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For artist Daphne Guinness, clothes are a conversation with the past, present, and future. “I have a deep fascination for everything to do with cloth and weave and pigment,” Guinness says on the latest episode of the Who What Wear With Hillary Kerr podcast.
Guinness is a muse, model, and style icon in the fashion world, inspiring designers like the late Alexander McQueen. She has collaborated with photographers like David LaChapelle and Nick Knight. On top of that, she also designed her own jewelry, perfume, and makeup lines.
In the music world, Guinness is known for her blend of art-pop and ’80s electronica. For the first time in three years, she’s back with new music, recently releasing “Hip Neck Spine,” a single off her forthcoming album Sleep.
For the latest episode of Who What Wear With Hillary Kerr, Guinness shares how she developed her personal style, her relationship with music, and more. For excerpts from their conversation, scroll below.
I read that you were planning on training as an opera singer. Tell me a little bit about your relationship with music when you were growing up.
Daphne Guinness: I grew up in several different places. One of the places I grew up in the summer, it’s a monastery, essentially. It’s on the top of a mountain overlooking Cadaqués in Spain, where we had a generator for electricity, and my bedroom was behind the altar.
My father would play the piano. I suppose it’s that room and me pitching to that. Then also Mozart, Bach—to an extent Schubert—Wagner, Beethoven, all of that all just went in. I learned by ear. That’s my skill.
I always find creativity to be such an interesting process. What is the process like for you?
I feel like I’ve got very little to do with it. The analogy would be going into a dark corridor, and you don’t know where you are, and you’re feeling your way through sounds. You come up against things, and then you sort of walk, or you go around them. Then you have to turn corners, and you don’t know where you are at all.
Then by the end of whatever it is that’s coming out, someone turns the lights on, and you see where you are. It’s that first note. And that note will take you to the next note and take you to another note.
You have been referred to as a fashion person’s fashion person. I would be remiss if we didn’t talk a little about your personal style, as it certainly is a big part of my perception of your art. Do you remember the process of developing your personal style or when you started really dressing in a way that amplified your vision the way that it does today?
I started when I was quite young because, to me, clothes or costumes or fashion is a form of conversation with the past, the future, with everything. I have a deep fascination for everything to do with cloth, and weave, and pigment. I suppose the books that I was drawn to or the sort of romantic elements, I’ve got different periods of literature, or music, or things that I absorbed.
I was always kind of tomboy as a child, and I have a sort of a male-female thing going on all the time. I sort of invented a hybrid uniform in the Oscar Wilde, Lord Byron area. But that’s kind of my uniform. But, of course, there are all these other things that sort of informed me, too. I like to be part of that process, too.
When you have an event that you’re going to, how do you think through what you want to wear?
It’s quite a lot. Sort of last minute, I’ll go, “Oh, God, I’ve got to think of something to wear.”
It just depends. It depends. I mean, having been through the whole recording process, I have sort of gravitated to a kind of uniform. I’m just getting back to a kind of normal at this point. It’s a very fast process.
When you’re relaxing at home, what would we find you wearing?
I’ve got black leggings, and I have these karate coats, so I look like a sort of ninja. And espadrilles or bare feet. That’s where I’m doing my handstands and writing and stuff.
Check out Daphne’s new music video for “Hip Neck Spine” below.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. Next, check out our interview where Who What Wear editors break down their dream weddings.
