Even style icons need to take time out. I like these candid pics of Daphne Guinness.
Enjoying a moment with her on-and-off-again French philosopher boyfriend.
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Couture Artiste ~ Theatrical Daphne Guinness
Daphne Guinness briefly studied art at Slade,
developed an affliction for classical music,
and tinkered with the idea of becoming an opera singer.
…..she was always so terribly shy, sheltering herself from the world with her outrageous outfits.
“That’s why I could probably be quite a good actress.”
“Being in disguise, assuming another role, hiding behind a costume, is so easy.
Being oneself, now that’s always a little more tricky, don’t you think?”
“I grew up in an artists’ colony near Barcelona with Salvador Dali and the Surrealists, so my dress sense is very colored by my youth. Everybody knew that Dali was the most crazy – you’d go to his house and he would have lobsters in his pool.”
“Anything went, clothes-wise. You could wear whatever you wanted any time of day, so people would wear evening clothes at breakfast time, simple Catalan shoes and hats, lots of brightly coloured hippy kaftans, and a lot of French, tailored outfits.”
“When you walk about in Paris, you just see a lot of people who are incredibly well-dressed – for example, Loulou de la Falaise dresses beautifully. I think you do have a more fun life if you wear beautiful clothes. There is a certain joy in it; dressing well is an art and it shows respect to be neatly turned out.”
Modeling Alexander McQueen, Vanity Fair. Photo:Michael Roberts.
“Cultivate a sense of adventure and surprise but temper it with steely-eyed “appropriateness.” Understand, for example, why you wouldn’t want to make an appearance at the Golden Globes or anywhere else, short of a bordello, in a pink tutu with knee-high-satin-bowed shoes.”
Top two images from March 08 British Vogue, Photographed by Mario Testino
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Deciphering Daphne Guinness
Fashion and art-loving Daphne Guinness
is surely one of the most eccentric and
intriguing figures of our time.
Petite and curious, she considers haute couture an essential part of Western culture. She loves being surrounded by artists to absorb their genius and inspire their creativity. Discover more about this icon from Vogue Italia.
Name Daphne Suzannah Diana Joan Guinness.
About her
Daphne is a fashion connoisseur, and is fascinated also by men’s fashion: she is capable of telling apart the subtle nuance variations of a Huntsman’s 1925 suit from a 1929 one (also because she owns both).
With her mother, she would spend her summers in Cadaqués, Spain. Often by Salvador Dalì ‘s pool that, she recalls, was “full of lobsters”. Hanging out with them Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray and Richard Hamilton. But she was very young and had no idea who they really were: “They were just neighbours to me”.
The origins
She is the daughter of beer heir Jonathan Guinness and his French wife Suzanne Lisney.
At 19 she married Stavros Niarchos, with whom she has three children (Nicolas, Alexis and Ines). At that time she starts collecting couture: “I found that fashion became an extension of self.” She divorced in 1999.
After seeing her at a party wearing a rather flamboyant hat, her great friend Isabella Blow suggests that she collaborates with Tatler as fashion editor
What does she do
“I do ideas”.
Bernard-Henri Lévi told her once:
“You are not a person anymore, you’ve become a concept”.
What’s next
She would like to be a film director again , and plans on writing a novel: “It’s evolving. I guess all novels must be part of what you know, and it’s a difficult thing to write because there are many many things that I don’t understand about my life.”
Alternative projects
She has financed and produced the film Cashback, by Sean Ellis, that earned a nomination for the Academy Awards. She has designed a collection of white shirts for London’s Dover Street Market.
She has shot a short-film: The Phenomenology of Body.
She has posed for all the greatest photographers, from Steven Klein to David LaChapelle.
She has developed the fragrance Daphne for Comme des Garçons.
She has taken part in the video Pursuit of Happiness by KiD CuDi.
She is fascinated by the production process and is “interested in absolutely everything, except football”.
Shoes Killer heels: she was the first to wear Alexander McQueen’s Armadillo shoes in public.
Jewelry “It doesn’t have to be real”: she loves style, but not showing off. She has collaborated with Shaun Leane, jewel designer for Alexander McQueen, for a jewellery line inspired by armour.
Hair Until some time ago she sported blonde, very light hair, with two big distinctive dark locks. When we last met she had brown hair: “I’m going through this black phase now, it’s my fetish colour”.
Her style “Surely I’m not a conformist. I don’t think I belong to any category”.
Style advice “Follow your instinct.”
Good habits Reads the papers, does yoga, takes a walk every day and sees her friends very often.
Besides, she recycles second-hand clothes. She will wear the same outfit more than once, because “clothes must be lived in”. And has put up for auction most of her “Fabergé Egg” period wardrobe (this is what she calls the years of her marriage to Niarchos) and donated all proceedings to Womankind.
Bad habits She worries too much, about everything.
She loves Friends and family, first of all. Reading (“I can sit for hours dissecting abook on English grammar”) and going to the Opera. She has got a stunning voice, though: before getting married she had ambitions of becoming an opera singer and used to take singing lessons.
She hates Intolerance, racism, ignorance and the modern obsession for what she calls “celebrity culture”.
The dry-cleaner’s: “My idea of heaven would be to open up a proper, old-fashioned laundry, where shirts could be laundered in a proper, old-fashioned way.”
She’s crazy for Uniforms and armour : “A kind of disguise, a way to become invisible”.
Feathers, birds, the idea of flying.
Favourite dress A very simple grey flannel dress by Alexander McQueen.
Favourite cities Paris and New York.
Favourite music Johann Sebastian Bach.
Favourite food Sushi and mashed potatoes.
Favourite drink Tea.
Favourite film The Razor’s Edge by John Byrum.
Favourite book Tender is the Night, by Francis Scott Fitzgerald.
Motto “Judge not.”
Never goes out without Her iPod.
Favourite shops Dover Street Market in London, and flea markets all around the world
Favourite designers Her friend Alexander McQueen:
“He put to rest the idea that fashion is not art. He was an artist”.
Balenciaga (“Revolutionary”), Karl Lagerfeld (“An inimitable wonder”), Valentino (“Makes every woman look stunning”).
Her icons Her grandmother, her mother.
First thing in the morning A cup of tea.
Last thing before bed Tells a prayer.
Birthday 9 November 1967.
Born in Ireland.
Lives Between London and New York.
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The Honourable Daphne Guinness
May you fly straight to heaven
- but if you go to Hades –
may Lethe run with Guinness!
Daphne Guinness in Alexander McQueen for Vanity Fair. Photograph by Michael Roberts
Avant-garde heiress Daphne Guinness is extraordinary.
Sophisticated socialite. Designer muse. Mother of three. Noteworthy collector of haute couture. Model. Modern heiress of an aristocrat Irish Protestant family. Journalist. Stylist extraordinaire. Philanthropist. On-and-off-again girlfriend of a married French philosopher. Undisputed style icon.
Daphne Suzannah Diana Joan Guinness was born into a life of luxury. She is the daughter of Irish brewing heir Jonathan Guinness, Lord Moyne, and French beauty Suzanne Lisney, and granddaughter of Diana Mitford, the celebrated aristocrat.
At 19, in 1987, she married Spyros Niarchos, 12 years her senior and a son of the fabulously wealthy Greek shipping tycoon Stavros Niarchos. In 1999, after having three children with him (now 19, 17 and 13), she obtained a divorce and eventually a reported settlement of $40 million.
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Alexander McQueen’s muse ~ Daphne Guinness
Daphne Guinness is a fashion stylist, film producer and heiress of the Guinness brewing family. Known for her elegant, original fashion style with a penchant for couture, she is an Alexander McQueen devotee and muse.
A charity catwalk show at New York Fashion Week, became a salute to the late British designer,
The show, Fashion for Relief/Haiti,
was organised by the British supermodel, Naomi Campbell,
a global ambassador for the White Ribbon Alliance charity.
Daphne Guinness walks the runway at Fashion For Relief Haiti 2010
McQueen muse, the heiress, Daphne Guinness, her tear-stained face veiled in white tulle, wore a dazzling, silver-sequinned catsuit, specially made for her by McQueen.
“This is my memory of Lee. He only finished it for me two weeks ago. It was a belated birthday gift and I will always treasure it. It’s probably the last piece he ever made in his life,” she said.
‘Fashion For Relief’ Haiti Runway Show was a celebrity-studded affair. Daphne Guinness with six other models closed the show to pay homage and honor the late Alexander McQueen. The finale featured several of the designer’s looks, with Naomi Campbell leading the models in the special, yet tearful, runway tribute.
The spotlight fell on “The Magnificent Seven” – a group of seven spectacular designs from McQueen’s last-ever collection, “Plato’s Atlantis”, originally shown during the Paris prêt-à-porter season last October.
The designs demonstrated the wilder shores of McQueen at his technological and creative best, inspired by Darwin’s theory of evolution, featuring brilliantly-coloured computer-prints of serpents and bizarre sea-creatures, and accessorized with “barnacle boots”, in python, encrusted with crystals and jewels.
Daphne wearing the same style McQueen dress in two different colors at two different events.
Style icon Daphne Guinness in Vanity Fair.
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Daphne Guinness mourns Alexander McQueen
“He was the kindest, shiest, funniest person.
And when the chips were down, he was there.
He wasn’t a flake. You could count on him.
I will miss him.”
Daphne Guinness
Heiress and haute couture aficionado, Daphne Guinness remembers her friend, Alexander McQueen, the late British designer and pays tribute to his genius.
‘Notwithstanding the fact that he was one of my best friends and he saved me from many things, Lee Alexander McQueen was a gigantic personality. He was a colossus, a titan. And he had the biggest heart.
We met many years ago. As he told it, he saw me across Leicester Square, and I was wearing one of his coats. So he came up to me and said, “I’m Alexander.” We became so close. Me and Lee and Issie [Blow], we were a little gang.’
Daphne Guinness arrives for the service at Saint Paul's Church in Knightsbridge in a billowing black cape from the designer's autumn 2002 collection
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