Fashion illustrator David Downton: ‘Have I painted any monsters? Nobody is a monster with me’

After 50 years of professional illustration, and 25 spent on fashion's front line – where he made a living sketching shows for publications including the New York Times and the Financial Times – David Downton, 64, is showing his debut solo exhibition, Théâtre de la Mode.

“I had planned for it to be retrospective,” Downton says, from an airy study in his home in Lewes, East Sussex. “But it has ended up being entirely new works I did over the summer, all based on sketches I had started, but never completed.”

More than 25 works now hang in the Gray M.C.A Gallery, at Cromwell Place, and are some of the biggest Downton has ever produced. All come in his signature charcoal and watercolour brushed whimsy, and have benefitted from not being bound to specific commission ("or being swapped out for a Hyundai ad at the last minute," he quips).

“My position is a bit like being an actor — you get asked to do what you did the last time. For this, I was let off the leash, I had no client. I had a deadline, yes, but I didn’t have anyone to please but me,” he says.

His focus: the fantasy and frivolity of the fashion business. This was no better epitomised, in Downton's opinion, than by outrageous Paris Fashion Week collections at the turn of the century, when he stepped off the Eurostar fresh-faced. “The works are based off of the shows that really stuck with me, inspired by uncompleted sketches. A lot of them were early: 1997, 1998. I was new, and I was in Narnia. I arrived the same year John Galliano went to Dior and Alexander McQueen went to Givenchy, which was a lot like pulling two grenades. Fashion prior to that was in a doldrum phase, and it enlivened everything,” he says.

There, he was introduced to a rising set of top models. “The supermodels were still around but scattered and a new generation was coming up. I met my friend Karen Elson, Alek Wek. They were great personalities. They were celebrated for their individuality. I first saw Erin [O’Connor], who is a friend of mine, on the catwalk, and I said to the person next to me — who the hell is that? She looked in life like everything I wanted to do on paper. God had designed her to be drawn.”

How do models compare today? “There is no comparison,” he says, definitively. “After that came the troops of models all looking similar.”

Now, Downton is best known for immortalising celebrities on the walls of Claridge’s, as their artist-in-residence since September 2011. “I draw people who have a story with the hotel, it’s not just that they are famous and staying there, because there’s always someone staying there: Arnold Schwarzenegger’s there at the moment,” he says.

It’s one heck of a gig. “One of the few things that is as good as it sounds,” he says. “I always say, I’d love to live in London, but I want to be rich. Not just have a bit of money, I want to be rich. And at Claridge's I am rich, one or two days a week.”

As for famous faces, there have been plenty. “Joan Collins, who I have drawn a lot, is great — she wore the Claridge's robe, put a towel on her head, and borrowed diamonds. Sarah Jessica Parker… she said, can I watch television? I said sure. It’s a nice gentle portrait. Dita Von Teese, Gwendoline Christie.”

Have you painted any monsters? "Nobody is a monster with me,” he says. “And I’ll tell you why — I know more than they do about drawing. Most of those people are photographed to death, and they know as much, or more, than the photographer. With me everyone is very cooperative. I have the power. Because I’m doing the drawing.”

Théâtre de la Mode is open 15 - 26 November 2023, Cromwell Place SW7