse-Lautrec poster on my wall of Larry Steed,

with the dark blue he's wearing the dark blue trilby and the um red scarf and it i realized oh yes the whole kind of atmosphere of how he was dressed and what the hat did was was really important somehow oh yes it completely underlines your intent it's funny there is

Right, yeah.

It's so interesting, the thing of self-consciousness, how contraintuitive it can be.

And that thing of almost going into the eye of the storm is where you feel safe and because something else is doing the work, getting the attention for you.

But you don't, just because you're shy doesn't mean you want to be anonymous.

No.