Giles Deacon (Q5563)
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Giles Deacon is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Giles Deacon |
Giles Deacon is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
2003
founder
GilesDeacon said he had imagined a party thrown by Lady Ottoline Morrell when he was coming up with his first couture collection. Morrell was a flamboyantly dressed British literary hostess of the 1920s and ’30s whose friends included Virginia Woolf, D. H. Lawrence, Dora Carrington, Bertrand Russell, and Stanley Spencer—individualists and free thinkers all. Deacon’s collection itself represents a personal artistic breakaway from convention, too; he has put his ready-to-wear line on hold and decided to follow his heart and concentrate on couture. “I always enjoyed making the big, special pieces for the show, and those were the things we were selling, so I thought, why not do what you love most?”He had filled two salons on an upper floor on the Rue de Rivoli in Paris with an eclectic collection of the eveningwear silhouettes he’s built up as his signatures in London since he launched his collection in 2004. Hugely voluminous gowns in vibrantly colored fabrics and prints stood next to tiny dresses covered in 3-D petals, mixed with a smattering of tailored 18th-century–jacketed pantsuits. All of it is created in his studio off Brick Lane in London’s East End, with textiles like blue and white shibori prints and others made by Deacon’s own hand—there was a super-enlarged green-on-pink pattern of a drawing of kelp, for example—and brocades from the Gainsborough silk company, whose damasks are woven in Suffolk on 19th-century looms. They are entrance-making things for confident women. Without naming names, Deacon declared, “They come to us from all over: Hong Kong, North Yorkshire, America. There’s a High Court judge from Washington, D.C., who really enjoys dressing up. A brilliant woman!”From the point of view of a client, it’s rewarding to be able to have a relationship with a dressmaker who is as happy as Deacon is to tweak his designs for customers, and who will make it as fun an experience as he does. His enthusiastic affability is very much part of his attraction, and for Americans, the maelstrom of events still spinning out from Brexit does at least make the work of this very English designer even more worth considering, since the exchange-rate value of the dollar against the pound has shot up.
6 July 2016
Let’s start with the last look. Because that laser-cut, micro-pleated, satin organza gown goes a long way toward explaining what was going on at theGilesshow tonight: Flame-hairedKaren Elsonemerged, looking to all the world like the genetic clone of Queen Elizabeth I, reanimated to preside over some postapocalyptic England (or, at any rate, a United Kingdom of which Elizabeth’s thorn-in-the-side, Scotland, is no longer a part). And that was preciselyGiles Deacon’s point. The show was held in the Elizabethan-era Banqueting Room in Whitehall, a place to which the designer would often retire as a student to get away from hustle and bustle and take in the Rubens murals on the ceiling. He’d booked the space for this season a year in advance, and a deep dive into the history of the place led him back to Elizabeth, and provided him the inspiration for his new clothes.In other words, this time out, Deacon was in one of his historical moods. It’s a frame of mind that usually results in maximal looks, and on that score this collection did not disappoint. Working with print designer David Holah of Bodymap, Deacon created a print based on a scan of a full-length portrait of Elizabeth I, which found its way onto silhouettes as varied as a leotard-taut bodysuit and a diaphanous caftan. There were also Baroque wallpaper florals and embroideries based on tapestries. But the real drama here was mainly to be found in the collection’s skirts and sleeves. Deacon didn’t stint on the volume, cutting full bell- and balloon-shaped sleeves and frothing his skirts and dresses with parachute hems or underlying layers of tulle. The patterned tights made for a nice complement to all that volume, and they conjured a masculine Renaissance-era look.Then there were the showpieces. Alongside the satin organza gowns worn by Elson and Erin O’Connor, Deacon displayed his couturier skills in dresses embellished by an overgrown English garden’s worth of tulip-shaped florets and finished other, more plainspoken dresses with tender little frills. As is often the case at Giles, the showboating craft threatened to become the collection’s whole point, and this season, that threat was particularly acute: The construction of a gown in a brown-toned, understated print could wow you, but the same material, done up into a matter-of-fact silk jumpsuit, underwhelmed. It would have been nice to see Deacon apply more of his attention and artistry to his straightforward looks.
The designer was at his best here when he pulled out all the stops, and anytime he did, it was impossible not to be swept up in his storytelling. One sight of Elson in that gown, and all quibbles were forgotten.
21 September 2015
You need to be within particularly close range of looks 12 and 13 from Giles Deacon's Resort collection to realize that the faint jacquard features borzois lounging on daybeds. In the all-white variation—used for a girly frock coat and a trapeze dress—the chic canines basically retreat into the fabric. For such an extroverted designer, this feels like some sort of volte-face. But fear not, the lineup is largely ruled by a multicolored motif that gives the impression of Pop Art-stained glass. Sometimes it fills every inch of a tented shirtdress or flounced skirt, and other times it appears judiciously on a pinned-back hem or pant cuff. The diagonal stripes running vibrantly across another breezy silk crepe grouping have been edged like pinking shears; the statement is bold yet wearable.You do, however, start to get the sense that Deacon is thinking more commercially, which might explain the T-shirt fronted with four "fashion fairies" dolled up like next-genSex and the Citygals. The level of irony is unclear. At least we learn from another T-shirt that the borzois' master is a dominatrix and decidedly Deacon-esque. Still, for all the crispness and focus, something doesn't sit right in a Stepford kind of way. Maybe the clothes feel too normal. Or maybe it's just a matter of removing some of the twee grosgrain bows.
24 June 2015
Every so often, a fashion show is really ashow. Giles Deacon didn't stint on the theatrics tonight as he debuted his new collection—not only did the clothes possess a rather Grand Guignol sense of drama, but each of the (A-list) models in the cast was instructed to bring some character to the catwalk. The event was capped by Anna Cleveland—Pat's daughter—pirouetting around the show space in a fan-pleated cocktail dress and vertiginous Jimmy Choo mules. Impressive.The character thing wasn't just for fun. As Deacon explained after thedéfilé, his collection was meant to conjure the spirits of the women who might have ambled the lanes of the Chelsea Physic Garden in the years close after its founding in 1673. Hence the collection's séance quality, with ruffs, capes, and frock coats giving way to hallucinogenic prints such as the salon scene rendered in lurid colors on duchesse satin. If some of these clothes seemed a little de trop, that was the point—one does not design a corset-tailored, ruff-collared duchesse jacket with seemingly electrified feathers sprouting from the sleeve in a spirit of understatement. Same goes for leather, bow-decked pantaloons.But for all the severity of, say, the patent frock coat modeled by Edie Campbell, the look was still realistic. So were the gorgeous ruffled white shirts, the strapless pencil dress in a gothic jacquard worn by Jessica Stam, and the flared wool coat with lacing detail on Lily Donaldson. And so on. As a whole, the collection could seem forbidding—the superb tailoring alone approached S&M dungeon levels of discipline—but this was actually a pretty accessible outing for Deacon if you considered it in terms of its parts. Likewise, for all the darkness here, it was plain that Deacon was having a great deal of fun as he raised his ghosts of fashion past. His was a haunted house you'd like to visit.
23 February 2015
Some very cool predators stalked the runway at Giles today. Taking his cue from the artist Walton Ford and his vaguely menacing paintings of wildlife, Giles Deacon gave snakes, leopards, and birds of prey a soigné spin. Frizzy serpents twisted around the torso of dresses. Brooding leopard faces stared out from fractured grayscale and sepia-toned prints. Eagles hunted in a pink silk pajama sky and fluttered their vast wingspan across the horizon of a caftan. Most memorably, though, there were the cat claws—oversize, multicolored, and glittering under a finish of sequins. Deacon's sense of pop has rarely if ever served him better than it did here.The really great thing about this show, though, was the way it managed to bridge the differences between Deacon the demi-couture gown-maker and Deacon the sassy, streetwise club kid. The same fractured leopard print that showed up on a voluminous gown also found its way into trim pants and little day dresses. The claws turned up on a sequined, ankle-length slipdress, but one was also knit into a goofy, oversize sweater, and yet another grasped the back of a laid-back pale pink jumpsuit. Many of Deacon's dressy looks exuded a nice "whatevs" mien, like the floor-length skirt in pink jacquard paired with a matching zip-up, racerback top. The casual approach to formalwear felt relevant, modern. It also felt correct for Giles. Deacon should keep working this groove.
15 September 2014
"A trip to the moon on gossamer wings, just one of those things…" Giles Deacon didn't have the old Cole Porter tune "Just One of Those Things" on his mind when he conceived his latest Giles collection. But his celebration of all things trippy had a Porter-esque sprightliness: Riffing onFantasiaand Roger Corman's hallucinogenic flickThe Trip,he leaned in a distinctly casual direction, with dresses shaped like oversize raver tees and indigo tie-dyed jacquards that read a bit denim. He also shied away from his usual favorite fabric, duchesse satin, focusing instead on more relaxed materials. But the collection was hardly lacking in textural richness—there were tons of sequins and bright 3-D flowers. A very cool use of vinyl coating, deployed here to make a tonal floral pattern on such pieces as a bustier-topped black dress, also stood out. There's one girl or a few who will go gaga for Deacon's sequined flamingo looks, which had a cheerful wit, but the tie-dye (a definite highlight of this collection) ought to reach a far broader audience. Some pop, some poetry: Very Cole Porter, indeed.
17 June 2014
Though he's a designer whose aesthetic tends to pinball around, Giles Deacon is undoubtedly best known for his baroque gowns—those demi-couture creations lavish with fabric and somehow macabre. To wit, Binx Walton closing the Giles show last season in a gown seemingly made from bats.That'sthe signature Giles, according to popular opinion. But popular opinion was in for a shock at this evening's show: Once again, Miss Walton did the honors, opening the proceedings by stomping down the runway in lug-soled man's shoes, a collaboration with Grenson, a bird-embroidered tank top, and color-blocked motorcycle pants. It made an impression. So did the chunky oversize knits, and the scarred leather looks, and the little sheath dresses topped by wool tanks in the shape of scythes. The strongest looks here felt streetwise and matter-of-fact. There were also some relatively understated cocktail dresses with a sculptural Giles flourish, like the short black dress with a swathe of white satin draped off to one side.When things got more baroque—more classic Giles, you might say—the high-speed show lost force. Both the bouffant dress that appeared to be crawling with bugs and even the very polished white-and-black gown that closed the show came off as obligatory and a touch off-message. This was definitely not a show about dressing up. It was a show about motorcycle pants, and stomping around.
16 February 2014
There's a fine line between procrastination and work. When director Ken Russell died a little over two years ago, Giles Deacon was inspired to re-watch his films, such as his landmark adaptation of the D.H. Lawrence novelWomen in Love. At the time, this may have seemed so much distraction, but this season, Deacon's immersion in the Russell oeuvre bore tasty fruit. As he explained of this Giles collection, it was inspired by a certain kind of young woman who reappeared in Russell's work: a posh girl, rather uptight, but "blossoming and burgeoning," in Deacon's words. He was imagining that girl traveling to London to meet a filmmaker like Russell, and getting swept up in the mod scene and the director's own escalating provocations.Anyway, Deacon likes a backstory. This one gave him a strong peg on which to hang his interest in decadence—of the operatic, historical kind on the one hand and the pop-tastic, nightclub-y kind on the other. Op art polka dots and baroque wallpaper jacquards had a meeting of the minds here. Likewise, Deacon did a fine job yoking together his sense of nattiness, evidenced in the discipline of these retro-ish silhouettes, and his anarchic streak, which found an outlet in a chaotic bright pink print and in luxe jacquards in a pattern of chain link. A pale pink chain-link jacquard suit was a particular winner; it captured the appeal of this collection overall—very neat and very twisted.
7 January 2014
A sense of melancholy and a remembrance of things past seem to be permeating quite a few of the collections this season. That relentless cheerfulness and upbeat color palette that are often a hallmark of the Spring shows have been rejected by some. And Giles Deacon's collection could be seen as one of the mopiest of the lot. "After last season, I was satisfied with the direction we were going in, and I decided I wanted to do a non-flowery summer collection," he explained. "I wanted a melancholy to it and none of that summer fun fun." That's not to say that moping around can't be quite enjoyable at times, too—especially when it comes to a remembrance of the early to mid-nineties, in Deacon's case. He is from a generation that was fundamentally shaped by that period in pop culture and fashion. The era is seen as a golden age for London, when style magazines ruled, personal style was all, and both mainly formed fashion.To convey that mood, Deacon turned to Glen Luchford's photography of the period, writ large, or rather blown up, to monumental proportions as full photo prints on a variety of dresses; they appeared painterly on silk gazars and chiffons. The two are longtime friends who reconnected recently over Instagram, where Luchford has been posting his early photography and some of his unpublished Polaroids. They had the starring role here, with the ghosts of a young Kate Moss, Amber Valletta, Amanda de Cadenet, and Guinevere Van Seenus staring out from the picture planes and the silken folds of material.Deacon had wanted something with "clean lines [that was] less historical" this season, and it was these dresses that provided it. The whole collection was styled with Adidas trainers—a combination of Shell Toes (Superstars, to give them their official name) and Gazelles. That again took the edge off the costume drama, as well as offering another nod to the nineties. But nobody can be that melancholy for that long. The rest of the collection spun around a motif of pink and purple mouth prints and crystal appliqués. It looked like an almost nod to the Rolling Stones logo—Georgia May Jagger was in the show, and it could have been modeled on her pout. Or it might have been an homage to Katie Grand's gap-toothed grin. The stylist of the show, she's also a longtime friend and collaborator of Deacon's. They too met in the early nineties.
What sat less easily was a section devoted to bats, yes, bats—Deacon often goes off on these tangential trains of thoughts for his own amusement, and this is where the train ended up this time. It brought to mind less melancholia and more of theScooby-Dooopening sequence. Saying that, there was a short black layered dress in this section, with tight tulle pleats under a shorter transparent shift embroidered with jet-black beads. It was the most beautiful dress of the collection.
15 September 2013
Giles Deacon is a designer with a split personality. As he pointed out while presenting his new collection today, his sensibility is divided between Pop and the baroque. Over the past few seasons, Deacon has leaned on his baroque side, turning out costumes for the surreal period drama playing in his head. This time out, he let his Pop flag fly. The theme du jour was the Hacienda, the legendary ravers club in Manchester. As Deacon explained, he was particularly inspired by his memories of the industrial feeling of the place. He also took pains to point out that—per the industrial decor—his key motif this season was the head of a screw, and not a pill. But alongside the screw print, screwhead hardware, and screw-shaped broderie anglaise, there was a pilled-up-ness at work, legible in the way prints had been magnified or smeared, and in the acid-house color palette of neon pink and yellow. Shapes were easy, very updated mod, and Deacon kept the dramatic flourishes to a minimum; the upshot was a collection with a ton of commercial appeal.
12 June 2013
As Kristen McMenamy emerged in the first look of Giles Deacon's show this evening—white hair flowing, eye makeup appearing almost bruised, expression somewhat askance, clothed in a long white silk organza dress, modest yet extravagant, somewhere between the bridal and the funeral shroud—it appeared it was time for an excursion in melancholia. And a somewhat Pre-Raphaelite one, for good measure. But it is never quite as simple as that with one of Giles Deacon's collections, and what we actually got was a cross between high art and pop culture, the up and the down, intense craftsmanship and throwaway punch lines.If there was an abiding theme for this collection—and it is always difficult to pin the designer down—it was heaven and hell, with McMenamy leading a cast of fallen angels. The show venue was the venerable Stationers' Hall, dating back to the seventeenth century, standing in close proximity to Saint Paul's Cathedral. It was here that Deacon had gathered chief inspiration for the collection, in the form of Viscount Melbourne's monument, the doorway to which is meant to be a portal to heaven or to hell, depending on which side you enter. This collection walked through the middle and had something of both.There was a heavy debt to the sculptor and wood-carver Grinling Gibbons—again, his work features heavily in Saint Paul's. That was particularly the case in the carefully crafted gold laser-cut leather pieces of baroque curling feathers. But there was equally a debt to the American grunge music scene of the early nineties. The downbeat mood, the purposeful repetition of floor-sweeping full-skirted silhouettes, and the slouchy knitted caps had as much to do with this as any English baroque meditation on death.Still, the real guiding principle of this collection was its craftsmanship, and that is what grounds Deacon as a designer. "This takes time, all of this work," he said after the show. "The latticed leather bodices alone took two months to perfect and complete. It simply is not fast fashion; it is fashion that is flamboyant, specialist, creative, and can often be made to order. It really should stand apart in that way." And it did. Despite the professed influence of the TV showBlackadder,and setting jokes aside—which is hard for Deacon to do—he is a serious designer who can really make clothes.
Theatrical maybe, but in terms of the man-hours involved, the handcrafted techniques, and the level of skill shown, nothing comes close to this in London this week.
17 February 2013
At this stage in Giles Deacon's career, his design signature is set in stone—or rather, the crepe that loans itself so well to the Old Hollywood atmos of his clothes. Tick the boxes: formality, eccentricity, glamour, perversity. But such predictability doesn't stop him from entwining those threads in darkly entertaining new ways each season. For his pre-fall collection, Giles was inspired byAtomAge,a cultish British fetish magazine from the seventies that photographed women in leather and rubber against incongruously natural backdrops. Nothing bestows innocence on a model caped in black rubber like propping her against a wooden fence in a farmer's field. Not that Giles was going for aliteralreinterpretation. He may have borrowed the classic fetish color palette—black, red, white—but he was more engaged by the cheerfully subversive campiness of theAtomAgeethos, the gleeful wallow in the tension between the proper and the peculiar. Nowhere was it more obvious than in a sheath in an oily black Lurex that held in check a voluminously sleeved blouse in purest white poplin. Just like schoolteacher Miss Jean Brodie, reimagined as a suburban dominatrix. The designer compounded the notion with a dress that could have been a schoolgirl's uniform, except that it was cut from red polyamide and bisected with a long zip.The same contrast—lurid glam vs. stock-tie priss—appeared elsewhere. It was at its subtlest in a supremely elegant full-sleeved, floor-length, Empire-lined dress whose polka dots were actually a tiny little rendition of the ventilator from a fetish mask. The same pattern dotted a floor-sweeping gown with a bodice corseted over a matching blouse. Adrian himself could scarcely have designed a better outfit for Norma Shearer in 1939'sThe Women.It's a huge part of Giles' appeal that he has mastered the craft of combining such glamorous propriety with manga-like graphism in the same collection. Quintessentialclassico-con-twist.Here, he fired a shot of Stephen Sprouse at Old Hollywood, graffitiing a pouty-lipped sex kitten over a vintage Alpine scene (a tip of the cap to theAtomAgeoutdoors) and printing the extraordinary result on neoprene foam in dressy shapes like an A-line coat and a pencil skirt. Best was a printed sheath dress with a thick horizontal band of red. It looked properlyadult.
8 January 2013
Sometimes observers have a hard time reconciling the two sides of the designer Giles Deacon. On the one hand there is the cartoonish frippery he likes to lace his collections with, and on the other there is the dark, sexually charged sophistication that also seeps through. "I want to unite the two sides in this collection," said Deacon just before his Spring show. "I think in many ways the person I always come back to is Allen Jones."The pop and perversity of the artist Allen Jones has been a touchstone for Deacon since he was a teenager, and a notion of "Jonesian" graphic delineation came to the fore in his Spring collection. There was an interest in graphic line, with Deacon's fashion illustrations sprung to life, and this was mainly explored through the use of black and white laser-cut leather and silk photo-prints; it was an illustrated woman who shifted along lines from punk to pop, and her motif was smashed glass."Initially I had been thinking about Jayne Mansfield and the place she occupies in pop culture," explained Deacon. "She is such a graphic figure, comic and tragic. And is defined by that car crash." For a while it was believed that Mansfield's fatal accident decapitated the actress, and it has made her the focus of obsessives ever since. "She is a significant figure for John Waters and J.G. Ballard," said the designer. "And I don't see why I can't like both." The designer showed that humour and sex aren't mutually exclusive with a look that resembled a French maid's outfit with a Peter Pan collar: It had the connotations of Allen Jones' work, and also of a Benny Hill sketch. A silk dress with a photo-print of smashed glass and jewelry, together with one of Stephen Jones' artificial-hair hats, could evoke a camp crime scene or an illustration of a geisha or bombshell. The two sides of Deacon and his collection are not incompatible, and it's the sense of intense craftsmanship within his design sensibility that ultimately binds them together.
16 September 2012
"Simple shapes with nice details." That, according to Giles Deacon, is what he enjoys about designing pre-collections. But such a bland summation doesn't come anywhere near close to pinning down the delirious essence of his latest Resort range. Poised awkwardly between the chilly rigor of the marble statuary he'd photographed at Castle Howard (the stately home whereBrideshead Revisitedwas filmed) and the slapdash vigor of Making Paper, the design app he uses on his iPad, the clothes were an unhinged hybrid of classic and cartoon. A lot of the statues Giles photographed were missing their heads, so he topped them with one of his own drawings. The clash of trompe l'oeil marble drape and googly-eyed popstrel was even more extreme when printed on a silk evening dress that dipped to an elegant bow at the base of the spine. It was the sort of languid silhouette you'd imagine one of the legendarily game Mitford sisters sporting at a Castle Howard house party back in the 1930's. Except for that print, of course, and the fact that Giles had slathered the bodice with hologram sequins. "RaveMitford," he called it. In that spirit, there was also a tank and skirt combination that might have made a tennis outfit for a Mitford, except that it was in pink Lurex. Likewise the pleated, racer-backed, princess-line Lurex dress that felt ready for a rave at Wimbledon. (The designer dresses Li Na, China's top female tennis player.)Giles turned the heads he'd imposed on his statues into a graphic black and white print of red-lipped little characters wearing cloche hats and driving goggles (again, an echo of fast-living dames from another era). Printed on body-conscious stretch canvas, they were the most winning element in the collection. The same print was shrunk down and abstracted to create a camo-like pattern in silk polyester jacquard, which Giles cut into cocktail dresses and coats (detailed in more of that pink Lurex) and cropped jackets that could do double duty—bolero or bed jacket. Such eccentric formality was a reminder that Giles came into this world admiring the extreme style of fashion gorgons like Helena Rubenstein (there were also timely hints of Diana Vreeland here). These are his guns, and he's sticking to them. Or, as he puts it, "the more personal you can make it, the more relevant it is." It's definitely a thing of wonder that there seem to be so many women for whom these odd clothes strike that chord of relevance.
6 June 2012
The tale Giles Deacon began to spin for Fall was that of a stately country home accidentally ablaze on an arctic winter's night. "I just had this idea of someone rushing out of a beautiful house," Deacon said backstage before the show. "It's burning down, and what are you going to take?"One very acceptable answer to that could be these clothes. This collection yielded some truly beautiful things, romantic with macabre bite, pumped up by a couturier's eye for detail. What's impressive is how they fit Deacon's new direction of well-made clothes for women of means, while still nestled comfortably into the narrative at hand.Deacon set the darkly enchanted tone with the first exit: a high club-collared tuxedo accessorized by a menacing black plumed scarecrowlike helmet—this season's version of Spring's swan headpieces, also made by Stephen Jones. He quickly segued from governess strictness to lady-of-the-house softness. A painterly print echoed a burnt tapestry; it was cut into a chiffon blouse, tucked into a matching skirt of sharply razored organza ruffles that spilled dyed-to-match feathers at its hem. The thorns from Deacon's frozen garden were transformed into laser-cut satins and a rich metallic lace. And in this fairy tale an icy blue brocade tapestry—populated, if you looked closely, with unicorns and other mythical creatures—seemed to have been ripped from the wall and transformed, through some sort of fashion wizardry, into a strapless mullet-skirted dress or an evening jacket to elegantly cover up a burnt and water-stained tulle gown. Catastrophe was rarely so chic. And though the collection might have skewed a bit prim and proper for those who love Deacon's antic side, inside it still burned with a magical and mischievous spirit.
19 February 2012
The word that kept coming back to Giles Deacon when he reflected on his pre-fall collection was "haughty." And there was definitely something about the structure, the solidity, and the pulled-together polish of the outfits that brought to mind an old-school society dame, someone like Helena Rubinstein, who inspired Giles' very first collection eight years ago. These were unambiguous clothes for womend'un certain âge. The designer said that was a follow-on from the response to his Fall collection, where store buyers could understand exactly who the customer was: "a woman with money who wants posh frocks," as he put it. If that implied a distinct formality, then that's exactly what Giles gave his woman. A typical piece was a short, hyper-tailored jacket flared into a pleated peplum and paired with a pencil skirt. Another short jacket was draped with a trompe l'oeil portrait neckline. It could have stepped straight out of a Park Avenue salon in the early fifties, just like the full-skirted cocktail dress. Even the shift shapes that fell straight to big ruffled hems had a retro weightiness. That impression was compounded by the substantial fabrics: black wool crepe and icy lilac poly duchesse.It was almost a relief to light upon the airier end of the collection, however weirdly an ice cream orange knit shrug sat next to that lilac duchesse. Keeping himself busy in airports, Giles has been doodling colorful figures—they looked like manga dolly birds—on his iPad, and these were turned into whimsical multiples for a print on silk lounging pajamas and a side-draped shift. Single figures were isolated and enlarged on silk T-shirts, sure to be big sellers. Giles has often injected cartoonish whimsy into his collections (there were a few of Stephen Jones' Pac-Man helmets around the studio as reminders), but he acknowledged it hasn't always sat comfortably with his more serious pieces. Here, however, his electric stick figures were a welcome alternative to posh frocks.
3 January 2012
"This is so not a collection aboutBlack Swan," Giles Deacon said backstage before his show. Rather, it was a panoply of interlocking, stream-of-consciousness references. The Silver Swan, the automaton from the Bowes Museum near Deacon's hometown in County Durham, led to society swans photographed by Cecil Beaton, whom the designer dubbed "the Andy Warhol of his day." Deacon was also influenced by Beaton'sSymphony in Silverportrait of his sister Baba; that led him to Warhol's Factory andSilver Clouds, which cued the runway backdrop.The most marked change between the designer's Spring and Fall efforts, for both his own label and for Emanuel Ungaro, was an almost dreamy lightness. The first look out—a gorgeous, fluid white suit—might have floated away, with its white swan headdress leading the way.There was undeniably a couturier's spirit in Deacon's collection, from those brocadeMad Men-ish cocktail dresses and gowns with ostrich plumes and tiered cutwork lace, to the stiff silver laser-cut leather that gave models their own automated elegance. You could see that as a playing out of Beaton's beauties, but perhaps another way to view it is as an au revoir to the ateliers of Ungaro, which the designer diplomatically said he'd treasured his time in. But Deacon also fast-forwarded to sharper, more modern times with tailored pieces in a 3-D swan-printed satin, and filmy yet slightly sporty looks in red and black animal-print lace layered with bandeaus and briefs.As Deacon pointed out, the swan may be supremely elegant, but it's also fierce and savage. (Hmm… Is there a parallel to be made with some women who love fashion?) Perhaps a pair of crimson gowns weren't meant to be anything as macabre as bloody brides, but once the idea got into your head, it was dark and hard to shake. Certainly the look that closed the show had something ominous about it, with its red swan headdress looking poised to pluck out someone's eye: beauty with bite, exactly as it should be here.
18 September 2011
Giles Deacon has never been a designer short on whimsy. And though he brought plenty of that whimsy to bear on his Resort collection, he's also seized on the opportunity to prove that he can do solid, salable clothes, with just the right balance of sweet and vicious. Picking up where he left off with last season's court-themed collection, which featured a print taken from Delaroche'sThe Execution of Lady Jane Grey, Deacon adapted Rococo artist Jean-Marc Nattier's painting of the Marquise d'Antin for another print, using it on several pieces. The twilight-toned motif was particularly winning on the simplest silhouettes, like a floor-length skirt of bias-cut silk satin or an A-line shift pleated in the back. (The print also made for a punchy accent to white shirting, a new and overtly commercial initiative.)Deacon stayed mum when asked whether he was making a political point with the Nattier and Delaroche references—maybe, one wonders, there's something rocking around in Deacon's head about class struggle and a new age of aristocracy. Or maybe not, but he did point out that women don't seem to be coming to him for, as he put it, "work clothes." At any rate, ladies who lunch will find plenty to like here, from his unbelievably lightweight, tailored peplum jackets, with coordinating cigarette pants or pencil skirts, to the fitted sheath with a neoprene mesh inset that just winks at vampy. The neoprene, used generously, was a nice touch, giving otherwise fine-boned looks a bit of muscle. Another major element—a big check with Lurex threaded into it—will be very much to some people's taste and read as garish by others. Of course, it would be disappointing to find Giles playing it entirely safe.
24 June 2011
Giles Deacon's invitation was an exact facsimile of an official summons to appear in court, which caused tremors for a few invitees when they pried it from its equally official-looking envelope.A talent to disconcert has long been a Giles trait. There's something about his approach to his design work that is unabashedly—and often darkly—fetishistic. That means this would seem to be his time, because for Fall, his peers have also been plumbing depths of shadowy sexuality. Sure enough, Deacon delivered his most accomplished collection to date. Not for the first time this season did the words "restraint and release" come to mind. The look that expressed it best was a governess-y white blouse gathered by wasp-waisted black corseting that barely controlled an eruption of shaggy champagne-toned goat fur. A white bow in the hair, black peep-toe booties on the feet, and the ensemble was complete. Specialist appeal? Why, yes, especially for readers of top-shelf magazines, but the intense discipline of the look also translated into a passage of slickly sophisticated suits.The high necks and elongated lines reflected the time Deacon spent researching Victoriana and Edwardiana in the Victoria and Albert Museum. When the collection took a breather from black and white, it exploded into psychedelic-ized William Morris, based on tiles made by Morris' ceramist William de Morgan. And Deacon's key print was also from the nineteenth century. Delaroche's paintingThe Execution of Lady Jane Greydepicts the young queen blindfolded, corseted, about to lose her head to a hulking brute with a big ax. Martyred innocence is scarcely Deacon's default position, so it was surely the emotional extremity of the image that fit with the designer's big picture.He populated that picture with women as fierce and worldly as dominatrices, parading by like exotic birds of prey in clouds of stripped black peacock feathers and swaths of wild pagan fur. Do such creatures even exist? For perhaps the first time in Deacon's career, it just about seemed possible.
20 February 2011
"Austere, not austerity." Giles Deacon has a way with words, and his description of his pre-fall collection summed up the strict, even severe quality of an offering that was so tightly edited it bordered on tense. If other designers are expanding their pre-fall collections as a response to the share of the business they're coming to represent, Deacon wound his down to a handful of elements. The print was the result of something called data bending. His explanation was much too complex for a late afternoon on a frantic fashion day in Milan. Suffice to say, it looked like reptile scales. The color scheme veered between black and fuchsia, and the silhouette was somehow evocative of haute couture in the early sixties, particularly a coat of lacquered, textured wool that felt like raffia. The ever charming Deacon cheerfully confided his appetite for the fake as he pointed to the perforated pleather trim on a skirt, or the pleather chain link that ran round the waist of a black shift. Nothing about his ingredients was appetizing in the abstract, but once the finished dish was donned by a model, it made curiously alluring sense. Tough and uncompromising, yes, but alsomoltosexy.
13 January 2011
Giles Deacon's latest show suggested he was well ahead of the forties/seventies curve that is turning everyone else's crank this season. He was already fifties/eighties. "No, no," he corrected backstage, "It'snineties—the color and fun and playfulness of the Milk Bar." He was referring to the unprepossessing London nightlife institution where you would once have seen Björk hopping about, Katie Grand propped up at the bar knitting, and Jon Pleased Wimmin deejaying (and what happened tohim?).Giles' shtick is more overtly self-referential than most. His latest invitation duplicated his trademark eyewear. He had personal icon Veruschka close his show. And the Milk Bar big-up was his latest dip into styles he has known and loved. On the runway, it translated as an intense farrago of psycho color, Pac-Man pattern, and extreme silhouette. The highest compliment you could pay the whole thing was that it was all in exquisitely bad taste.The designer already proved his passion for Christina Hendricks with his Resort collection. With this outing, you have to imagine her singular shape overlaid with emblems of rave and sprayed with glitter or swagged with pearls. Shazam! Sid Bryan's knits were as luridly irresistible as his work for his own label Sibling. A hibiscus print saidsummerin a twisted way (Giles picked up that idea on a visit to Kew Gardens with his mum). And the lady looks that are de rigueur for Spring 2011 were here unhinged by a print that looked like naughty capsules. That normal/nuts dichotomy is a Giles signature, but he's never scrawled it quite as successfully as he did today.
19 September 2010
Giles Deacon lovesMad Men, more specifically the superb Christina Hendricks, whose va-voomery was very much on his mind when he was designing his Resort collection. He hung a bustier off a bra strap (and paired it with silk cigarette pants) at one overt extreme, and, much more subtly, draped a jersey column over a half-corset in the name of emphasizing curves. His organza bubble skirts sort of served the same function, spotlighting everything above the waist.If Deacon's clothes can occasionally seem a little studied, bordering on heavy, this season he joined the light brigade with skirts and dresses that either bounced or flowed. Put those silhouettes together with surface details like an explosive squiggle print, a surreal doll-face visual, or a jolt of vermilion, and you have yourself a look that just might drive men mad, Joan Holloway-style.
21 June 2010
Something of the sixties keeps bobbing up on the runways this season. It was there at Prada and Rochas, and now—not entirely surprisingly, since it's often the designer's beat—at Giles, giant beehives and all. This time, Giles Deacon found his way into it by looking at the work of the contemporary Dutch photographerErwin Olaf. The designer said he was aiming to catch the spirit of "slightly disconsolate girls who might be from the sixties—or somewhere in the future. Or maybe on a starship."If it didn't count as one of the season's more rigorous work-throughs of sci-fi and sixties themes, it gave Deacon the excuse to crush some of Fall's trends together: a palette of browns and orange, A-line skirts, cropped versions of winter's new flares, metallic brocade gathered short skirts, and a shearling jacket. The last had a big collar styled (if you looked at it one way) like an Apollo-mission space suit. Toy-shaped handbags—a gonk and a gremlin—made for Deacon by Katie Hillier, and funny metal "cloud" headdresses by Stephen Jones gave a spoofy cartoonish spin. Still, there's a sense that Deacon is having a harder time attracting attention among the Paris competition than in his native London. This season, to get the slot he wanted, he went off-schedule, causing a certain amount of disruption to the first night of the Paris shows.
2 March 2010
He's as agreeable an individual as you could hope to meet, but Giles Deacon is twisted. Or at least the pictures he draws are, and so are a lot of the clothes he designs. Take, for instance, a gray evening gown, elegantly cross-draped and gathered at the waist, that spun to reveal a fleshy foundation-garment backing and a thick half-belt of paper clips. It was one of the 15 pieces Deacon showed in his pre-fall presentation at Pitti (from a total of 90 in the actual collection), and the same perverse flair was apparent in everything from the choice of location to the models' lurid nylon wigs.Turning his back on the fabulous palazzi of Florence, Deacon opted for the factory where the famous Richard Ginori porcelain is produced. The clanking of the production line melded nicely with Steve Mackey's booming metal music, the huge prints of tools, and the spectacular Stephen Jones constructions that decorated the models' heads. But ultimately, it was (wo)man, not machine, that Deacon emphasized with the fetishistic edge that is almost his signature: the hook-and-eye closings on a second-skin leather coat-dress, the shoulder straps that could've been lifted from bras, the va-voom definition of the body in a contoured sponge crepe coat-dress, with vertiginous Louboutin stilettos compounding the whole effect. Deacon loves a dangerous curve on a bad girl, and if there's something risky about the result, there's also a toughness and wit to give the clothes a kick. Together they made the Spring 2010 collection he showed in Paris last October his best yet. And these new looks suggest he's not done with risk-taking.
13 January 2010
Winning the French ANDAM award may only have shuffled Giles Deacon to the graveyard slot on the Paris schedule, but he made the very best of the situation with a spoofy-spooky Scooby-Doo-ish show starring his very own Daphne (Guinness, that is). Debuting on the bottom rung of the Paris schedule after years of being top dog in London didn't faze this most genial of designers. Instead, it made him sharpen up his act so that the cute, sixties-cartoonish, neon, pastel, and metallic collection full of delightful prom dresses turned out to be the first truly coherent outing of his career—with tons of playful accessories thrown in. "You have to make it more concise here," he said. "I just wanted to do more real-life, obtainable clothes." Deacon's line is now produced under a new license deal with the Italian manufacturer Castor SRL. That means his deliciously detailed peach, apricot, and lime froufrou dance dresses and Monroe-ish sheaths in draped tulle or 3-D "dragon-stitch knit" (a genius design by Sid Bryan, a London specialist friend) may hit stores at a competitive speed next spring. They deserve a place, too—as do the nutty, teenager-ish accessories: Cutler and Gross "Scooby" sunglasses with pink printed frames, spider and scorpion jewelry, neon pegs and gold-plated bulldog clips to stick in hair and festoon collars—not to mention really silly soft-toy dinosaur bags. Like so much else this season, Deacon's collection is young, and it has a believable, cheerful personality that should see him holding his own. As a footnote to the season, Deacon also smartly confirmed the new shoe shape that will come as a blessed relief to all the platform-weary fashion foot soldiers who are limping home from the field on planes and trains right now. It is, of course, the kitten heel. Deacon's version is attached to a long, low, pointy plastic and snakeskin last—provided by Christian Louboutin. Let's hope he makes enough to slake demand.
7 October 2009
It's all go in London. Pixie Geldof, hotfoot from Glastonbury, had just rushed round to Giles Deacon's studio in Brick Lane to model his Resort collection in an orange doll wig. Katie Grand, Deacon's friend, stylist, and the editor ofLove(etc., etc.), was dressing her while simultaneously counting the days until her wedding to Steve Mackey in upstate New York (she's wearing a made-to-measure Azzedine Alaïa dress). And Deacon was buzzing on the news that he's a) got a new Italian licensee, and b) won the French ANDAM award, which means not only oodles of euros, but also that he'll be showing in Paris in the fall.On the rail—and on Pixie—it was all polish and pragmatic pieces, the kind of range Deacon says he's only now able to achieve with Castor S.r.l. "There are 30 pieces, with a couple of repetitions, so 60 in all. We're being asked for daywear much more, funnily enough," he said, "And for the first time we've been able to do things like work out what our great trouser is going to be. Hardly anyone does them these days because it's really hard to make trousers. But now we can." The Giles pant—high-waisted, cuffed, and with a slight flare—hits a neat summery equilibrium between casual and formal.The line also has plenty of Deacon's signature sheath dresses, the best being the "Razor" in pink and silver lamé decorated with lines of anatomically provocative curvilinear overstitching. His proper-looking, ladylike tailoring, made slightly sporty with "super-locked" edging, comes in a silk and nylon mix to give structure without weight. It's all very grown up, though Deacon swears his inspirations still come from some funny homegrown sources. Part of the collection, he said, "came from a John Lewis pillowcase." The result: a drape-y georgette square-cut, slightly asymmetric T-shirt dress that comes in sophisticated taupe or smothered in a squiggly pop print that instantly had Geldof jumping about as if she were still at Glasto.
29 June 2009
An unidentified, aggressive raw noise greeted the audience at Giles Deacon's show, a scene-setter for a collection that was obviously intended to shake up the normal order of predictable runway behavior. The show started with eighties supermodel Rachel Williams in a gray flannel bustier dress with shearling gauntlets, threateningly clutching chains in her fists—a sign that something feistier than usual was going on, though quite what only became clear once Deacon had his say at the end. "I just thought I wanted to go back to what got me into fashion in the first place," he said. "I graduated from Central Saint Martins in 1992 and I wanted to recapture all of the fun we had playing with things in those days. So the collection is a revisiting of all the things of my own that I've liked—and hopefully an improvement on them." The women walking for Deacon were a mixture of former fashion heroines and street-cast locals from Camden. Not that anyone really looked that rough and angry—this is a show where Katie Grand's styling always lends international polish. As for clothes, the sequence of Deacon's favorite moments would only be really legible to his nearest and dearest. Few others would realize that the circular leather skirt came from his graduate show, or that the fly-fishing printed dress hooked onto the fact that the other side of Deacon is a country-loving boy from Cumbria, or that the giant knits at the end were a reprise of something he did 18 months ago. It was, in other words, a random affair, and a somewhat puzzling exercise in solipsism for anyone who expects fashion to move relentlessly onward.
22 February 2009
Is Giles Deacon getting a bit sensible? Put aside the giant pinkPac-Manfigure squatting at the end of the runway for a minute—what he actually sent out was not one of his excursions into extreme whimsy but a collection of sheath dresses, the shape that's currently winning the popular vote among grown-up women everywhere.Of course, this being Deacon, you wouldn't expect them to be delivered straight up and down without any tweaks of craftsmanship—or without skewering some insider pop culture references. Deacon declared those afterward. "I was just looking at the graphic designers of the late eighties and early nineties who I grew up admiring: Ben Kelly, Peter Saville, Mark Farrow. Pet Shop Boys videos, The Hacienda club. What they did was ridiculously simple but incredibly graphic."Pac-Man(the precursor of every modern computer game) dates from the same sort of vintage.True enough, there were prints (giant allover camouflages and smudged polka dots), but Deacon kept them mostly to trimmings, or removed them altogether in a series of solid-color double-knit jersey dresses. And he endeared himself to his potential customers by using a broadened age group of models, including Emma Balfour, Elise Crombez, Liberty Ross, and Christina Kruse. He even popped in western shirts and a single pair of jeans, coming out soon as a collaboration with Lee Cooper.
15 September 2008
When the press blunders backstage in search of the key to Giles Deacon's collections, he usually comes up with a surprise. This season it was a horror movie:The Masque of the Red Death, an adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's story of "people partying in a castle with everyone dying outside." Or, as Deacon also paraphrased it: "Femme fatale in a gothic disco!"In retrospect, that did make a little more sense of the red dresses, the heads tied up in black veils, the spidery gothic sweaters knitted from yarn as fine as embroidery silk, and the billowy Hammer-horror hooded cape or two. By the sound of it, this might have been a collection that trod into Alexander McQueen's macabre storytelling territory, but no. Deacon never uses his clothes to support a narrative from beginning to end, or to suggest anything very subversive. In the end, attempting to join the dots between a series of couture puffas in duchesse satin, padded fin-de-siècle prints, a bone-colored leather dress, and a suede column with "millipede" fringe running down the front is a pointless exercise. What Deacon does, at best, is one-off special dresses with a lot of individualistic handcraft going on in them—clothes that happen to have a photogenic quality that reads well both on magazine pages and on the red carpet. Coherent on the runway or not, there are plenty of pieces in this collection that will meet that criterion just fine.
12 February 2008
There are some collections in which asking what inspired the designer adds nothing to the clothes in front of you, where trying to follow a thread of logic actually gets in the way of seeing the designs. Giles Deacon is the world's prime example: His work is randomness incarnate. It can't keep to any one message, or develop an intellectual thesis. If you're looking for a point, he'll never get to it. These are all potentially exasperating traits, but in Deacon's case, you need to put them aside. Because in spite of them, his collections are increasingly full of wonderful things.Is there really any logic to a show that starts out with sober, gray denim Alaïa-ish tailoring, moves through duchesse satin fifties debutante gowns, Marie Antoinette milkmaid dresses, some breezy silk T-shirt dresses, giant fuzzy photo prints of Kate Moss, balls of layered tulle, and a print of Bambi with blood spurting from its neck? Deacon said afterward that he was digging out his old record collection and came across eighties album designs on the 4AD label, like the Cocteau Twins, and the Sex Pistols' "Who Killed Bambi?". That might explain the punk-fetish connection which popped up in 3-D rubber roses and a peculiarly great-looking pale-pink trench with hundreds of brown elastic bands knitted onto the front to mimic fur.But he soon admitted today's show was just as much about following up on the commercial success of his well-received first pre-Spring collection, in which he decided to make everything lighter and "go a bit mad, really" with fabric and embellishment. "It's almost like we're inventing our own textiles." So, a hanger inspection of the clothes backstage is a much more revealing exercise than trying to drag theory out of the designer. Then, the level of handwork in the painted fabrics, the multi-layers of tulle petticoat, and the construction of a panniered coat becomes clear, and the real attraction of Deacon's clothes becomes unarguable.
18 September 2007
Giles Deacon has always been a nature-lover, and after a few virtual flying expeditions via Google Earth, he was off on his Fall theme. It came to encompass earthy forest-floor colors, porcupine quills, leaves, tribal prints, Chinese pheasant feathers, and, along the way, a showpiece constructed of fans that may be fashion¿s first-ever dress based on a sea cucumber.As always in a Giles collection, though, the starting point is never where things end up. ¿We just add and add and go mad, and we got on a real roll this time,¿ was the best explanation he had for the anti-method that produced a duchesse satin gown jigsawed together from 550 pattern pieces, a leather sheath decorated with grommets, gargantuan knitwear, acoq-feather bolero, and a puffy ball gown sprouting extravagant tail feathers.It makes for an expansive show with links that are perplexing to follow, until you realize that none really exist. Deacon¿s increasingly complex, handworked clothes are best considered individually, just as they are rendered in his studio, with prints and embroideries, corsetry, and padding applied by a small army of friends. No big thrusting vision, then; but a sense that a jolly good time was had by all who made it.
14 February 2007
The energy surging from young London fashion is affecting everyone in its radius, including, it would seem, a slightly older generation. Something certainly inspired Giles Deacon to up his game this season. His spring collection was definitively the best he's done.Deacon has always aspired to a Parisian level of couture-like design, but the execution has tended to be a bit lumpy and clunky at times. This season, he delivered on all fronts, with a collection of chic sixties looks that had an underlying S&M theme, madly accessorized with vast ostrich hats by Stephen Jones. If that sounds aggressive, it didn't stop Deacon producing a slew of beautiful dresses. One was a short trapeze of black lace overlaid on white; another was a gown in tiers of stiff fan pleats, trimmed with patent at the neck. Others were belled at the hip, or Empire-line in a slightly off-register print of dancing skeletons.The bondage theme was worked out in the spiky stilettos, prints of whips and chains, and, most pointedly, in the squashy patent bags loaded with giant studs. They're the result of Deacon's collaboration with Mulberry, and among them was one of the wittiest little evening bags to be seen in a long time, made in the shape of a miniature mace. Bottom line: Thanks to his new level of accomplishment, Deacon has put clear water between himself and the next generation of beginner talent. And, in the meanwhile, those bags promise an excellent income stream he could surely do with.
19 September 2006
Finally Giles Deacon is living up to his hype. For fall, he whipped himself out of his complacent groove as a young London designer who reveres "lady couture," and delivered something splashy, quirky, and colorfully original.Part of the show's punch was in the bold stripes, dots, gigantic leopard spots, fluorescents, Lurex, patent leather, and holograms he used—in marked contrast to the somber wintry palettes that have been depressing the mood elsewhere. Another plus was in his silhouettes: fifties and sixties shifts and trapezes, hourglass eighties dresses, and—new to him—flowy poncho tops over easy pants. Deacon said he'd been inspired by the paintings of Ellsworth Kelly, as well as "a healthy feeling that I wanted to throw everything out and look for contemporary modernism."But you don't need a fashion or art history degree to respond to Deacon. It hardly matters that he researched his patterns in the Tate in St. Ives, or that references to Cardin can be caught along the way. What does count is that the results—seamed and patched together into arty, optically vivid effects—don't look like any reverent rehash of the past. It's taken a few seasons to get there, but now that Deacon has found the nerve to say what he believes in, he's turning into something interesting.
16 February 2006
At every Giles Deacon show, there are two types of attendees: those in the inner circle who get it, and those who aren't, who look on disguising puzzlement behind fixed smiles. If you're a Gilesinperson, you see a young designer aiming to outfit an older customer in respectfully couture-ish clothes, and are thrilled that he can pull Linda Evangelista, Stella Tennant, and Shalom Harlow to walk for him. If you're anoutperson, you spend the show wondering what kind of woman—older or younger—would really wear these clothes, and fretting over the skills he has at his disposal.This season did represent a stylistic shift, at any rate. Dropping the flowy, slightly glam-rock seventies references of his first couple of collections, Deacon reversed into the sixties and its cleaner, pared-down silhouette. He showed leggy Cardin-like shifts in heavy silk, updated with sporty zipper implants and paired with flat sandals, and the occasional silk cagoule, but then mixed that graphic statement with fancier, draped cullings from the legacy of Madame Grès.His starting point, he explained, was the work of Colin Self, a painter who created on the cusp of Pop Art in the sixties and whose canvases record that odd moment when mod looks coexisted with trad dressing. An interesting source, but something stalled in the leap to the runway. It takes magic fingers to drape and mold a figure like Madame Grès. Deacon's approximations, fixed onto stiff, conical corsets, made his models look like they were trapped inside inverted 1950's lampshades.Deacon's better moments came when he didn't try so hard: a little bustier dress in navy doupioni that hugged the waist and flared into a short skirt, or something soft in kelly green silk, fastened with fabric flowers at the shoulder. Individual dresses from this collection will undoubtedly look good on magazine pages and at the odd offbeat special occasion, but that doesn't solve Deacon's central issues. Either he needs to acquire a fully fledged skill set to pull off this "couture" work properly (hardly the easiest route in London), or he needs to get over the "lady" thing and start watching what women his own age want to wear.
17 September 2005
Giles Deacon has been interviewed for the design vacancy at Givenchy and is waiting to hear the outcome. That was the news backstage after he delivered his best show to date, a collection unmistakably designed as a set piece audition for the last empty couture seat in Paris. The challenge focused Deacon's mind on demonstrating how totally serious he is about wanting to design grown-up, even grand, clothes. For the first time in three seasons, he dispensed with his ironic British tinkerings with borderline bad taste and went straight for old-school classic chic of the kind he hopes will translate across the English Channel.Deacon set out to show he can cut it with the best of them, meaning everything from snug riding jackets inset with velvet to well-cut pantsuits, decorative paillette cocktail dresses, and extravagant opera coats. He redirected his former experiments with volume into ballooning sleeves, bubble jackets, and puffy unpressed hems, producing shapes that directly recall the haute eveningwear of 1950's couture. Among all this, there were one or two knowing references to the design ethos of Hubert de Givenchy himself (a white puff-sleeve blouse here, an Audrey like peacoat there). Still, there was more than enough to prove that Deacon wasn't simply resorting to slavish pastiche, a design cul-de-sac that other young Givenchy incumbents have floundered in before. Increasingly, Deacon is developing his own sophisticated handwriting, particularly in the flowing, high-waisted, vaguely seventies gowns that finished the show. It remains to be seen whether Givenchy's parent, LVMH, will want to risk hiring a fourth young British Central Saint Martins graduate for the job, after John Galliano, Alexander McQueen, and Julien Macdonald. But if this collection doesn't convince the company about the caliber of Deacon's talent, nothing will.
15 February 2005
Watching Giles Deacon's show—headlined by Linda Evangelista, Karolina Kurkova, Eugenia Volodina, and Karen Elson—while glancing at the haute-couture-style program notes ("pheasant feather pencil skirt, jasper pendant"), you had to pinch yourself to remember that this was only a young designer's second collection. This is London, after all, where spotting a supermodel on a runway is about as rare as sighting a unicorn in Hyde Park.For all the hype surrounding Deacon, it's still too early to say whether or not he's really going anywhere. He may have earned local raves for his seventies-suburban-ladylike vibe, but hardline critics find it impossible to imagine what woman could possibly wear those jazzily striped jacquard suits with the matching 6-inch wedges. Or find an occasion equal to one of his flowing printed scarf dresses or electric-blue sunray-pleated dinner gowns. Some might mutter, too, about the overtones of Vivienne Westwood tailoring—not to mention a smidge of Jean Muir here and quite a lot of pure Stepford Wife cheese there.On the other hand, there's enough that is genuinely odd in Deacon's aesthetic to make it almost grotesquely fascinating. He has a small boy's interest in animals and insects, which crop up in motifs of apes, bees, scorpions, and lizards, or outsize marquetry plaques, which he fashions into vast pendants or bags. All of which provides a certain unsettling undercurrent to the pseudo-glam pastiche. That may not be a bad thing in a season of too much normality. But the jury's still out.
19 September 2004
Giles Deacon had the confidence to harness the best of British spirit with relish and wit. In his debut collection, called Giles, he managed to marry a slightly peculiar, uptight-seventies-lady look—all nipped-waist suits, pussycat-bow blouses, and flowing printed gowns—with homegrown English craft. Deacon, 34, graduated from Central St. Martin's ten years ago with Hussein Chalayan and has spent the intervening years freelancing, with stints at Bottega Veneta and Gucci. So why choose London as a launchpad? "I live here. I love it," he said. "There's such a lot going on here if you dig around."Deacon's international experience shows in the polish of his silhouettes—and in the roster of supermodels (Nadja Auermann and Eva Herzigova among them) who wore his precision-cut wide-shouldered jackets, pencil skirts, cashmere tank tops, and fan-pleated skirts. That, plus the deliberately chosen materials—hand-loomed bespoke jacquards, custom-made psychedelic woodland prints commissioned from the Glasgow School of Art, luxe Linton tweed from Scotland, and leather accessories, molded into the shape of stag beetles by artist-craftsman Justin Capp—gave the show what Deacon calls "a slightly odd, misplaced chicness." With its underlying thread of perversity (covered-up dresses that showed intriguing flashes of garter and seamed stockings) and just a hint of trippiness offsetting the very sensible, Deacon's collection put down a marker for a new English look.
14 February 2004