TASA Fashion News!!!

Daphne Guiness's Provocative Collection

By Ray A. Smith

Daphne Guinness didn’t just bring her luggage on a recent trip to New York. She brought her closet.

Actually, part of her enviable closet. Ms. Guinness has lent some of her designer couture clothing collection – and a number of towering heels – to the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York for an exhibition entitled “Daphne Guinness.” FIT says the exhibition, which opened on Friday, is one of the few times it has devoted an exhibition to a woman of style rather than a designer.

“I do believe she is the most individual, inspiring fashion icon in the world today,” said Valerie Steele, chief curator at the museum, at a press preview held Friday morning.

The exhibition was two years in the making and Ms. Steele recalled having fun going through Ms. Guinness’s many closets. Ms. Guinness collects clothing from uncompromising, provocative, artistic-minded designers such as her good belated friend Alexander McQueen, Azzedine Alaia and Karl Lagerfeld for Chanel as well as cutting-edge garments from young designers as if they are works of art. Indeed a good argument can be made that these clothes are true works of art. Ms. Guinness treats them as such, but that doesn’t mean they sit in her closets like artifacts. She wears the clothes, which most people, Lady Gaga excluded, would have difficulty pulling off, as naturally as the average person would wear jeans and a t-shirt. She’s never had a wardrobe malfunction or looked uncomfortable in even the most avant-garde couture.

(click here for more...Wall Street Journal)