Fashion Neurosis with Daphne Guinness

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1:17Welcome to Fashion Neurosis, Daphne Guinness. Thank you for having me, Bella. Can you tell me what you're wearing today and why you chose those particular clothes? Well, I'm wearing a tailcoat, a black tailcoat. It was ancient. I had it made a long time ago. A white gilet out of white poplin, which is a fairly new cut of waistcoat. And a pair of black shorts and a pair of old tights and my shoes. And why did I wear it? this is part of my uniform which I wear most of the time A uniform is a very handy thing A uniform is a fantastic thing I often feel like I'm such a bore in my uniform I think we need the uniform to do daring acts it's helpful It's so true, it's a wonderful thing to be able to go back to and it's also a nice thing to just to sort of constantly perfect because sometimes I I mean it's sort of the old and the new but just maybe a little bit more a little sort of quarter of an inch on the arm or slightly narrower or slightly slimmer shoulder where I am a new you know a summer fabric or a winter fabric it's all sort of the same thing these small adjustments are everything aren't they they are I noticed that you arrived with a bag with a special pillow in it and I wondered why where that comes from do you always carry a pillow or do you have a thing about bags I do have a thing about bags I do tend to take a lot of things around with me when I was at school I always used to carry around many book bags so I always think I might have left something behind but also um I I do tend to carry around pillows just in case I sort of feel like having a nap that's a good idea I I can definitely relate to that I always have a huge bag and sometimes wander around the house with it in case I don't know what I think the in case is all about but you were telling me just before how you moved around a lot as a child and so did I and maybe that's where it comes from that we keep our houses in our bags that's correct uh well definitely for me i've i think i was telling you i've moved i think in 25 years over 20 times and why do you think that is what do you is there something about moving that you enjoy or you you're restless or um some of it was um just hazard really i i would have much preferred to have had a a more a more stable life but i'm slightly used to feeling sort of slightly well completely sort of nauseous from moving around i wanted to ask you what was the first time you wore something that made you feel different i remember having a really good pair of corduroy trousers when I was probably about six and seven.

4:47I thought they were very smart. They had flares that I could wrap three times around my ankle, and I thought that was quite groovy. Were there things you longed to wear as a child, and did you have a sense of your own identity at that point? I always had an idea of myself as sort of wearing what I wear now, sort of tails, tails, because I always liked dressing more as a boy rather than as a girl. Yeah, I had that too. It felt like a better edit. I felt like I could be more intrepid with a stricter kind of ensemble kind of thing. I was always really, I was always very jealous of other, of male uniforms.

5:42Yeah. And the cut. And the strictness. Yes. Yeah. Very much so. I hadn't thought of that about it because you have such a kind of amazingly kind of dazzling look that now you're talking about it. It is a very strict edit of these dazzling pieces. When you were talking about having this ambition to wear what you're wearing now without really knowing what it was, was there anyone in a book that you identified with? I always used to like how Peter Rabbit dressed with that pale blue punkish jacket. Oh, my goodness. That's so, now I think about it, that's sort of true. I... Peter Rabbit's a very good one, the pale blue jacket.

6:34Also, the romantic poets. Anyone in particular? I would say Byron, really. Oh, wow. Yes.

6:47And Hamlet, actually. The black with the white grill kind of. In my head, that's what it looked like. I mean the other of course then I go to another kind of feeling which was things like sort of Titania you know on the sort of fairy side of things yeah but I always ended up sort of almost back where I started with this with the strict edit it's easier to pack yeah lots of things. Well your performance seems, your performances seem to have an element of Titania, her free kind of imagination. Oh my goodness. That makes a lot of sense to me. I like the sort of idea of sort of being like a billowing kind of cloud but sometimes I'm not organized enough to sort of pull it off in a sartorial sense.

7:46I think of your Titania-esque as the gesture, but you're much more sort of punk rock David Bowie in your actual deftness. Oh, my goodness. I like the combination. It's great. Yeah, the Guinnesses are a huge family with a lot of dazzling women in. In fact, my father was married to the Guinness. His second wife was Caroline Blackwood. And I wondered who were your early influences and whether your mother had had much of an influence on you. Yeah, my mother certainly, as I get older, I realise that she had more of an effect on me than perhaps I was able to understand when I was younger. And also my grandmother, she had a sort of rather strict edit on her wardrobe.

8:46What was her look? My grandmother's look was she dressed very much in sort of pale greys and blues and whites and extremely, extremely sort of edited and simple. Was this your Guinness grandmother? Diana Mitford. Oh, right. Diana Mitford. She had a very sort of very, a very kind of minimal aesthetic. Very beguiling. Yeah, I know that Guinnesses are so much fun. Yeah. Also, there's Penny Guinness, who was married to your Uncle Desmond Guinness, and she was a girlfriend of my father's and sat for many paintings. But she also looked after me as a very small child, and when we came back from living in Morocco, she was travelling around Gloucestershire in gypsy caravans with Mark Palmer and a group of upper-class hippies and I went and stayed with her while my mother was looking for somewhere for us to live and she was just a really important influence on my life and my stability.

10:03I completely relate to that. Penny's been one of the most reliable people in my life too and so great with small children and so down to earth and so funny and so warm and so with such a great sense of humour so sort of dry but really just intelligent sense of humour very very down to earth in that kind of bohemian upper class kind of world which really didn't have very many anchors Penny is very much a kind of an anchor in a somewhat eccentric storm of characters. I remember being at breakfast with staying at Leak Slip one, I think it must have been about 15 years or 20 years ago, and Desmond was in a really bad mood and he was really quite apoplectic, red in the face, just furious about something.

11:06We looked at Penny and she just went, oh, Desmond, don't be so ridiculous. Go and smoke a joint or something. And it was just so funny. It was just so funny. It was to get everybody into shape in about sort of five seconds. She just knew what was... Unfazed. Yeah. She knew what to make a fuss about and what to... What not to. Yes, yeah, she was fantastic. Thinking about people one loves makes one feel so good. Yeah, that's true. It's wonderful. It's very energising. It's interesting what you said about your mother, you being prejudiced against your mother's tastes and then beginning to incorporate them actually into your work.

11:55And I always like that thing of having things that you think you don't like and then suddenly realizing that or deciding you do like them and your horizon expands as a result. That's so true. It's so true. And also you come to terms with the relationship that one thought one had with one's mother or father or anything. sort of when you sort of suddenly realize where it comes from. It's so surprising how much goes in when you, well, in early childhood and you don't really realize quite how much until you look back. It's very easy to be sort of overcritical or critical of one's mother, I find, just because they're more vulnerable.

12:51And I found with my parents, my mother was, I mean, my mother was 20 years younger than my father. And my father was wild and free and had a lot of power because he had some money. And my mother was wild and free with no money, so she didn't have power. And I wanted that power because there was some element of security in there. And I wondered what the dynamic was like with your parents. You know, it's very difficult to, sort of the first time I've even thought about them having a dynamic because they seemed, I never really seemed to see them together very much. I had quite a strange childhood, to put it mildly.

13:38So I didn't really take on board the dynamics between my parents, if that makes any sense. I'd have to think about it more to, I mean, The person who I was really close to when I was growing up was my dad. So I spent a lot of time with him, more than my mother. I only got to know her later on in my life. But dynamics, it was very difficult for me to even think of it in that way. both of them were fairly eccentric in their own ways and my father is still thankfully alive I remember meeting you in New York the first time I met you with John Richardson and you were I mean you were very young but you already married with children and um and I remember what you were wearing because you were so you looked so pretty and you were wearing Dolce Gabbana and you had kind of kind of model-y pretty blonde hair and I want it's it's a different very different look from how you are now and I wondered looking back whether you felt like a different person then I think I well I've definitely been lots of incarnations of of of the same same thing which sort of I suppose is when you would be talking before about editing and then I think when I perhaps I was I had a bit more of a base at that time when I first met you and as the bass shrunk and things you know often in storage I had to sort of become a much more kind of I suppose I had to sort of get a sort of uniform of some description going because also sort of between music studios or art studios or you know packing and unpacking it it just became same narrow and narrower sort of um ledge I was on um but yes I I I was I think I was the same but I know what you mean I mean that the hair was definitely different um I had it my hair was sort of more I I could tolerate it around my face a little bit more than I can now is that why you like to have it back because it annoys you yeah or it just feels I don't mind it sometimes when it starts going um starts falling down at the front I don't really it looks quite nice for a bit but when it's straight down because it's so long I just it gets in the way and I I don't quite you know I just have to pull it all back up again and do you think was there a trigger for your transformation did something happen was was it a conscious I'm going to change my how I how people perceive me when I walk into a room or was it a gradual thing I never thought of myself as a particularly pretty or particularly kind of able to be in front of a camera but the more I was kind of working with Izzy and then I sort of ended up being in in in pictures for her and then I started a kind of becoming a kind of part of my friend David LaChapelle's kind of extended troupe of kind of models and when you sort of become a I suppose as John actually said you know he he said to me you know you you are a sort of performance actor and I said I'm I'm really not I was just trying to get by and he said well you might not know it but you kind of are and I don't he disapproved quite a lot of performance art but I sort of did it in spite of my shyness and also in spite of kind of not actually thinking that I could do any of these things and sometimes I think well why on earth did I do it to myself because it's actually it goes against all the things that I like, which is sort of being in the shadows and sort of not being in the spotlight, but it sort of went, it's really difficult to explain it, but I went against my own kind of character.

18:24And then as I got more and more kind of extreme, the more and more, but I'm not sure if it's not, I think maybe the world also changed because there were so many more people that were individual, I felt, feel when I was growing up kind of in the 80s in London. I mean, I wouldn't look too far out of place in 80s London than I do today. I think everything else got a little bit more, I don't know, a little bit more bland, shall we say? Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't be thought to be that different, I think. I'm not sure. Yeah, I think you're right. I've always thought of you and watched you as a person with a lot of courage.

19:18And I was going to ask, did that come from nurture or fending for yourself? Fending. Yes. I'm a good old fending for oneself. Yeah. Yeah, it comes from neglect, I'm afraid. But I suppose there are many, many ways to get to a point.

19:45However you get there, I'm still discovering new ways to try and get to the next point. Yeah, it's so interesting you talking about your shyness because I was going to ask you about whether the way you dress is partly a protection for your introvert, whether you have that, because you're very good at being in the limelight. You obviously are brilliant at it, But there's this part of you that seems shy, and it's a very endearing and moving combination to watch somebody with that shyness, that interior kind of shyness be a performer. It's even more intense than just performance. Do you think? I mean, I really do wonder each time I do something if it's worth the kind of the physical and mental anxiety that it puts me through every time.

21:05Because you said somewhere that music saved you. True. And I wondered what it saved you from. Well, it saved me from after Isabella and then Alexander killing themselves. And I was, you know, very much, and there were several people that, you know, that told me over the years, was sort of like, oh, well, when are you going to be next? Or we thought you were going to be the next one. And I really, I wanted to be kind of out of the whole, I was never really much of an insider in the fashion world. And I didn't really ask to be in that position. And I didn't want to, I didn't want, I didn't really feel like my, the thing I was most at home with and the thing that always through all of my life had saved me, you know, from different things that had happened to me was music, listening to music and being able to sort of go off and sort of think about, you know, be in a different state of mind.

22:12Um, and, and I was a, you know, I, I, I studied music as a, as a child and as a teenager and, and I, um, and I mean, I, um, I obviously got a lot better at it now, but I, um, it was something that, that was, I felt more drawn to than being part of the fashion world, which I didn't, which intimidated me tremendously. I mean, it felt very, very cold and uninviting. and you know with with lots of such great friends I didn't see where where I could possibly fit in and especially after Alexander because him and I shared so much in in in so many ways um I just I couldn't imagine having to sort of putting that much effort into sort of anything ever again And I didn't think I'd ever feel protected by any piece of fashion after he died because it was very much a sort of conversation I'd have with him.

23:15And I think he went out of his way for his friends to sort of make them feel protected by the things that he would make for them. That definitely was the case for me. I suppose it's like, as designers, we have your back. Yeah, that's what we try to do to make someone, everybody, but particularly people, you know, that we care about. It's something that I think that it's a big part of the power of clothes and why clothes are more than just, you know, it's nothing to do with vanity. It's about getting you through things and giving you a great guise that you can be, that can be your strength when you feel kind of hopeless.

24:11This is so true. Izzy Blow was a famous fashion stylist and she had a huge influence on lots of people and she was a great pioneer of avant-garde. And in a way, she was a little bit like someone in a Henry James novel with you, where she took you up and nurtured you into and helped you with a metamorphosis into the Daphne we know you as now. And I wondered what that was like. It was a lot of fun. And it was, it was, she brought so much joy to my life and so much laughter. And also her grandmother and my great grandfather were sort of, were an item, I'll say. I met her when I was a teenager, but I only, I re-met her when I'd just got divorced.

25:12Actually, no, I hadn't got divorced yet. It was, it was at Maureen Dufferin's 90th birthday. Gosh. which so I'd gone as a funereal pony I remember she came zipping over and sort of said I'm here I am well I can't remember she sort of introduced herself and that's when we we became friends again so it would probably be 1998 and then after I got divorced she was very much there for me and and um yeah she really did she really showed me a side of of of life and and the avant-garde that I you know have been very closeted away from um during sort of the times where I was um having my children and living in in in in a different in a different part of the world really.

26:06She was quite maternal in her way wasn't she? I remember you saying that someone described you as a concept and I thought that seemed so impersonal compared to how you are you're such a warm person and so much more faceted than than just your kind of dazzling and brilliant performance is oh my goodness sometimes sometimes it's annoying just to be well the the idea of just being a persona but sometimes I sort of think well maybe I should just lean into that and just you know then at least I can just disappear into it but life is more faceted than that you everybody's a big mixture of your living breathing human and, you know, sometimes you're in great shape.

27:01Sometimes you're not, you know, a mass of emotions. I know sometimes it's best to leave off. It's not just a perfect concept. Gosh, if only. Well, I'm glad you're not because it's much more one-dimensional and what's so interesting about you is that you are so multi-dimensional and you have so many layers and nuances to you. And I find that remarkable, given how much you put yourself out there in the service of your art. And I suppose it's hard to do that when you're too thinking and feeling. You have to leave some behind. Oh, God. Too nerve-wracking. Just even thinking about it makes me quiver.

27:52Oh, but it's all right. I'm quite happy to be on the other side of my last project and at the beginning of new ones. Avoiding your unfinished home projects because you're not sure where to start? Thumbtack knows homes, so you don't have to. Don't know the difference between matte paint finish and satin or what that clunking sound from your dryer is? With Thumbtack, you don't have to be a home pro. You just have to hire one. You can hire top-rated pros, see price estimates, and read reviews all on the app. Download today. And do you ever wear an old tracksuit and a t-shirt? Yeah, I do, sort of.

28:37I mean, it has to be a very specific kind of, because I wear, I mean, for the gym, I live and die by my routine. So when I do my sort of yogary kind of exercises and I'm in a kind of version of a tracksuit. What is that version? Well, it's a sort of black leggings and a T-shirt without sleeves. It has to be and a zip up, you know, tight hoodie. but it has to be very kind of exact. And how about your hair? Oh, the hair's exactly the same, but I have a scarf around it. Unless I'm swimming. But I can even swim in the hair now. I've found a way to do the hair and swim. And does it take a long time to put your look together?

29:38If I'm lucky, it doesn't take long. And then if I set it off in the wrong way, it can take a long time. And then if I've gone down, if I've taken the wrong route, then it can get very difficult. Sometimes it happens really quite well. Yes, I know. It really depends. When I'm left to my own devices, sometimes it goes horribly wrong. And if you fancy someone and they're wearing something that you don't like, does it kill your attraction? to them probably i i'm not sure i i've i've never had i don't think i've ever no i think if i i think if i loved someone i don't mind what they were you don't have any sort of allergies about certain things i wonder that's such a good question i can't i can't think of it in that in that way Yeah, that's a very loving and magnanimous, you know, attitude towards.

30:43I haven't really thought about. Can we circle back onto that one? Yes. Because I really can't think. It's never quite happened. Maybe one adjusts one's taste because you love someone. I think definitely I notice in myself that if I like someone, and I'm attracted to them and I notice I don't like what they're wearing or something. I'm too quick sometimes to override that. And the overriding makes me plunge deeper into loving them. That's interesting. And sometimes the bad outfit is a warning saying, this just isn't right. And I think, oh, that is so true. It doesn't matter the straw boater. when I'm thinking this is awful and I shouldn't be here.

31:37Oh my gosh, that's so true. No, absolutely. What an interesting idea. It's so true. And do you have any feelings about being naked? Do you feel at ease being naked or do you have to wear something that makes you feel good and naked? I have to wear something that makes me feel good and naked. Yeah. I don't really like being naked. What do you wear? I wear, well, I make, I have, I'm always making them again and again, but bodysuits, sort of flesh-coloured bodysuits, or I have very sort of fine kind of underwear, or more for other people. I can't imagine that anybody wants to see. I'm so sort of small and thin.

32:31I can't imagine it would be very nice to look at. I'm always thinking about how to sort of mitigate the sort of the tininess of not so perfect physique that I have. Where do you think this exacting view of yourself comes from? Have you have you always felt like that? I think I think I probably have. I've never thought of myself as being particularly attractive. um I always rather looked at other people rather than looking at myself and in the mirror and I don't know that it it's not that it it's not that it wasn't encouraged but it wasn't encouraged it wasn't really uh I didn't really I didn't really think about it when I was growing up especially, you know, trying to be such a tomboy.

33:27I mean, I really identify with that, and I had similar experiences of a certain amount of neglect. I mean, there's always that thing in England of it being sort of very looked down on to draw attention to yourself, even when, you know, children describing them as attention-seeking, when that's what you're supposed to do as a child, to alert people to your needs. But sometimes I think a very upper-class upbringing is particularly unattentive to children in that way. Do you think that was your experience? It was my experience. Pretty much that was my experience. And also it was kind of, it wasn't, I don't think anybody was going out of their way to be mean or that's just how things were.

34:29It wasn't, no one was trying to be, you know, I just think one wasn't really noticed. I mean, I did have the great, one good thing about being, I mean, I was very much the youngest for a long time in sort of my direct family. It was, you know, I made, what was nice was being able to talk to adults quite a lot. So I, you know, when you're speaking to people like Aunt Penny or whatever, people who are older, you're not really... I suppose I wasn't really interacting with other people my own age very much, which brings its own other things. So you're not really, I mean, probably I picked up on things when I was at school, but not so much as maybe other people would, because it was rather, from my point of view, it was quite isolating my childhood.

35:34certainly you've always had admirers I mean if I think about the art historian John Richardson who was you know he's 70 years older than you I mean admirers in the sort of gay fandom world and he adored you so much he was such a fun person and he loved talking about you and it seems like you seem very at ease with much older people. Very much. I love older people. They teach one so much. Yeah. And they were much less judgmental than people one's own age. Yeah, that's really... Uncomforting when everything else seemed to be falling apart. Do you remember specific people that did encourage you, given you didn't get a lot of encouragement?

36:32And it just shows your drive, how strong your drive is to, you know, express yourself artistically. But I wondered who sort of noticed that. The other person, apart from John, at the same time kind of more or less, was Fred Hughes. Really? Yes. Fred Hughes who worked for Andy. Andy Warhol. Yeah. And again, he liked white ties and tails quite a lot. So, yeah, maybe now it's coming back to me, that would be another check to be in very sleek menswear. Fred always looks so incredibly brilliant. Did you go out dressed the same ever? No, I'm not at that time. I mean, but now thinking back on it, when I first met him as a sort of early teenager.

37:40And with your look, how do you see yourself going forward? do you have a kind of feeling of something next about how you put your look together and i'm always adjusting little bits of it i'm i'm trying not to veer off into any new directions at the moment but but i i do have some ideas which i'm starting to execute bit by bit but because of my sort of my lack of a stable home I've been trying not to kind of create too many new distractions and is the stable home on the horizon I hope so I hope I hope I hope I have a bit more than a perch and not just everything in storage all the time what do you sleep in?

38:36I sleep in a either a black t-shirt sort of it's like a t-shirt that goes it's a sort of t-shirt without sleeves and it goes down to about just above my knees and I've got a black one and I've got a white one. So you don't have any sort of titania style? Oh yeah and then I have sometimes that I have sometimes sort of like kind of I wear lots of karate gear, kung fu trousers, because that's my other kind of persona as a sort of martial arts person. What, like a ninja? Yeah. Is that to do with a kind of spiritual containment, like a deftness that keeps you safe and agile? Yeah, and that's sort of, I kind of, I mean, I'm not in any way very good at it, but I sort of do a kind of martial arts type mixed exercise within everything that I do.

39:40And I've always admired the sort of Zen martial arts. and I'm you know and I thank goodness now I've got a bit more time to even look into the more I used to do um kickboxing and and judo and things like that I haven't been I mean I haven't had as much time or health as I would have liked in the last few years so it's been more other things that I've been doing but I'd love I like anything to do with quite physically extreme yeah I love those things those that things to do with rigor yeah and sort of endurance tests yeah I used to go to an Aikido class about 20 years ago but part it was so sort of strict and there was an amazing mentor, the teacher, no one would speak to me.

40:42So I couldn't really learn anything properly, but I liked the extremeness of the whole thing. So I kept going back to that class where I couldn't learn anything. Oh my goodness. And eventually gave up because it was kind of ungratifying because I stayed really bad for a whole couple of years. and I wish I'd tried a few others, but it was really exciting seeing how with very small movements you could have this massive effect and that was exciting. I think that's one to do. It's really hard. Oh my gosh. I'm going to definitely go. Of course. I'm going to redouble my efforts. Do you have a fashion kink?

41:28In what respect? well when i think of that word kink i think of a sort of deviation right and i just yeah my probably my fashion kink is to be asymmetrical but it has to be asymmetrical in a kind of in a it has to be severe in a funny way it's not it's not as random as one might think but i i can't I'm not very good at symmetry. I noticed when you lay down, you took out one of your hair clips and said symmetry. This is true. And like I have, I normally wear one earring. Or if I wear an earring here, I'll wear another one in a different place. Is that to do with liking things to be almost incomplete?