Giles Deacon Sounds Off on the Cast of Characters That Inspired His Debut Couture Collection
“I love characters and I love people who can’t be pigeonholed. I think there’s so much more to everybody than I’m just a so-and-so. People’s interests are many and varied, and I find that fascinating,” says Giles Deacon over the phone from London. He would know. For his debut couture collection for Fall 2016, the designer presented 31 looks that range from the demure and proper (a shibori shift) to the flirty and funky (a violet origami mini) to the veritably regal (a floor-sweeping gown), stopping along the way to explore Edwardian silhouettes, violet velvet draping, and one surreal column gown printed with a variety of eggshells. As a whole, the collection looks as though it’s traveled through time and space, pushing the limits of the designer’s creativity along the way.
Here, we let Deacon explain the people, places, and processes that inspired some of the line’s most outstanding looks. You’ll want to read on, trust us, it’s a real trip.
Photo: Getty Images1/7Lady Ottoline Morrell
“She is a character and a half!” cheers Deacon. “I wouldn’t say she was just the inspiration, it was her spirit that was the inspiration for the collection.” Drawing on Morrell’s infamous parties for Bloomsbury Group artists and friends—“and I think she slept with nearly all of them as well!” laughs the designer—served to form the idea of his couture collection as a cast of eccentric looks that could suit all personality types. “I just really loved the idea of the apartment we got in Paris for the presentation to have that feeling that you were walking in to a great party with these characters who would be wearing these different pieces. When designing that was really helpful as well, thinking, ‘We need to do a really precise little dress for this character, but then so-and-so would want to wear something much more flamboyant and extravagant and heavily embroidered. It was good fun to work like that.” As for what Morrell might choose herself, Deacon suggests a floor-length gown with bustled sleeves and an embroidered bow around the neckline. “I think she’d probably go for that, a big easy piece to have lots of fun zooming around in.”
Photo: Courtesy of Deutsche Grammophon2/7Max Richter’s Sleep
“I have music on constantly. I’m a complete music freak,” says Deacon. “I go to sleep with headphones on and put quiet music on, classical or modern electronica. I listen to everything from punk to jazz to you name it.” Among the many tunes on repeat as the couture collection developed was Max Richter’s eight-hour-long album Sleep. “I saw Max Richter play a concert of Sleep at the Barbican in London and it lasted as long—and of course you’re encouraged to sleep. The whole experience is just extraordinary; it was just so, so beautiful. I think he’s such a talented composer of modern classical music and the concepts that he comes up with and his film scores as well. I design to it quite often. I’m really easily distracted and it really helps me concentrate—not quite a transcendental state,” he laughs, “but it can get me really focused. It helps with designing and drawing a lot. I find it very relaxing as well, which in our busy world is really essential. I can come in from the studio, sit down, and put that on and sit and listen to it for like two hours and really not think about anything while I’ve been listening to it.”
Cecil Beaton, Vogue, September 19683/7Cecil Beaton
If you haven’t gotten the message quite yet, Deacon loves a character. In this arena, Cecil Beaton’s life and work proved to be a delightful subject to dive into. “I absolutely adore his work and he’s been a big inspiration to me. I was given a book of his when I was about 17 with an introduction by Truman Capote that documents a whole host of aspects of his life and career, and what really interests me are the photographs he took as a young man of his sisters, his photography in the war, his set design with Oliver Messel, and, really, the fact that he photographed everybody, from the royals to you-name-it.” Beaton’s glamorous photographs were well documented in the pages of Vogue, too, although most people might remember him best as the man behind Audrey Hepburn’s exuberant gowns in My Fair Lady. A modern Eliza Doolittle needs a modern wardrobe just as fantastical, we’d venture. Enter Giles Deacon.
Photo: Courtesy of Giles4/7Apple’s iPad Pro and Pencil and Palomino Blackwing Pencils
“I draw constantly,” declares the designer. “This is real pencil nerd talk, but the Palomino Blackwing pencils are the most fantastic pencils in the world. They’ve got such a light feel and weight to them. It can be a very fine line and then very expressive. I start by drawing very freehand and do lots of watercolors on top of the pencil drawings to get shapes and silhouettes. From there, Deacon explains that his sketches can undergo some technical treatment courtesy of Apple’s latest iPad Pro and Pencil products. “I can scan a pencil drawing, email it to myself, and do work over that with a drawing app. I really love the cross-pollination of a hand-drawn, pencil-to-paper piece being manipulated with various apps and Photoshop and playing around that way.” Deacon points to a voluminous shibori-dyed gown as one piece in particular that came to life thanks to the iPad. “I was looking into shibori techniques, downloaded some images of shibori, and then was warping the image in Photoshop to see what shapes we could make. The shibori technique is so very precise, as opposed to a tie-dye, to twist and twirl and whirl around the body gives it a really unique feel. The app is really good for seeing volumes like that quite quickly.”
Photo: Getty Images5/7Sir John Soane’s Museum in London
“We’re spoiled for choice in London, from the V&A to the British Museum, but this one is particularly special because he was a great architect and anthropologist, and it’s been beautifully, beautifully kept,” says Deacon. “I never tire from going there. If I’m in town and feeling a bit ugh, I go in there and feel inspired that the world’s not all turning in to something just terribly vulgar. It’s just extraordinary. The colors of the fabric wallpapers, these incredible golds.” Soane’s appreciation for the past and its artifacts is very much in line with Deacon’s own thinking—“I suppose I have a real love of the Edwardian and Victorian eras, and also to try to couple those with technology,” he explains—but the connection between the two can be as obvious as this shimmering gold gown that echoes the wallpaper in the iconic museum.