Hello I'm Kirsty Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Disks from BBC Radio 4.

For rights reasons, the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.

For more information about the program, please visit BBC.co.uk.

Radio 4. My castaway this week is the designer Celia Bertwell. In the ephemeral world of fashion she has endured,

Marianne Faithful wore her creations in the 60s. Kate Moss is a fan today.

Wimsical prints and flattering forms are her signature style.

And although her vintage designs are highly collectible, her new ranges fly off the high street rails too.

Never one of the fashion world's flamboyant self-promoters, she has nonetheless a face known to millions.

As a long-time friend and muse to David Hawkney, she is the woman at the center of his famous painting, Mr and Mrs Clark and

Percy. She wants her work to be relevant because she says there's nothing

worse than being outdated. If that happens and I feel I'm past it I'll stop. Well you're

clearly far from past it Celia and these days you're commissioned by everyone from

top shop for clothes to claryges for interiors. And you've been at it a good long time. But when you see some lovely

young things swanning down the street in one of your current creations,

do you still get a thrill?

Yes, it's lovely to me.

I think the older you get,

youth looks more and more delectable

and you think, gosh, I was there once but when you

young you never appreciate it the same way.

I'm imagining when you started out you were full of sort of blind enthusiasm and optimism.

Is that harder and harder to hold on to as you deal with the big corporate beasts of the world? and he was trying something out, sort of quite new, but then suddenly young and beautiful became

...