Michelle Obama can't dress and Lucian was odd, says Celia Bertwell

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10 April 2012

I didn't want it be a coffee-table book," Celia Birtwell says about her new book. "I wanted something with a story."

Birtwell - David Hockney's muse - has had an extraordinary career, which has seen her go from the heights of the fashion world to obscurity - and back again.

Her floral prints for the flowing dresses designed by her late ex-husband Ossie Clark defined the boho look of the late Sixties and Seventies.

Elizabeth Taylor, Marianne Faithfull and Bianca Jagger were fans. In 1972 Mick Jagger owned 10 Clark jumpsuits.

Three decades later, Birtwell re-emerged in 2006 with sell-out collections for Topshop. And, with the return of the maxi dress, we're seeing the influence of her romantic, feminine prints on the catwalk again.

Now Birtwell, who is 70, has written about her own life. Her book, which is out today, is no scandalous memoir, it's a beautiful scrapbook full of fashion illustrations and photographs of famous figures in her designs, each page decorated with iconic Birtwell motifs (stripes, stars, flowers, hearts).

But it does represent Birtwell taking control of her life, partly because her story has been documented elsewhere - not least in Ossie's explosive diaries published after his death. In 1996 he was murdered by his gay ex-lover. By then he and Birtwell had been divorced for 21 years but it was a shock. "My God, I've lived a long time since then," she says softly.

Birtwell, who was awarded a CBE earlier this year, is a survivor. After she and Clark divorced in 1975, she retreated from the fashion industry and brought up her sons, Albert and George. She taught and in 1984, encouraged by Hockney, opened her homeware shop on Westbourne Park Road, selling exquisite hand-blocked muslins and other fabrics.

We meet at the shop, now run by George and his wife, Bella (Birtwell lives nearby). In a black trouser suit with stripey pumps she looks gorgeous -sharper than her younger self, more defined.

She's grown out of Ossie's chiffon dresses now.

Plus her work is all about the new. "I hope I'm not still stuck in the Sixties," she says. "When you're older, you've got to be bloody careful if you wear something a bit shabby. You want to keep looking fresh."

Her heart-shaped face is recognisable from the countless paintings and drawings of her by Hockney (many reproduced in the book). "Celia is a good model," he has said. "Her face isn't a mask, it reveals a lot."

In 1970 Hockney painted the double portrait, Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy (featuring Celia, Ossie and their cat), one of the most popular works exhibited at Tate Britain.

The painting captures one of the great love triangles. Ossie was bisexual and early on had an affair with Hockney, who was best man at their wedding. But it is Hockney and Birtwell's relationship that has endured for nearly 50 years.

For a brief time in the early Seventies, when Ossie was going off the rails with drink and drugs and Hockney was distraught after he split with a younger boyfriend, a tender love affair took place between Birtwell and Hockney.

Both came from Left-leaning, bookish Northern families. They consoled each other, had long talks. He took her off to Paris. The result was romantic crayon drawings of Birtwell in vintage lingerie, as well as nude and semi-nude studies."I think when he painted me he almost saw me in a romantic light," she writes in the book. "He used to call me names like 'Little Celia'."

There is a grown-up sensuality to the pictures that implies a lover's eye. In a piece in this month's Vogue, Hockney's biographer, Christopher Simon Sykes, claims their relationship was never consummated, although they ended up in bed on several occasions.

She joined Hockney in Malibu where he had rented Lee Marvin's house. "We got very close and I suppose I was in love with her," the artist told his biographer.

Any chance of the affair developing further, however, was scotched when Ossie arrived - "like a bloody boomerang" - and ruined everything.

When we meet, Birtwell is a little disconcerted by the Vogue piece. "Christopher Simon Sykes is writing a two-volume biography of David, so he came to interview me about when I met David - blah, blah, the usual story. But the Vogue piece is really his take on this strange affair I had with David. He rang me to say he was doing the piece, and just wanted to chat to me for a few minutes. I said that I think we amuse each other, that David likes the absurd qualities of mine he can laugh at, but that I'm okay with that because I know it's done with fondness. Then Simon Sykes said, 'Okay, I've got enough now'. And then this..." she points at the feature.

It goes much further than anything Hockney has ever said on the record. Clearly Simon Sykes had access to letters the artist sent to friends about his feelings for Birtwell. "I think he was very fond of me at the time, it shows in the fabulous drawings. I'm deeply honoured that it was me who inspired that softness."

This is slightly tricky territory. After all, for the past 25 years she has been with her partner, Andrew, a builder and craftsman. They met when he came to work on her house. She has six grandchildren. "Sometimes I think we should marry - maybe when I'm about to disappear," she laughs.

"I don't have a big thing about marriage any more."

Arguably, Hockney is her platonic husband. They watch Forties films together, visit galleries.

When her sons were teenagers he took Birtwell and the boys to Utah and Nevada. She loves weekends at Hockney's home in Bridlington. "He's a great host. Somehow he just does things with aplomb."

She's probably one of the few people who can tell him the truth. And she can be fabulously un-PC. She loves Barack Obama - "Give him a bloody chance," she admonishes America - but Michelle is on her worst-dressed list. "When I saw Obama's wife here the other day with her skirt up to here," she gasps, "I thought, 'No, no, no, it should be here'," pointing mid-calf. "Poor old thing, she tries really hard. But I tell you who does dress well - Bush's wife, she always looks rather smart in a good blue suit. I always thought her outfits were good for a middle-aged woman."

It was Birtwell who was partly responsible for Hockney embarking on making digital paintings, when she made him exchange his battered Nokia for an iPhone. And Hockney introduced her to Lucian Freud. She found him "quite formidable, quite strange". Not good husband material, she observes.

"I bet he was a difficult bugger."

If Freud didn't want to go to bed with you, he looked through you, she recalls. "A bit old-fashioned all that, isn't it?" As for his pictures, "I wouldn't like to have one, would you?" she says. "A bit too brown."

As a child, she drew obsessively and at 13 was accepted by Salford Art School, where she studied textiles.

After college she moved to live in Notting Hill.

When Clark came to London to study at the Royal College of Art, he moved in with her. She knew he was gay. "Friends said I was walking into something that was very difficult," she says in the book. "But Ossie was very persistent and eventually won me over."

Birtwell and Clark were part of a social scene that included the Stones, Beatles and Jimi Hendrix. But Ossie struggled to maintain his career, battling drugs, going bankrupt, losing his home.

Birtwell has no intention of retiring. Now what she desperately wants to do is design for women of her own age.

She'd never put herself in Hockney's league. "He thinks I'm a decorative artist," she says with a wink. "But I don't think my work looks embarrassing next to his in the book, does it?

Although he's a giant, I think it stands up. I've been able to put his pages in sympathetically."

And Hockney has told her he is proud of the book. "He's a great companion, he's enriched my life. I've had a really nice time being his friend."

Celia Birtwell, by Celia Birtwell with Dominic Lutyens, is published by Quadrille today, priced £30.

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