Daphne Guinness, heiress to the Guinness brewing fortune and a descendant of the Mitford family, has lived a life stranger than fiction. Speaking from the Caribbean, she recounts childhood memories of being kidnapped at age five, marrying a Greek shipping magnate at 19, and finding solace in music after the suicides of close friends Alexander McQueen and Isabella Blow.
Guinness's early years were marked by eccentricity and isolation. Her father, Jonathan Guinness, bought a former monastery in Spain near Salvador Dalí's home, where the family spent months without electricity. Her bed was beside the monastery's altar, and she played in caves with hornets. At 19, she was 'married off' to Spyros Niarchos, with whom she had three children before divorcing in 1999.
After her divorce, Guinness became a fixture in London's fashion world, modelling for and befriending McQueen and Blow. Both died by suicide, as did her brother Jasper in 2011. Guinness says she is 'gratefully post-suicide' after McQueen's death, noting that someone once asked her, 'What are you still doing here?' She avoids psychiatry, believing it worsened Blow's condition.
Music has become her outlet. Her sixth album includes a song called Solitaire, written after an aunt finally spoke about the kidnapping incident. Guinness says the process expelled a ghost. The song's lyrics reference crying for 'every psychopath' who entered her life. She acknowledges her 'very, very strange life' but insists she never felt like a victim.
Guinness also dismisses bizarre online conspiracy theories, including claims that she is in league with the devil and has 'two secret QAnon children'. She finds such fabrications amusing but notes that her real story is extraordinary enough without invention.
