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AN EXHIBITION BY DAVID DOWNTON
15 - 26 November 2023 Cromwell Place London SW7 2JE
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GAULTIER PARIS A/W 2000 Charcoal & pastel on paper, signed & dated 2023 75 x 59 cms
The twenty charcoal fashion illustrations here are unlike any of those in any previous David Downton exhibition. These are the drawings he always wanted to do but couldn’t, because when it came to illustrating the shows, he was usually at the beck and call of “The Client.” Sometimes I was the client – or rather The Times, the newspaper I was writing for was. David and I were privileged enough to be paid to attend the couture shows in Paris twice a year, in the days when Gianni Versace, Christian Lacroix and Signor Valentino were in full flight. I was there to review them; David to capture their ephemeral, in-motion essence before they disappeared off to private collections or were bundled in tissue paper in archives. Together we found ourselves observing fittings with Valentino as his pugs (in V embellished nappies) danced around Shalom Harlow or Carla Bruni in lashings of lace and silk, or listening to Christian Lacroix, a voluptuously calm presence, giving us a private preview in his Garouste & Bonetti furnished showroom. “Before I pitched up at Paris couture in 1996, I’d never been to a show before, not even a student one,” says David. “Suddenly I was in the eye of the storm because we had such privileged access from the getgo, which at the time I didn’t realise wasn’t normal.” Along with the established stars, John Galliano and
Alexander McQueen were just taking off. “It was like watching a Baz Luhrmann production,” he recalls. “Exhilarating but also a time to hold your nerve. It felt as though I’d gone straight from the nursery slopes to do the black runs,” he says. “Backstage, some designers revelled in the energy that came with creative chaos. Others would be almost spookily serene.” With that privilege came certain boundaries. “You were always under the gun, deadline and space wise. You had to select dresses in colours that would withstand the vagaries of newsprint. I learned very early on it wasn’t necessarily about drawing the outfits I liked best. The newspapers wanted Galliano in all his madness, Versace in his pomp – not the impeccable navy Chanel suit. It was about speed and summing up the whole ambience. I remember coming out of my first show – it was Versace. I’d drawn a beautiful rendition of Kate Moss’s arm but hadn’t properly got the dress.” Once he’d worked out the degree of drama required to hold the attention of a newspaper readership, there was no stopping him. “Very occasionally, when I was illustrating a fitting, I was semi-allowed to select the outfit from the show,” he says. “But even then, there were limitations. One time, Dior kept saying non to my requests. Eventually I realised I needed to choose one that wasn’t so huge it required a truck to transport it to our studio.”
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DAVID DOWNTON Photographed by Jacobus Snyman
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It wasn’t all private audiences. Often our first sighting of the clothes was the show itself. In the days before smartphones, for David that required fast thinking – is that The One that will sum up the will o’ the wisp beauty of the collection? – and blink-of-an-eye line work in his sketchbook while forty or so models swirled down the catwalk. “You had to imagine what you were drawing might end up as a cover, so it had to be eye-catching. Or if it was inside the paper, it might be opposite a big ad for Sainsbury’s, so it had to hold its own. You knew you had to look out for the highest drama possible,” he says, “even if what you really hankered to draw was a black trouser suit.”
There’s the one from Galliano’s Parc Bagatelle Autumn/Winter 97 collection. “Edwardian meets Mata Hari meets Toulouse-Lautrec. That was one of the most memorable shows I ever saw,” he says, “and this was so seductively drawable. The model had worked with the illustrator Antonio. No pressure for me then. But she knew how to hold a pose.” Another illustration, is from the day, in 2004, when he was on set illustrating a shoot for V Magazine with Linda Evangelista modelling Chanel and she uttered the immortal benediction: let David choose the dress. “I should have that on my tombstone. I think that shows her incredible trust in the person who was creating the picture.”
Yet, as the work here shows, even when he draws the simpler outfits in monochrome, the results live up to the title of this exhibition Théâtre de la Mode, which is the name Paris couturiers gave to their first post Second World War collections, which were shown not on living breathing models, but scaled down mannequins that were sent to clients across the world. The drawings here, completed over several months with no colour or size constraints (some are four feet high; all are black and white), are mainly inspired by those sketchbooks or from the scraps of paper on which he jotted down ideas that for one reason or another, he never got round to working up into finished illustrations. Others are from the era when people first began using little cameras in the shows. “The illustrators would take their rolls of film to be developed between shows. You were constantly running across Paris.”
Those original sketchbooks are part of the exhibition, under glass. Not for sale, they’re hugely evocative of the time and provide insight into the leap from instant impression to finished artwork. “The temptation of course, is always to keep adding. But that’s nearly always a mistake” he explains. “It’s a bit like knowing when to leave a party – slightly before you want to. The great thing about drawing,” he continues, “is that you can always improve. I don’t think I can do better than this – and I don’t often say that about my work.”
LISA ARMSTRONG Head of Fashion at The Telegraph
JOHN GALLIANO FOR CHRISTIAN DIOR COUTURE A/W 2000 Charcoal & pastel on coloured paper, signed & dated 2023 75 x 55 cms
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JOHN GALLIANO FOR CHRISTIAN DIOR COUTURE I A/W 1997 Charcoal on paper, signed & dated 2023 114 x 84 cms
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JOHN GALLIANO FOR CHRISTIAN DIOR COUTURE II A/W 1997 Charcoal & pastel on paper, signed & dated 2023 114 x 84 cms
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VALENTINO COUTURE A/W 1997 Charcoal & pastel on coloured paper, signed & dated 2023 75 x 55 cms
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MAISON VALENTINO I A/W 2023 Charcoal on coloured paper, signed & dated 2023 75 x 55 cms
ALEXANDER MCQUEEN FOR GIVENCHY COUTURE A/W 1997 Charcoal & pastel on coloured paper, signed & dated 2023 75 x 55 cms
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ERIN O’CONNOR IN GAULTIER PARIS A/W 2004 Charcoal & pastel on coloured paper, signed & dated 2023 76 x 53 cms
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YVES SAINT LAURENT COUTURE S/S 1998 Charcoal & pastel on coloured paper, signed & dated 2023 75 x 55 cms
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LINDA EVANGELISTA IN KARL LAGERFELD FOR CHANEL COUTURE A/W 2004 Charcoal on paper, signed & dated 2023 109 x 75 cms
CHRISTIAN LACROIX COUTURE A/W 1997 Charcoal & pastel on paper, signed & dated 2023 76 x 57 cms
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DANIEL ROSEBERRY FOR SCHIAPARELLI COUTURE I A/W 2022 Charcoal, pastel & gouache on paper, signed & dated 2023 76 x 59 cms
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DANIEL ROSEBERRY FOR SCHIAPARELLI COUTURE II A/W 2022 Charcoal, pastel & gouache on paper, signed & dated 2023 75 x 55 cms
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JOHN GALLIANO FOR CHRISTIAN DIOR COUTURE III A/W 1997 Charcoal on paper, signed & dated 2023 118 x 84 cms
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GAULTIER PARIS A/W 1999 Charcoal on paper, signed & dated 2023 75 x 55 cms
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CHRISTIAN LACROIX COUTURE 1996 Charcoal on coloured paper, signed & dated 2023 74 x 55 cms
MAISON VALENTINO II A/W 2023 Charcoal on coloured paper, signed & dated 2023 76 x 56 cms
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JOHN GALLIANO COUTURE A/W 1997 Charcoal on paper, signed & dated 2023 114 x 84 cms
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Special thanks to: Lisa Armstrong OBE, Head of Fashion The Telegraph Jacobus Snyman, Photographer info@jacobussnyman.com Karen Morgan, Exhibition Identity Designer morgan.radcliffe@btinternet.com
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“David Downton’s style is as light as air and as powerful as water” CHRISTIAN LACROIX, 2014