About Last Night: Episode 5 featuring Amanda Thompson

About Last Night hosted by Parry Ray

This episode features fashion designer Amanda Thompson. One of the most fascinating things about Amanda, to me, is that her creative journey actually began as a professional ballet dancer. She was a dancer in Michael Clarke’s company, during which time Amanda danced in a Vivienne Westwood show and was photographed by Nick Knight many times, notably once for the front cover of ID magazine. Through her life as a dancer she became enthralled by the medium of film which then led to her training as professional actress during which time she worked with creatives such as David Bailey, Ian Drury and Billy Connolly. Amanda describes this phase of her life as “feast or famine”, with financial struggles at the fore, something she is extremely frank about. And it was at this time Amanda found her calling, which is how she describes fashion design. She was compelled to design and make her own clothes having spent years craving couture she simply couldn’t afford. Self taught, Amanda is a massive proponent of slow fashion and strongly feels clothes should be things that are cherished rather than discarded. She runs her business from her relatively new shop in Westbourne Park, behind Portobello Market in west London. So, we met up in the summer at a lovely bar called Negozia Classica in Notting Hill where we had a couple glasses of delicious Italian wine and chatted about Amanda’s journey to date, what inspires her and her new AW collection. Here’s our conversation…