RICHARD EDEN: Daphne Guinness, 56, is writing a memoir about her wild
This should be a best-seller: Daphne Guinness, the most colourful character in fashion, is putting pen to paper.
‘I am writing a memoir,’ confirms the brewing heiress, who was a muse to the late designer Karl Lagerfeld.
Guinness, 56, is the daughter of Lord Moyne and granddaughter of the late Diana Mitford.
‘My grandmother was the closest thing I had to a mother,’ she says of Mitford, the socialite who married Fascist leader Sir Oswald Mosley. ‘I loved her, and I have an uncanny resemblance to her physically.’
Guinness suffered at school because of her connection to Mosley, who was imprisoned after the outbreak of World War II.
Daphne Guinness, the most colourful character in fashion, is putting pen to paper on a memoir
Pictured: The 56-year-old’s grandmother Diana Mitford, who ‘was the closest thing I had to a mother’, and her husband Sir Oswald Mosley – a Fascist leader
‘I was pulled into a trap by my history teacher,’ the style icon says.
‘She announced to the class that I was related [to Mosley]. I was 13. I was bullied forever from that minute onwards.’ She spent childhood summers in Cadaques, Spain, with the artist Salvador Dali as a neighbour, but was brutally attacked at the age of five and taken hostage by Tony Baekeland, a violent schizophrenic, in her parents’ house in Kensington, west London.
As an adult, she experienced the tragic deaths of her close friends Isabella Blow, the celebrated stylist, in 2007, followed by designer Alexander McQueen four years later.
Formerly married to Greek shipping heir Spyros Niarchos, with whom she has three children, she later embarked on a passionate love affair with Bernard-Henri Lévy, the dashing philosopher who was still married to his third wife, Arielle Dombasle, an actress and singer.
Guinness received a musical mentorship from David Bowie and has just released her fourth album, to acclaim from critics. The album is called Sleep, but her memoir promises to be anything but sleepy.
