“Her life is a stage. Funerals or balls, she always makes a performance,” said Valentino when describing the heiress and couture enthusiast, Daphne Guinness who is the subject of a new book and exhibition...
“Her life is a stage. Funerals or balls, she always makes a performance,” said Valentino when describing the heiress and couture enthusiast, Daphne Guinness. “But behind the extraordinary looks is the sweetest and most tender human being”. Now, Guinness, who has enabled the world to vicariously experience the pleasures of couture through her unwavering appetite for the art form, has co-authored a new book of which her decadent life – referred to by friend and art historian John Richardson as “her own masterpiece” – is the subject.
Titled simply Daphne Guinness, the publication is illustrated with a photo album’s worth of images and explores both her public persona – the fashion collaborations and style characteristics she is famous for – as well as her private one, examining the friendships Guinness has forged with designers including Valentino, Phillip Treacy, Tom Ford and Karl Lagerfeld. And then of course there is the late Alexander McQueen. He considered the fashion icon an indispensable muse. After he died, she praised him for his "gigantic personality". “He was a colossus, a titan,” she said. “And he had the biggest heart”.
Born in 1967 to the brewery heir Jonathan Guinness, Daphne always moved in artistic circles. As a child she spent holidays in Spain swimming in her neighbour, Salvador Dali’s lobster-filled pool. During her teenage years she resided in New York where her sister worked as a PA for Andy Warhol. Her paternal grandmother was Irish aristocrat Diana Mitford – one of six famous sisters who captivated 20th century Britain with their outrageous antics. These are a mere few examples. But in terms of her outlandish appearance, the turning point for Guinness undoubtedly came when aged 31 she divorced Greek shipping billionaire Spyros Niarchos and met one of the few women who could match her extraordinary vision, Isabella Blow. Along with McQueen, the fashionable three formed a tight and life-long friendship. “We became so close. Me and Lee and Issie. We were a little gang,” recalls Guinness. In 2007 after Blow’s suicide, she bought the fashion editor’s entire collection, halting the auction at Christie’s, which was to settle Blow’s estate. “It would not be merely a sale of clothes,” said Guinness at the time. “It would be a sale of what was left of Issie.”
In conjunction with the book release is an exhibition at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, both of which are collaborations between Guinness and Director and Chief Curator of The Museum at FIT, Valerie Steele. On display will be 100 garments and accessories from Guinness’ personal collection including two dozen McQueen creations and a selection of couture from Chanel, Dior, Givenchy and Alaia to name but a few. It will also include the diamond-encrusted glove featured recently in the press, a piece which took four years to create with designer Shaune Leane – a tribute to her passion for medieval armour.
The heiress offered an insight into why she has amassed so much couture when she famously criticised how comfortable we have become acquiring objects, which are cheap, ill-made and disposable. “We need better things, not more,” insists Guinness. “We should not pollute the world with meaningless, unused things when we can make and support things of rare and precious beauty.”
Daphne Guinness, published by Yale University Press, goes on sale on October 17.
Text by Fiona Cook
