Giles Deacon: My name is Giles Deacon, we' re here at the V& A in the Raphael room on the day of our Fashion in Motion.
We kind of decided it to be a...I suppose almost a retrospective; which always sounds like a lofty word but it pretty much is that - favourite pieces of the last six years.
Today has been amazing actually at the V& A, its been a real honour for me to come into a room that when I was at St Martins, exactly 20 years ago, I used to come in here and draw an awful lot, in this very room. So to be in here 20 years later and doing a retrospective of your favourite pieces of the last six years of your work is incredibly flattering to be asked to come and do and I’ m really delighted to be doing it.
The work today is since setting up my own label. I have worked for other houses previously to that: Gucci, Jean Charles De Castelbajac and Bottega Beniton in Italy so this is all under my ' eponymous line' the official term is.
We have shown 60 looks today, out of - when we worked it out there was just over 700 to choose from. There were a couple of pieces that I would have liked but unfortunately they were way too dead and would require two months work to get them made, which is something we must do because they are important pieces. But it was really good fun going through all the collections to see things that we thought hadn' t been so successful from a kind of technical level at the time and really standing up on their own ' X' amount of years later, which is kind of what I have always really kind of wanted.
Within the work that I do is that the pieces, sure they are in a term of fashion time, but they are also timeless so people can lock them away for 20 years and get them out and they are then super interesting. So I really like that. We work predominantly in lots of heavy silks which we hand print and then embellish ourselves and we do lots of fabric developments in-house, and then we elaborate upon that and send them off to people to then develop further or to be produced into manufacturable fabrics. The whole development is all in-house which is a really nice way of working as opposed to going and buying fabrics from the shelf as such.
That was an amazing piece; that was done working with Stephen Jones who' s been a long-time friend and collaborator, and we had this really beautiful strict corset in a brown heavy silk and then all of these plastic beak-like sequins coming off it. When Stephen saw it he was like I know exactly what should go with this and did a sketch of this kind of collar and these amazing long pheasant feathers and put them all the way around and it has the most extraordinary floaty movement and then all this kind of strict and spiky aggression. Its a really nice and interesting piece I think.
We were having a meeting about what we thought it should be and drawing all these shapes and Stephen jumps up in his own inimitable and beautiful way and goes ' its a Pacman' , and I need no encouragement and say ' brilliant, Pacman it is' . So there it is, and we haven' t been sued by Namco yet though.
Interviewer: Have you had any feed back at all?
Everybody thought it was rubbish! No the feedback we have had has been incredible. One of the most interesting things about doing an event that' s essentially open to the public as opposed to shows where it' s press and buyer-orientated. It's people coming along with a real passion for fashion and a passion for design and a passion for art. I think in today's society it's something really interesting not about celebrities, which is a nice thing - they are important part of our industry but this is your hardcore people who love design and fashion.
