Who is Daphne Guinness? Why is she relevant to the fashion industry? The 43-year old, eccentric icon is a socialite, journalist, and massive collector of haute couture. On the ‘why is her name everywhere?’-side, she spent 12 years married to Greek shipping heir Spyros Niarchos, and is an heir to the Guinness beer fortune herself. Daphne grew up in an artists’ colony near Barcelona with Salvador Dali and the Surrealists, where her obsession with the wonderful world of fashion – especially couture armory – began. In the past few years, she has emerged as a modern pied piper of fashion, a sartorial leader who’s been cited as an inspiration to everyone from Lady Gaga to Tom Ford, from the retired Valentino to virtually the entire blogosphere. She is a model, a stylist, a collaborator, and the embodiment of that part in every woman’s heart that swells for The Beautiful Things.
It’s a very mathematical, artistic, ancient tradition. I would never dispose of anything that I’ve had made, it has my personal stamp on it.
– Daphne Guinness on Couture
