This weekend some of the country’s leading fashion lights will make way for Port Eliot, the Earl and Countess of St Germans’s Cornish pile, for cross-disciplinary creativity of the most gleeful kind.
For the ninth year of ‘The UK’s most original, inspirational and downright decadent garden party,’ festival organiser Cathy St Germans (the Countess) invited Sarah Mower to create a fashion programme. The fashion journalist and BFC ambassador has delivered a sparkling roster of stylish names for festival goers to enjoy.
Step into The Wardrobe Department to see Ed Meadham and Ben Kirchhoff arranging and giving away floral headdresses with the help of their friend, milliner Nasir Mazhar. If you were taken with the fluoro polka-dot makeup at Louise Gray’s most recent show, don’t miss the designer’s face- and body-painting sessions in the same venue.
Leave your binoculars at home for Luella Bartley’s Bird-Spotting Expedition. She’s not searching for the feathered, flying kind, but for 'creative, witty, fearless, pioneering, curious, sharp, contrary, rebellious, nonchalantly wrong and above all, original' dressers. Bartley will also reprise her popular clothes-making session with Biba founder Barbara Hulanicki.
Bring any baubles that have seen better days to Vicki Sarge-Beamon’s Broken Jewels Masterclass. The Erickson Beamon co-founder will show attendees how to resurrect smashed necklaces, brooches and bracelets in altogether more thrilling incarnations.
You’ll have to set foot indoors to view Mary Katrantzou’s contribution. The designer visited Port Eliot earlier this summer and photographed the 1,000-year-old house’s chandeliers, paintings and furniture. She used the resulting images to create a new print for a triptych of dresses.
‘The inspiration was endless—I probably took about 1,000 photos, and there were so many treasures in every one,’ she said. ‘Every single room we did, every corner, was stunning. I told Cathy that we could create an army of dresses.’
Katrantzou said she found it impossible to focus on a favourite object in a home that combines centuries of antiques with hand-painted surfboards and papier-mâché elephants. ‘It’s that combination of things that are so personal and so historic that makes Port Eliot special.’
‘The dresses are more a canvas of different rooms and objects, collaged together to create the dresses, then engineered around the body. But again, it’s not enough.’ The Port Eliot Dresses will be installed in the house alongside selections from Katrantzou’s A/W ’11 collection.
The schedule of fantastical fashion events continues: Louise Wilson will reveal her Top Ten Fashion Books in conversation with Mower. Rubbish Magazine editor Jenny Dyson will offer blindfolded styling sessions and mount shows with her cast of fashion finger puppets. Stephen Jones will demonstrate How to Bake a Hat. And Justine Picardie will hold forth on Coco Chanel’s favourite flowers, camellias, at the Flower Show.
Then there are all of the authors, artists and musical acts on the line-up. Jay McInerney, Edmund De Waal, Caitlin Moran, Martin Scorcese and Jez Butterworth are all there, along with Saturday night headliners British Sea Power.
Frankly, a spot of Hip Hop Karaoke followed by a swim in the river sounds just right to us...
Port Eliot Festival, 21-24 July 2011. Visit porteliotfestival.com for more information.
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