Man Of The Moment: Fashion Illustrator David Downton Reflects On His Illustrious Career

David Downton is amused. Forty years after the “death” of fashion illustration, his chosen medium is being embraced like never before. When he’s not being flown all over the world to draw Hollywood’s most famous women, he’s sitting down at his table in Claridge’s hotel in London where he is the artist in residence 52 nights of the year.

This doesn’t mean that his path to success wasn’t one long slog. After leaving art school, Downton accepted anything and everything in an attempt to get a break. From romantic fiction and cook books, to wine labels and even a sex manual, Downton would be sketching from morning till night in an attempt to make a living as an illustrator. He did work upon a few fashion illustrations, but his career as a fashion illustrator didn’t come until much later. His goal wasn’t to be successful, it was simply to be an illustrator that was working.

While it’s been his career for 20 years, Downton likes being slightly removed from the spotlight of the fashion world. He may wear a Dries Van Noten scarf with panache, have the perfect turn of phrase, and count some of fashion’s elite as his best friends, but this 55-year-old artist who sports a steely gaze and square jaw, is painfully self-deprecating and somewhat shy. He’d rather you call him an artist, than he have the audacity to label himself as such (even though three colleges, including the London College of Fashion have invited him to be one of their lecturers).

He came up the ranks when commercial artists and fine artists were seen as separate entities and never the twain would meet. He admits that had this success come earlier, he might not have been able to handle it. He didn’t see a fashion show until he was 37. But when he was invited by How to Spend It magazine to draw the Valentino fittings at the Ritz in Paris, everything “clicked.”

Downton seems to have been at his most confident when he was at school: He knew he had found his forte. At the time he had the paparazzi camped outside his front door, not for himself, but his brother who had been invited to play cricket for England, family and friends worried that Downton junior may suffer in the shadow of his famous sporting brother.

However, David said that he couldn’t think of anything worse than being crouched behind some wickets in the midday sun; he didn’t envy his brother in the slightest. He was happiest in his bedroom recreating movie posters by his own idol, American artist Bob Peak. It was only when he went to art college that his confidence took a bit of a knock, when he found that there were other students out there who were equally adept at putting pencils or paintbrush to paper. But maybe this is what encouraged him to knuckle down and be prepared to work for his success.

He is now celebrating 20 years in the business with the launch of his book—David Downton: Portraits of the World’s Most Stylish Women. It features more than 150 illustrations of women from the fields of film and fashion. But the images that lie within this glossy tome are only just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what Downton has achieved. He is the doyenne of fashion illustration.

There have been many highlights in the fashion illustrator’s career, but when it comes to shows, he says that Galliano’s Marchesa Casati couture show in 1998 was perhaps the most memorable. “It took place at the Opera Garnier in Paris, there was a tango orchestra, Maharajahs in diamonds serving champagne, and that was before the show began,” he says. “What followed was sensory overload and I don’t think that anyone who was there will ever forget it. It was the perfect illustration of the madness and beauty of couture.”

There’s no doubt that illustration fell out of favour somewhere along the line. So when we chat to him about his success and career, we want to know why he thinks he has become so popular once again. “Today, we are so saturated by photographic images that illustration looks increasingly refreshing,” says Downton. “Everyone thinks they can be a photographer today, in part thanks to the iPhone. You see them pointing everywhere! Although drawing pre-dates photography by centuries, right now I think it looks, in a strange way, more modern. I think illustration is more personal.”

This “madness and beauty” that he experienced at Galliano kept Downton enraptured. And like the child who once drew the movie posters, he’s still as star struck. When he’s invited to sketch A-listers like Cate Blanchett, Dita von Teese or Beyoncé, he panics, but then when they arrive, the nerves go and he just sits down and draws.

Yet, he admits that drawing couture also comes with its own challenges. “They are all difficult and easy at the same time,” says Downton. “An illustrator is essentially an observer, not a creator. Fashion illustration is really about soaking up someone else’s creativity and reinterpreting it. I Ioved YSL, Galliano for Dior and the maestro, Christian Lacroix. And today I especially love the art and artistry at Schiaparelli.”

When he’s not on the front row of a couture show, or sketching at Table 4 in The Fumoir bar in Claridge’s, the father of two is in his own studio in Brighton on the south coast of England. While he tries to make each illustration look as if it’s been done with ease, he’s been drawing and redrawing and tearing sheets of paper off his notepad until he’s pleased with he end result. “When I’m happy that the drawing is ‘right’, I put it on the light box and use it as the basis for the finished piece, it’s then that I start to think about elimination and deconstruction. If I leave out a hand or an eye or an ear (as I frequently do), it’s because I’ve worked out on my initial drawings where they should be and I feel confident about leaving them out. My mantra is to keep working until it looks effortless.”

What makes it a Downton drawing is that it needs to have: “Fluidity, observation and a sense of the moment. Above all, great drawing is what I strive for. It’s a lifelong quest.”

As he has had to switch his own style constantly in the early part of his career, in an attempt to suit the product he was working on, Downton says that it took him quite some time to develop the look that he now seems to be known for. In fact, he didn’t think he had a style until friends started sending him images of works that look as if they had been influenced by Downton. However, he still seems to find it flattering rather than offensive. “We can become very hung-up on the notion of ‘style’,” he says. “In my experience you don’t find a style, it finds you, eventually. I did enjoy the way [then Fashion Director of Elle] Ian R Webb once described it as “Contemporary Nostalgia.” That pretty well sums up what I’m trying to achieve.”

While he’s just finished a world tour to promote his new book, he shows no signs of slowing down. “I’m planning an exhibition for next year; I have on-going projects with Vanity Fair and Claridge’s; and I am going to start a new book [focusing on his 20 years of Paris couture shows] and I am going to have fun. As my great friend Carmen [Dell’ Orefice] would say, “If it’s not fun, it’s no fun!”

By Claire Turrell