EXCLUSIVE! Giles spills on Ungaro!
Grazia Daily had the pleasure of catching up with the lovely 
Giles  Deacon this morning at a brunch to celebrate the launch of the 11th  
GOLD by Giles collection for 
New Look (check back on the  site tomorrow, for the full lowdown). Naturally, though, as well as  talking about his collaboration with the high street store, we also got  him to exclusively spill the beans on his highly-anticipated debut  collection for 
Ungaro. 
It’s been impossible to think of 
Ungaro  recently without thinking about 
Lindsay Lohan’s 
disastrous  tenure as Artistic Director for the brand, when she famously worked  alongside 
Estrella Archs for one season in 2009, producing a  collection that is best remembered for the inclusion of heart-shaped  nipple tassels. 
Giles took over at 
Ungaro after Lohan and  Archs’ departures, which in many ways was the climax of five unsettled  years at the Parisian couture house following Emanuel Ungaro’s  retirement in 2005. His appointment was greeted with much approval,  partly because everyone LOVES Giles, and partly because his  unapologetically feminine style is the perfect modern update of 
Emanuel  Ungaro's own.  
And clearly no one is more excited than Mr  Deacon himself. ‘Ungaro is one of the last three Houses on the Avenue  Montaigne’ [the premier address for high fashion in Paris] ‘and I felt I  wanted to bring back this feeling of vivaciousness, of Frenchness, of  really sexy clothing that’s got that Ungaro thing about it’.
Sounds  good to us. And Giles will not be dealing with the task of reviving the  beleaguered couture house alone. He has 'a good team on board and a  great factory,' and just as thrillingly, he is also continuing his  long-term collaboration with uber-stylist (and his former girlfriend); 
Katie  Grand, who he claims is 'involved in it as well’. 
He also  said that he hoped his collection for 
Ungaro would bring back a  ‘quality...which I think it had kind of lost - for lots of reasons that  have gone on over the last five years that we’re all very aware of. And  amused by in various cases’.  
The name 
Lindsay Lohan  still hangs around the label of 
Ungaro like a bad celebrity  fragrance, so did Giles find any trace of her at Ungaro HQ? An  unfinished sketch for a SCRAM bracelet cover, perhaps? ‘I didn’t find  one, no!’ he told us. ‘No hair extensions, no!’ 
Asked whether  his appointment at 
Ungaro would have come about at all had  Lindsay still had her role as Artistic Director, Giles charmingly  replied by saying ‘I think there would have been some conflicting  interests, between myself and Lindsay’.
 Giles said that the inspiration behind his first collection had come  in part from the 
Ungaro archive, telling us that ‘they [Ungaro]  have got an amazing photographic, fabric and collection archive so I’ve  spent quite a bit of time getting my head into all of that’ He explained  that there are ‘some amazing pieces’ as well as ‘some hysterical  pieces’.
Obviously, we asked him what his favourite piece in the archive was,  and he told us that ‘there were some really beautiful cut dresses that  were made exquisitely by the atelier. Beaded lace numbers, which look  very, very simple, but they’re all made out of one piece. The work on  them is incredible. Some of the pieces were, he said, from ‘the early  90’s’ and some ‘from mister Ungaro’s last collection which was in about  2002’. 
So does this mean we can expect lots of lace from 
Giles  at 
Ungaro? Well, ‘there’s all of the 
Ungaro staples’ he  promises, which will be ‘reinterpreted in a kind of modern Giles way’.  Yay! 
Giles shows his debut collection for 
Ungaro  in Paris on Monday 4th October. Of course we’ll be there, so check back  here then for our review of his debut collection for the label.
 - Alex Butt