bodies. Having more hair on our bodies meant that
protein that was meant to be for the hair couldn‟t go
into our brains, and we‟d never have our big brains. So
the evolutionary decision was to have less hair and
more brains – but less hair means that you‟d then have
to invent clothing, to insulate yourself from the
environment, which is what we did.
Are you aiming to make a statement by the way you
dress?
Yes, of course you do! Everybody does. To some
degree, women more than men, on average, but you‟re
making a statement of: “this is who I am, this is how I
feel, this is how I exist in this world which is around
me.” Not just me as an empty identity, I‟m also me:
the person who dresses like this. By dressing like this
I‟m making a statement of how I expect the world to
treat me and how I want to treat the world.
Has your style changed over the years? And in
what ways?
On one hand, doing the media stuff, I‟d dress up nice
and bright and have exactly as much fun as I‟d feel
like. On the other hand, when I‟m doing a corporate
speaking event, there is the essential thing of playing
the game of pretending to be like your host. So I‟d
wear a suit and shiny new black trousers and a suit
coat, but I‟ll never wear a tie. I always wear my
bright shirts, so even in the middle of my corporate
amour I‟d still manage to sneak in a little bit of
renegade.
It makes it easy, best of both worlds.
Well it shows respect to your host.... I do try to show
respect to the audience, so if I‟m talking to a bunch
of pharmacologists or pharmacology students at
university I‟ll wear one of my shirts that‟s got a
whole bunch of pills on it. If I‟m talking to
agricultural students, I‟ll wear a shirt with little
animals on it. If I‟m talking to engineers, I‟ll wear
my Japanese Shinkensen shirt materials that we
bought in Shinjuku station in Tokyo, Japan.
Is it true that you make your own shirts?
No, no, my wife makes my shirts. There are many
rumours, as probably you have guessed yourself, that
go around but my wife makes my shirts and I help
her. I ask many incriminating things, like “why did
you turn that inside out?” and “why is that doing
that?” and I'm gradually picking up knowledge, but
my wife is different. Recently we were doing a
photo-shoot for Spinifex and the brief was for
something „Christmas-y‟. So my wife got up at 5:30
AM and by 8:30 AM I had my shirt, in three hours.