Podcast · Arts & Books

Fashion Neurosis with Bella Freud

New episodes: Weekly
Typical length: 1 hr 11 min
Latest: 7 Oct 2026
Language: English

Latest episode

7 Oct 2026 · 1 hr 20 min

Tim Walker

Tim Walker is an English photographer. He began taking pictures as a young boy and, after leaving school, worked in the Cecil Beaton archive at the Condé Nast Library before studying photography at Exeter College of Art. After university, he moved to New York to assist Richard Avedon, before returning to England where he shot his first fashion story for Vogue aged just 25. He became known for his lavish tableaux and ambitious narrative-driven shoots on location around the world, working with extraordinary props and sets, often in collaboration with set designer Shona Heath. Walker has made…

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Earlier episodes 29 most recent

30 Sep 2026 · 1 hr 1 min

Glenn Martens

We recorded this episode in the summer before the announcement that Glenn Martens would be stepping down as Creative Director of Diesel. Glenn Martens is a Belgian fashion designer and the creative director of Maison Margiela. Martens graduated first in his class from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, and then worked as a Junior Designer at Jean Paul Gautier from 2008 to 2012. Martens had an eponymous label which released three collections, before he joined Y/Project in 2013, quickly becoming Creative Director following the death of co-founder Yohan Sefarty. Martens worked at…
23 Sep 2026 · 1 hr 30 min

Carlos Acosta

Carlos Acosta is a Cuban dancer, choreographer, and director. Acosta won the Prix de Lausanne aged 16, and became the youngest Principal at the English National Ballet in 1991, aged 18. Acosta returned from classical ballet in 2016 after 28 years of performance. During his ballet career, he wrote and choreographed Tocororo, which broke box office records at Sadler’s Wells when it premiered. He also choreographed Royal Ballet productions of Don Quixote and Carmen. In August 2026 Acosta returned to the Royal Opera House stage for a weeklong run of shows, including performing Havana Suite with…
16 Sep 2026 · 1 hr 24 min

Martine Syms

Martine Syms is a multidisciplinary artist working across film, video, photography, and publishing. Born and raised in California, she studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and gained an MFA from Bard College. From 2007 to 2012, she co-directed Golden Age, an artist-run space in Chicago, and had her first solo exhibition at Bridget Donaghue gallery in New York in 2015. She has exhibited at international art institutions including the ICA, MoMA, Sadie Coles HQ, and the Walker Art Museum. Syms has published several books including PICTURES 2014-2024 and SHE MAD, and has her own…
9 Sep 2026 · 58 min

Anthony Vaccarello

Anthony Vaccarello is a Belgian fashion designer. Born to Sicilian parents in Brussels, he studied law for one year before moving to the renowned La Cambre art and design school. Upon graduation, Vaccarello spent two years working for Karl Lagerfeld at Fendi in Rome, and then launched his eponymous label Anthony Vaccarello in 2009. Since 2016, Vaccarello has been Creative Director of Saint Laurent. During his ten years at the helm of the brand, Vaccarello has upheld Yves Saint Laurent’s creative legacy with irreverent modernity. Across his tenure, he has steadily reinforced the House’s…
2 Sep 2026 · 1 hr 11 min

David Sedaris

David Sedaris is an American author and humourist. David’s first book, Barrel Fever, was published in 1994, and he has since published fourteen books including Calypso, and Me Talk Pretty One Day, with his essay collections regularly appearing on the New York Times’ bestseller list. His latest book, The Land and Its People, was published in May 2026. He is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and to NPR. His BBC Radio 4 series, ‘Meet David Sedaris’, won a BBC Audio Drama Award in 2026. In 2019, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is the recipient of the…
26 Aug 2026 · 59 min

RERUN: Rick Owens

RERUN: In the first episode of Fashion Neurosis with Bella Freud, I was joined by the legendary fashion master of avant-garde gothic elegance Rick Owens as he lies on the couch. Rick Owens is known for his preoccupation with distortion and exaggeration of the human form through clothes. Together he and I talk about how this plays out with his own physical transformation; what are his current obsessions; and how nothing could be cooler than not having to hold a glass in his hand when he (rarely) walks into a social situation. Honest and insightful, this is a conversation with one of fashion's…
19 Aug 2026 · 52 min

RERUN: Zadie Smith

RERUN: Zadie Smith was one of my first recordings of Fashion Neurosis. She arrived on a bicycle in the pouring rain, a more typical June day in London 2024. I didn't know Zadie well, but she owned a couple of my velvet suits and she is one of those writers who dresses as brilliantly as she writes. Writing is such a glamorous thing. Seeing a body clothed with style makes me wonder how that person thinks. This is why I was so keen to see Zadie Smith lying on my couch - to see her and to hear her. - Zadie Smith is a British novelist, essayist, and short story writer. She is the author of six…
12 Aug 2026 · 47 min

RERUN: Kate Moss

RERUN: I never expected to have Kate Moss as a Fashion Neurosis guest. I knew she hated being filmed and is famously private. I had been doing little experiments with set ups before Covid and one day we were having tea together and I showed her. ‘I want to do this,’ she said. I could hardly believe what I was hearing. I knew I must have made something good if Kate wanted to be part of it. Her episode will always be one of my favourites. Her brilliant irreverent wit is second to none. - Kate Moss is an English model. Born in Croydon, she started modelling aged 15 after she was scouted in an…
5 Aug 2026 · 1 hr 17 min

Laurie Anderson - Live at Tribeca Festival

A live, audio-only recording from my conversation with Laurie Anderson at the Tribeca Festival in June 2026. Laurie Anderson is an American writer, director, composer, visual artist, musician, and vocalist whose groundbreaking work spans art, theater, experimental music, and technology. She has created numerous multimedia stage performances, published ten books, and been nominated for five Grammy Awards, with her visual art exhibited globally at institutions including the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, DC, and the Moderna Museet in Stockholm. Anderson has a BA in Art History from Barnard…
29 Jul 2026 · 1 hr 20 min

Shania Twain

Shania Twain is a Canadian songwriter and artist. She is a five-time GRAMMY Award winner, and the top-selling female country-pop artist of all time. Born in Ontario, Shania Twain experienced a childhood fraught with deprivation. From the age of 8, her mother would take Shania to perform after hours in local bars in order to raise grocery money, but also to showcase the extraordinary talent of her daughter. Through her bold and boundary-pushing lyricism and musical style, Twain helped redefine country music for a global audience, opening the door for the genre-blending sound and cultural…
22 Jul 2026 · 1 hr 5 min

RM

RM is a South Korean rapper, songwriter, music producer, and the leader of pop royalty BTS. His discography includes solo mixtapes RM (2015) and mono. (2018), as well as solo albums Indigo (2022) and Right Place, Wrong Person (2024), which showcase his remarkable versatility across genres. BTS have released ten studio albums since 2014, are among the world’s best-selling musical acts, and have been recognized with numerous prestigious awards worldwide. As a creative powerhouse and avid art enthusiast, RM is renowned for crafting profound lyrics often inspired by various art forms. He has an…
15 Jul 2026 · 1 hr 2 min

Rashida Jones

Rashida Jones is an award-winning American actor, writer, producer, and director with a dynamic body of work spanning film, television, and documentary filmmaking. Her extensive acting credits include Sofia Coppola’s On The Rocks, The Social Network, Celeste and Jesse Forever, as well as the television series Parks and Recreation, The Office, Angie Tribeca and Sunny, which Jones executive produced. Jones will star in Lena Dunham’s upcoming film Good Sex, alongside Natalie Portman and Mark Ruffalo. In 2025, she received Golden Globe and Emmy nominations for her performance in “Common People,”…
8 Jul 2026 · 1 hr 33 min

Flea

Flea, born Michael Balzary, is a musician, writer and actor. He is one of the founding members and the bassist of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Flea is a legend in the musical fraternity. His style, both sartorially and musically is instantly recognizable and brings an emotional charge to everything he is involved with. Flea met Anthony Kiedis in high school in Los Angeles, and they formed the Red Hot Chili Peppers in 1982. The band achieved major mainstream success with their album Blood Sex Sugar Magik in 1991. The band most recently released their thirteenth album, Return of the Dream…
1 Jul 2026 · 1 hr 18 min

Leïla Slimani

Leïla Slimani is a French-Moroccan writer. Born in Rabat, Morocco, she moved to Paris aged seventeen to study media and journalism at Sciences Po. She is the author of seven books published in the English language. Her debut Adèle was published in 2014, followed by Lullaby, which made Slimani the first Moroccan woman to win France’s most prestigious literary prize, the Prix Goncourt. Her non-fiction work Sex and Lies compiles accounts of sex and sexuality from Moroccan women she had interviewed while on a book tour, while The Scent of Flowers at Night is a meditation on art, life and the…
24 Jun 2026 · 1 hr 11 min

Charli xcx

Charli xcx is a British musician, artist, and actor. Raised in Essex, she recorded her first album at the age of 14, and was discovered after posting demos on MySpace and performing at East London raves. She has since released six studio albums, with her seventh album Music, Fashion, Film releasing on the 24th of July. One of the defining artists of our time, Charli moves seamlessly between the experimental and the mainstream, building a career characterised by reinvention, collaboration, and a singular approach to artistry that has influenced both the sound and visual language of…
17 Jun 2026 · 1 hr 27 min

John Currin

John Currin is an American painter. Currin is widely recognised for his figurative oil paintings in which themes of sexual personae and historical painterly genres appear in surreal and sometimes disconcerting guises. Oscillating between a graphic sexuality and playful symbolism, Currin captures the tones and textures of everyday life with an acute sensitivity and a meticulous attention to detail. Currin has exhibited internationally at galleries including Sadie Coles, Dallas Contemporary, Museo Stefano Bardini in Florence and Gagosian in New York. His first solo show was at White Columns in…
10 Jun 2026 · 1 hr 17 min

Colm Tóibín

Colm Tóibín is an Irish writer. Born in Enniscorthy, he is the author of eleven novels, including The Master, Brooklyn and The Magician, and two collections of stories. His novel Brooklyn was an immediate bestseller on publication and was adapted into an Oscar- nominated film starring Saoirse Ronan in 2015. His most recent novel Long Island is a sequel to Brooklyn. In his new short story collection The News from Dublin, these luminous short stories delve into the days and nights of those living far from home: lives of great longing, at a great distance from past lives and past selves. Colm…
3 Jun 2026 · 1 hr 12 min

Stephen Jones

Stephen Jones OBE is a British milliner and designer, highly regarded as one of the most radical of the 20th and 21st centuries. Jones studied at St Martins, spending his evenings at the Blitz club, immersed in London’s fashion and punk scene in the 1970s. In 1980, Stephen opened his first millinery salon in the heart of London. This shop was visited by rock stars and royalty, from Diana Ross to Diana, Princess of Wales. Over four decades later, Jones’s era-defining designs continue to attract a celebrity clientele which includes Rihanna, Lady Gaga, Mick Jagger, and British Royalty. Since…
27 May 2026 · 1 hr 18 min

Peaches

Peaches is a Canadian singer songwriter, producer, director, and performance artist. She first catapulted to stardom with her 2000 debut album, The Teaches of Peaches, which introduced the world to her sexually transgressive, fiercely assertive and captivating persona. Since then, Peaches has released four more trailblazing albums, won the prestigious Polaris Heritage Prize, collaborated with everyone from Iggy Pop and Daft Punk to Christina Aguilera and Yoko Ono, and had her music featured in cultural watermarks like Lost in Translation and The Handmaid’s Tale. In addition to her musical…
20 May 2026 · 1 hr 2 min

Jerry Hall

Jerry Hall is an American model and actor who rose to fame in the 1970s, becoming one of the world’s most sought-after supermodels. Born and raised in working-class Texas, she was discovered at 16 on a beach in St. Tropez, and moved to France to model, sharing a Paris apartment with Grace Jones and Jessica Lange. She has been photographed by the greatest photographers including Helmust Newton and David Bailey, and by 1977 she had graced the cover of 40 international fashion magazines. Hall was a muse to the artist Andy Warhol and fashion illustrator Antonio Lopez, and sat for Lucian Freud…
13 May 2026 · 1 hr 31 min

FKA twigs

FKA twigs is a Grammy-award winning singer-songwriter, producer, dancer-choreographer, visual artist and actor. Raised in Gloucestershire, twigs moved to London aged 17 and became embedded in the underground art and club scene. She released her debut EP EP1 in 2012, and breakthrough album LP1 in 2014, establishing herself as a singular creative force who writes, directs, and physically embodies her work. Her subsequent albums Magdalene (2019), Eusexua (2025), and Eusexua Afterglow (2025), melded movement, experimental sound, and cinematic storytelling. In 2022, she became the youngest solo…
6 May 2026 · 1 hr 18 min

Dan Levy

Dan Levy is an Emmy award-winning actor, writer, director, and producer. Born and raised in Toronto, Canada, Levy is the son of actor and comedian Eugene Levy. Dan Levy became a sensation for his work on Schitt’s Creek, one of the most beloved shows on television, which he co-created and featured in with his father Eugene Levy and which also starred Catherine O’Hara. The series garnered countless awards, and a total of 165 nominations, including nine Emmy wins for its sixth and final season. Levy launched a film and television production company, Not a Real Production Company, in 2022. Levy…
29 Apr 2026 · 1 hr 5 min

Kristen McMenamy

Kristen McMenamy is an American model. Born in Pennsylvania, she rose to fame in the 1990s as part of the legendary group of Supermodels including Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford, Kate Moss, Christy Turlington, and Linda Evangelista. McMenamy was a muse to Peter Lindbergh and Karl Lagerfield, and her short dark hair and bleached eyebrows made her an icon of the early 90s grunge scene, appearing in the famous American Vogue “Grunge and Glory” spread shot by Steven Meisel and styled by Grace Coddington. Known for her unconventional, androgynous look, she has worked with many of the world’s most…
22 Apr 2026 · 56 min

Arlo Parks

Arlo Parks is an English singer-songwriter, and poet. Born and raised in Hammersmith, West London, Parks released her first EP Super Sad Generation aged 19, going on to win the Mercury Music Prize, a Breakthrough Artist Brit Award, and Grammy nominations for her first album Collapsed in Sunbeams, released in 2021. Parks performed at Glastonbury and Coachella, opening for artists including Billie Eilish and Harry Styles. Parks’ second album, My Soft Machine, was Brit-nominated and included a song featuring musician Phoebe Bridgers. Parks toured this album globally, and it was named one of the…
8 Apr 2026 · 53 min

Thom Browne

Thom Browne is an American fashion designer, who is widely recognized for challenging and modernizing our contemporary uniform and tailoring. By questioning traditional proportions, Browne’s designs consistently convey a true American sensibility rooted in quality craftsmanship and precise tailoring. Browne began working in fashion in the late 1990s for brands including Giorgio Armani and Ralph Lauren. In 2001, Browne began his eponymous label with five suits in a small “by appointment” shop in New York City’s West Village and, in the years following, expanded his business to include…
1 Apr 2026 · 1 hr 5 min

Lynne Ramsay

Lynne Ramsay is an award-winning director and writer. Born and raised in Glasgow, Lynne made the short film Little Deaths during her time at the National Film and Television School, which won the 1996 Prix du Jury at Cannes. In 1998, she wrote and directed the short film Gasman, starring her brother James, which won the BAFTA short film award and another Prix du Jury. Her feature film debut was the 1999 film Ratcatcher, which won numerous awards, follows a young boy growing up in working-class Glasgow during the bin workers strike in the 1970s. She has since written and directed four feature…
25 Mar 2026 · 1 hr 6 min

Riz Ahmed

Riz Ahmed is an Academy and Emmy Award winning actor, director, musician, and writer. Born and raised in Wembley, Ahmed studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford University, going on to study acting at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. Ahmed’s breakthrough role was in the 2006 film The Road to Guantanamo. He has starred in the satirical film Four Lions, the HBO award-nominated series The Night Of, and The Sound of Metal, for which Ahmed received a Best Actor nomination at the Academy Awards. More recently, Ahmed has featured in Wes Anderson’s latest film The Phoenician…
18 Mar 2026 · 52 min

David Byrne

David Byrne is a musician and visual artist. He was born in Dumbarton, Scotland, moving to Canada aged 2, and later Maryland, where he was raised in Baltimore. Byrne studied photography, performance, and video at RISD and the Maryland Institute College of Art, before moving to New York in the early 1970s. In 1975, Byrne co-founded the group Talking Heads, who released eight studio albums before splitting up in the early 1990s. The band made the concert film Stop Making Sense in 1984, directed by Jonathan Demme, which in 2024 was remastered and re-released by A24. Byrne established the record…
11 Mar 2026 · 1 hr 13 min

Fecal Matter

Fecal Matter are a fashion design and artist duo made up of Hannah Rose Dalton and Steven Raj. The two met at fashion school in Montreal in 2012, and formed Fecal Matter in 2014. Matières Fécales, the duo’s brand, was founded in 2025, and creates unique garments defined by their phrase “Provoke Society”. The brand is known for their post-human aesthetic and ethos of unlimited freedom and radical self-expression, with products spanning fashion, film, politics and music. Matières Fécales’ name reflects its mission to capture the beauty and grotesque of the human experience, whilst also…

About Fashion Neurosis with Bella Freud

Each week join the renowned fashion designer Bella Freud as she invites a special guest to lie on the couch and explore the connection between fashion and identity. Bella’s conversations begin with questions about style: what we reveal and hide through the clothes we wear. Bella also shares her own anecdotes and the conversations expand into deeper discussions on life’s universal themes - love, identity, culture, anxiousness, and politics. Through a series of tailored questions, Bella creates a relaxed, intimate atmosphere where her guests - ranging from fashion icons to cultural figures in sport, art, music, film, and literature - reveal more about themselves than they might expect. Fashion is often dismissed as surface, but in this podcast it becomes the lens through which we examine our inner lives, relationships, and society. Fashion Neurosis with Bella Freud offers a unique, thoughtful, and engaging conversation that goes far beyond what we wear, diving into the unspoken language of clothing and the ways in which we use style to navigate and communicate in the world. Part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. www.fashionneurosis.com www.fashionneurosis.substack.com @fashioneurosis_bellafreud

Fashion Neurosis with Bella Freud is a English arts & books podcast from Bella Freud. Melo plays each episode straight from the publisher's own feed — no ads added, no account needed — and remembers where you stopped, in this browser only.

Publisher: Bella Freud
Language: English
Category: Arts & Books
New episodes: Weekly
Typical length: 1 hr 11 min
Latest episode: 7 Oct 2026
Feed: RSS — paste into any podcast app
Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1768794307

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