Extreme beauty

Daphne Guinness and the art of looking interesting – BERNICE HARRISONlooks at a new book on the muse

FOR A WOMAN who says she “hates being called eccentric”, Daphne Guinness does a rather fine job of delivering a dictionary definition of the word. It’s not, mind, “eccentric”, as in living with a houseful of cats and wearing a tea cosy as a hat. With her eight-inch heels, Cruella de Vil hair, custom-built body armour and haute couture wardrobe, it’s the fabulous eccentricity that comes when extraordinary personal wealth produces a socialite with a passion for fashion, and a person for whom getting dressed is all about statement.

She’s a king pin in the fashion world and she knows everyone. In Daphne Guinness, a lavish new publication from Yale University Press – a publisher not exactly known for frivolity – catwalk and couture designers from Tom Ford to Karl Lagerfeld talk with awed affection about her personal style. Philip Treacy calls her “the ultimate fashion animal”, and says: “It’s a life and death situation for her, which sounds ridiculous but for people who live for fashion, it’s inspiring.”

She is very much her own creation. In a book filled with exquisite high-fashion shots from some of the world’s most famous photographers, including David LaChapelle and Steven Klein, the most-intriguing images are those taken before she meticulously created the persona of style icon. At her wedding aged 19 – she was married to Spyros Niarchos, second son of the fabulously wealthy Greek shipping tycoon Stavros Niarchos – she sits beside her father, brewery heir Jonathan Guinness, with her neat blonde hair and blue Chanel suit, looking every inch the conservative Sloan. It’s a world away from her current image, which she began to create after her marriage ended in 1999.

The book's publication coincides with an exhibition in New York at the Fashion Institute of Technology, which will show about 100 pieces culled from her wardrobe and it has brought the diminutive socialite – "you should try to keep everything very, very skinny" – out of the fashion and society pages with headline-grabbing results. Last week her interview in the New Yorkermagazine caused a stir with her "I'll eat when I'm dead" quote, and her reminiscences on discussing Hitler with her grandmother, the fascist-loving Diana Mitford Guinness Mosley. Her granny told her Hitler "didn't photograph well", but that he was a "very, very funny person".

The extraordinarily beautiful and stylish shots in the new book suggest that maybe Daphne Guinness would be better letting her clothes do the talking.

Daphne Guinness, by Valerie Steele and Daphne Guinness, is published by Yale University Press (£30/€35)