23 February 1962–16 May 2014
The fashion designer recalls his former teacher, the tough but inspirational Central Saint Martins professor
Opinionated, outspoken, incisive and uncompromising – Louise Wilson was all these things, but she was so much more as well. Her first words to me were fearsome (to say the least), and our last contained another f-word, but amid all the expletives were genuine praise and encouragement.
I remember my interview for the fashion MA at Central Saint Martins vividly. Straight off the train from Scotland and surrounded by painfully cool students (seemingly all carrying Louis Vuitton folios and a palpable London nonchalance), I was nervous to the point of nausea. I wish I could say she made me feel immediately at ease, or that she calmed my insecurities, but that wasn’t the case. Instead, she had pulled the venetian blinds entirely so that the light streaming in behind her created the most formidable of silhouettes – a trick, I’m sure, usually reserved for interrogation rooms, but more on that later. Less than three minutes into my interview, Louise assumed a full-on, frighteningly authentic Glaswegian accent to mimic my own which, as you can imagine, didn’t help either.
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