The magazine Pourquoi Pas? (Tony Cenicola/The New York Times)
I first met David Downton maybe five years ago at a showing of his drawings in Paris. His subject was Erin OConnor. You might say David, who is English, has an obsession with Erins long neck and lines. Well, she was meant for charcoal. Shortly after that meeting, I asked him to sketch a Dior couture dress in the studio, for a story about the making of a collection. Our link then and now was our admiration for the work of Joe Eula, and a fascination with the man. I got to know Joe well and in the last years of his life we worked together on a number of illustrated articles for the Times, including one about the denizens of the back track at Belmont. This past January, at the Dior show, David told me he was planning to bring out a magazine of fashion illustration and asked if Id write something about Joe. Issue #1 of Pourquoi Pas? has drawings by Rene Gruau, Eula, Richard Gray, Jason Brooks, with illustrations by David of Amanda Harlech, Jade Parfitt, and Carmen Dell Orefice. Among the writers contributing are Sarah Mower, Tony Glenville and Tim Blanks. The 72-page magazine is on heavy stock, costs about $40, and is available at pqpmagazine.com. David and I chatted by phone a few days ago.
CH: So how did Pourquoi Pas? come about?
DD: I thought about Vanity, obviously, and Gazette du Bon Ton. I really began thinking, Wouldnt it be great? Photography is everywhere. It has just dominated. Its almost strangled the life out of drawing in mainstream magazines. You can still see fashion illustrationon club flyers, in galleries, on leaflets, occasionally in advertising. But what you dont really see is the classic thing of drawing used in conjunction with photography in those high-end magazines. I just felt like waving the flag.
Q: Did you think youd do a one-shot?
A: My initial thought was to do two issues a year for three years, so I could build up the magazine. I wanted a magazine and not an illustrators directory or an album of drawings. I wanted it to have a design. And I didnt want advertising, which is possibly the stupidest thing ever. But I knew that whoever advertised in it would instantly change the tone of the magazine. I thought, For once, this is my thing. I generally react to what people want me to do. You wag the tail when the phone rings. But this kind of thing is like being an art director. It was so exciting to be in charge. Naturally [laughs], I didnt think it through.
Q: So how did you finance it?
A: Entirely out of my pocket. Lucky Im loaded, I say! I had my best year ever, doing the magazine. But I wouldnt fund it again by myself.
A sketch of the model Erin O’Connor in an embroidered gown with obelisk sleeves. (David Downton)
Q: How many copies did you print?
A: We did 1,500. We sold 1,000 in the first three and a half weeks. The V & A sold out and reordered 200.
Q: You know, I was thinking how Eula used to accompany Eugenia Sheppard to the shows in Paris and sketchthe immediacy and intimacy of his paper and pencil. And, of course, now we have sites like the Sartorialist, which does such a good job documenting the fashion scene and what people wear. But how cool would it be to have an entirely illustrated fashion blogreally using the point of view of the illustrator and obviously in reverse of the way everything is done digitally.
A: Its never been a better time to be a fashion illustrator. Because, in fact, there is no universal style; theres no prescribed way of working today. At one time there was a kind of over-arching style. When Gruau was drawing, everybody kind of drew like him. He put a stamp on an era, and there is no stamp on now. I do think the best ever at what you might call reportagegoing behind enemy lines, so to speakis Kenneth Paul Block of Womens Wear. He used the space well and the drawings are all right. Theyre anatomically right, which is the starting point. But he has exaggerated them, pulled them out, made them dynamic. He also put a stamp on an era, because everybody drew like him, including Steven Meisel.
Q: I suppose I just like the idea of one persons point of view, a kind of narrative in drawings. And if you have access to the studios and backstage
A: I agree. Because even the best photographers at the shows are in a holding pen. Theyre all taking the same picture. Backstage has changed so much in the last 10 years. Backstage is now just a prelude to the performance. I always think it must be dreadful for the designers. Theyve got cameras and TV crews pointed at them, and its more and more and more. Look at the backstage at Dior. There isnt a cigarette paper you can get between the TV crews.
Q: When in your opinion was the last good illustration magazine?
A: In the 80s, Anna Piaggi did Vanity. Antonio did most of the covers. His drawings look amazing.
Q: Its odd, though, that the quality of art direction seemed to seriously slip in the 80s.
A: I think thats one of the great progresses weve made recently. If you look back to Brodovitchwhich everybody doesyou kind of feel, Well, weve learned nothing. Brodovitch had it all sorted out, then. But I do think that Fabien Baron, coming along when he did, is very much of that ilk. Theres probably a 40-year gap between the times when weve talked about art directors. Im sure there will be people who will disagree.
Q: Magazines used to have a different attitude toward an illustrator or a photographers original work. A lot of pictures were lost or casually given away to people. What about Rene Gruau? Was he more careful about preserving his work?
A: I think he was much more careful but, also, he was celebrated from the beginning of Dior. He was a friend of Christian Diors and he went in after the war and he illustrated the first collection. By then, he was in his thirties and had been down all the blind alleys. And it was a postwar thingwith that great optimism of the New Look and all the stuff we now mythologize. Its Gruau who is the poet of the New Look, much more for me than any of the photographers. His sort of grand manner and flourish just sort of chimed with the style.
But its puzzled me that everybody in France who knows of Gruau doesnt also know Bouche or Eric. And Ive come to the conclusion that its because Gruau worked way beyond the confines of fashion illustration. He got out of the box, and the box was those amazing magazines. If you looked in Vogue, youd see 10 pages of Eric, who worked for 30 years, and gradually it would sink in that he was a Vogue artist. But Gruau was a poster artist, he was a fine artist. He did drawings for the Lido. He kind of went into the national psyche. As great as those other illustrators were, they didnt beyond the relatively few people who read fashion magazines. Gruau just saw the worth. Supposedly he was driven around in a Rolls Royce with a G on it. He was grander than the designers.
Q: Whats your background? How did you start?
A: I went to Canterbury. I was a very bad student because I was a good artistor, so I thought. I was encouraged as a child to believe I was really great, and I really believed that until I got to college and saw that everybody could do what I could do. It was a terrible moment! [laughs] That took me into a slow decline. I turned petulant. As we say over here, I threw my toys out of the pram! In the end, though, it served me well. I did 10 years as a jobbing illustrator. I just took anything that anyone asked me to do. I didnt have a focuscertainly nothing to do with fashion. I did kids books, I did a sex manual, I did romantic fiction, menu cards, album sleeves. The lowest point was I used to illustrate math textbooks.
Q: And when did you start drawing fashion?
A: In 1996, I did something for the Financial Times. And then the next week they said, Oh, do you want to go to Paris and do the couture shows? I had never seen a fashion show, but I did get the small printpaid trip to Paris. And so I just went. The first thing I saw was a Versace couture show at the Ritz. It was the Kate-Linda-Naomi moment. I couldnt believe any of it. I had to draw Valentino at the Ritz. I just saw it as hilarious and wonderful. I didnt understand the codes. But now I see it as a few days in the kingdom of indulgence with a pass that they take away when you leave.