David Downton: ‘Famous people are wonderful to draw, because they’re used to being looked at’

I meet David Downton at the newly opened restaurant in Claridge’s Hotel, restored to its art deco glory and suitably adjusted to today’s trend for quiet luxury. Downton, dressed in top-to-toe black – the signature uniform of fashionistas the world over, is sipping a double espresso. He looks a little tired and I know why. 

His most recent Instagram post shows a photograph of actress Kristin Scott Thomas, who was invited by Bafta to hold a private “evening of entertaining and insightful conversation” at the hotel last night. It must have been a late one. 

Scott Thomas is one of Downton’s favourite muses. “She has this extraordinary bone structure that is somehow a throwback, the architecture of her face is Garbo-esque,” he says. His portrait of her, along with many other black and white ink paintings of famous guests, hangs in the hotel’s Talking Heads gallery, adjacent to its celebrated ballroom.

“Famous people are wonderful to draw, because they’re used to being looked at, which is great for them and for me, because the more you pose, the less authentic it feels,” he explains. 

The fashion illustrator and portraitist, 64, has spent more than a quarter of a century capturing the spirit of some of the world’s most stylish celebrities, from actors and models to creatives and tastemakers. 

His list of female sitters is long and includes Catherine Deneuve, Iman, Kate Moss, Anjelica Huston, Sarah Jessica Parker and Faye Dunaway. A chronicler of fashion, he has worked commercially for Vanity Fair, Vogue, W Magazine, Harper’s Bazaar and The New York Times, as well as a slew of prestige brands including Chanel, Christian Dior and Tiffany & Co. 

Downton, who is Claridges’ artist-in-residence, dislikes having his own picture taken. “I was appalled when I had to be vaguely public,” he says without a hint of irony. 

He now accepts that having his portrait taken is part of the territory. He even has a pose, which is a bit like Auguste Rodin’s sculpture, The Thinker: head cupped in his left palm, right arm bent with right hand resting on a hip, legs crossed. 

He credits muse and friend Carmen Dell’Orefice, the ever-active 91-year-old model, with teaching him this picture-perfect position. 

“She said, ‘You have to make friends with the camera’ and that I had to create a gap between my side and my arm to avoid looking ‘like a bag of washing’.” 

You can see why celebrities love Downton; he has an easy, unpretentious manner and a mischievous sense of humour. 

When he painted Joan Collins for his first Claridge’s portrait (also in the gallery) they both got locked out of her suite. 

“It was very funny, not least because there was Joan, dripping in diamonds with a white towel twisted around her head, which is how she sat for me. It was very rom com,” he says, laughing. 

Another time, during Covid-19, when Collins and he were almost alone in the hotel, the actress appeared at breakfast ready for her portrait dressed in a totally over-the-top sparkling outfit. “Empty hotel, staff in masks, Joan in tonnes of sequins. What else?” 

Downton – ever gregarious and chatty – regales me with anecdotes from his back catalogue. 

There was the time that Sarah Jessica Parker, an American actress, graciously signed napkins for a group of gobsmacked female friends who were having a Sex and the City-style get-together. 

He shares his first memory of British model Erin O’Connor whose aristocratic beauty left him speechless (“I just couldn’t believe it. In life, she was what I was trying to do on paper”) and he recounts the time that the supermodel, Linda Evangelista, suggested he pick her Christian Dior couture outfit for his 2004 portrait of her for V magazine. 

He successfully completed this mission, albeit with a few hiccups. “I initially chose two extravagant dresses that the atelier declined to let go. I mentioned Linda and the magazine, but it had nothing to do with prestige. I didn’t realise that, because of the workmanship and size, they’d have to be transported by truck,” he explains. 

In the end, the staff suggested a dress that wouldn’t require a wooden crate and Evangelista was delighted with her outfit. “She told me it was just the one she would have chosen.” 

Downton has painted the model on countless occasions on the catwalk and for solo portraits. As is his wont, he includes just the essentials: her striking feline eyes, those perfectly arched eyebrows, that famous nose, her nonchalantly parted lips, all ineffably conveyed through an economy of brushstrokes.

Downton explains that it’s the body–garment synergy that has always interested him. Not high fashion languidly draped on a hanger or on a mannequin. “To me, it’s like electricity when that outfit is worn on a catwalk. It’s the bigger picture, the atmosphere of drama and excitement,” he elucidates. 

Downton, who lives in Sussex, is in London to open his solo exhibition at Kensington’s Gray M.C.A exhibition space, which features new energetic works inspired by the hundreds of sketches he drew at Paris’ haute couture shows over a 25 year period, focusing especially on key looks by Givenchy, Dior, Jean Paul Gaultier and Yves Saint Laurent from the mid to late 1990s. The show, Théâtre de la Mode, which consists primarily of charcoal drawings – some over a metre tall – spotlights the artist’s passion for the spectacle of fashion; its thrills and spills, but also the way cut, draping and anatomy flow into one.

“I entered the world of fashion at an exciting time and quite by chance,” he says. “There are moments that are seared in my memory forever, like watching John Galliano’s [autumn winter 1997] catwalk show at the Parc de Bagatelle, meeting Mr Valentino and his pugs, and attending a fitting in Christian Lacroix’s Atelier. Modelling his design, Linda [Evangelista] appeared to float magically across the room, as though she were levitating,” he says. 

Evangelista features in the exhibition, as does Erin O’Connor, though other than these two muses, who “can’t be half drawn”, he wasn’t focused on absolute likeness. 

The experience of working with no constraints was clearly empowering. He says: “I found it completely liberating and energising.  I had no boss. I just did what I wanted to do. Although I don’t work commercially as much as I used to, I was in that area for a long time, where it’s just the job that matters, not your emotions. If only one person can be happy, it has to be the client.” 

I wonder, then, if Théâtre de la Mode is his proudest moment as an artist. “Well, there have been a few highlights,” he says, smiling. “I drew Cate Blanchett for the cover of Vogue Australia [ September 2009] and the issue sold faster than any other in Vogue Australia’s history. It also won an award,” he says. “The prevailing thought at that time was that an illustration would stunt sales, not increase them.”  

Downton, polite and gentlemanly, would never dish the dirt on any of his high-profile subjects. But this memory hits a nerve because he interprets it as his chosen medium being dismissed as inferior to other art forms. 

He acknowledges there’s been progress, but he’s clearly had his fair share of disparaging remarks. “I remember showing [former editor of British Vogue] Alexandra Shulman the Blanchett cover, hoping she’d see the potential. She was adamant that she’d always choose a photograph over an illustration on the cover.” 

Was that disappointing? I ask. “Very”, he says, lowering his voice, suggesting a hint of lingering exasperation. Of course, it’s only natural for an artist to champion their chosen field, but he leaves it there. 

To conclude, I want to know if there is anyone left on his bucket list to sketch. He interrupts before I’ve finished the question. “Tilda Swinton,” he says determinedly. “She’s a living drawing. I could probably just tilt the ink out and it would make Tilda on the paper.” 

He’s not joking, there’s an ease to his portraits that seems to sway towards poetry, and that should be right up Swinton’s street. Perhaps his people could call her people. Who knows how these glamorous connections come about, but it’s magical when they do.