offered Marina Abramovic yesterday, calling in from London.
Im freaking out completely.
I know that Im doing something that is important, and I love risk.
Marina Abramović performing “Seven Minutes of Collective Silence” during day three of Glastonbury Festival 2024.
Im also ready to fail.
Music festivals are where we go to escape, but Abramovic turned Glastonbury into a temple of reflection.
People come to have a good time.
Abramović during her final fitting
Theyre drinking, taking drugs, the weather is good.
So much can go wrong, but Ill stand there, with my arms open.
I have journalists who ask me, As an artist, what are you going to do?
“It’s not easy wearing this dress, because you’re not wearing the dress, you’re wearing the symbol,” said Abramović of her look.
All of us have the function of [enacting] change.
That includes fashion, despite the industrys seemingly blind eye to the catastrophes unfolding around it.
Fashion is in a state of crisis, offered Abramovic.
Marina Abramović performing “Seven Minutes of Collective Silence” during day three of Glastonbury Festival 2024.
Its recycling different designers for different brands; everything is about content.
At that time nobody was doing any of it.
Tisci and Abramovic have collaborated often.
Its such a beautiful dress.
Riccardo made an incredible concept, Abramovic said of tonights ensemble.
I was thinking of how to present this idea, and he made this symbol of peace.
Its going to end in a museum.
Thats what this dress had to embody.
The inspiration came from the great art of the Japanese kimono.
We loved the idea to turn that into a peace sign.
Tisci is currently a free agent, having left Burberry in late 2022.
Ive worked my whole life!
So Im taking my time to enjoy it before stepping back into the light, he said.
She asked if I had time to do this for her.
I will always make time for Marina.
Marina Abramovic performing Seven Minutes of Collective Silence during day three of Glastonbury Festival 2024.
Over the years, Abramovic has embraced fashion like few visual or performance artists of her generation.
In the 70s, she said with a laugh, artists only wore dirty jeans….
Fashion was the enemy, red lips and red nail polish and you were trying too hard.
It was seen as terrible, she said.
I always felt really ugly as a woman, and I never felt secure as an artist.
I never had confidence as a woman.
But then, she recalled, she found fashion as a tool.
Its not wrong to feel empowered, to feel actually good in your clothes.
I discovered this and stopped feeling guilty about fashion.
A pivotal moment, the artist remembers, was hearing something attributed to the designer Issey Miyake.
He said, Because I like to have enough space for spirits to live.
She realized, she said, that designers can be spiritual people.
Ever since, she said, fashion and art have melded into each other for her.
Abramovics intervention at Glastonbury could go down as a new pinnacle for the artist.
What I can communicate to people is that, if you change yourself, you change others.
She cited Mahatma Gandhi as an example of revolution through peace.
We are dismissing that possibility.
Silence is not something that is resistance, it is not about protest.
We always criticize someone else, but we never look at ourselves.
