Daphne Guinness, The Book

Daphne Guinness, on sale October 17th.

“Her life is a stage. Funerals or balls, she always makes a performance,” said Valentino when describing the heiress and couture enthusiast, Daphne Guinness. “But behind the extraordinary looks is the sweetest and most tender human being”. Now, Guinness, who has enabled the world to vicariously experience the pleasures of couture through her unwavering appetite for the art form, has co-authored a new book of which her decadent life – referred to by friend and art historian John Richardson as “her own masterpiece” – is the subject.

Titled simply Daphne Guinness, the publication is illustrated with a photo album’s worth of images and explores both her public persona – the fashion collaborations and style characteristics she is famous for – as well as her private one, examining the friendships Guinness has forged with designers including Valentino, Phillip Treacy, Tom Ford and Karl Lagerfeld. And then of course there is the late Alexander McQueen. He considered the fashion icon an indispensable muse. After he died, she praised him for his "gigantic personality". “He was a colossus, a titan,” she said. “And he had the biggest heart”.