Naomi Parry - Styling Amy Winehouse & Exploring Creative Legacy

I was looking at some of your other endeavors and other work as well, like the Future Archive, which was a creative consultancy you founded and various things.

And I keep seeing time and time again that archiving and kind of safeguarding material seems to be like a really big theme of your work.

And I'd love to know how your relationship to that has changed because it's really interesting to me that so often we place value on things in the aftermath, like things at the time, they don't seem too important or too much historical significance or whatever it may be.

And they kind of reveal itself, its significance later on.

I'd love to know how you feel about that because it is a curious thing where we go to a museum, we see something like a hairbrush and were amazed by it but that was just someone's hairbrush back in the day it's it's an interesting thing i'd love to know how your relationship has has been to that

well i mean that is it's totally the sort of on the eye of the beholder i suppose because exactly as you say you know i actually speaking of my archive um i had accumulated um lots of bits and pieces throughout my work with Amy um and things that I designed and um things that she uh designers had given to her that she didn't want and she gave to me etc and you know at the time they're just things they you know they hold a bit of a sentimental value in a way because it's kind of your work and it marks a point in time um but I do think it's It's interesting how much, I mean, it depends on the item, I suppose, but people put a lot of emphasis on these objects.

And I think it's kind of because it gets them closer to the person.

So

I remember seeing years ago, like somebody sold a piece of chewing gum.

It was either from Britney Spears or it was Justin Bieber or something like that.

And it went for like tens of thousands.

Like that's insane because it's just this thing.

It's like, oh my God, I've had this thing that somebody's touched.

And, you know, I understand it, but it's a bit, it's a bit strange.

But then I also do understand that there are, there are parts of like an archive that is, they have like a cultural significance and, you know, like.

But Amy's ballet pumps, you know, they're so, like, synonymous with her.

And, like, even a hairbrush would be of massive interest because of how Amy did her hair.

It's just sort of...

And these pieces as well, I think particularly clothing, have now become...

They're almost like pieces of art.

They're like a moment in time.

And I think they do...

They have such... a significance and they're so it's so interesting to kind of see something up close and personal and just you know like none of amy's items were you know they weren't like couture really they didn't have they weren't they didn't have like an enormous amount of detail but one of the interesting things about her clothing and actually working on a book about this at the moment with a museum um who actually bought most of her stuff from the um the auction is how she wore clothing so and how she altered clothing like what she put um on you know whether how she pinned something up or how i even altered it for her and so you see this these little marks on these dresses and like you know the inner workings of them um and how somebody's altered them or their approach to it which i think is really fascinating and it's so nice for people to be able to kind of see that because again it kind of gives them insight into that person and it sort of creates a bit of closeness um And, you know, and I think these archives are super important.

Like I said, this museum, Museo de la Moda in Santiago in Chile, the guy that owns it, Jorge Yarur, he is... um a curator and a preservationist and he is really interested in um historical pieces but also kind of celebrity stuff because and he wants to preserve them he wants them um he you know he finds them very interesting he wants other people to be able to see them and he preserves them to a point where um they are kept below ground in temperature-controlled rooms, so there's no chance of moths getting to them or anything.

And they will absolutely stand the test of time.