MY LIFE, MY STYLE
At home with Dior’s Sydney Finch
Valli who was at Ungaro, and I started working with him.’ She also spent seven years as an advisor on special projects for Miuccia Prada. ‘I was always fascinated by her, because she is another woman who marches to the beat of her own drum.’
Finch took up her current role after a serendipitous meeting with Dior’s head of worldwide communications, Olivier Bialobos, on a trip to Morocco. ‘Dior is a dream; it’s such a beautiful, classic, historic French house, and the longer I work for them, the more I realise how rich its history is.’ Over the past seven years she has collaborated with a number of creative directors, from John Galliano to Raf Simons, and most recently Maria Grazia Chiuri, who captured the zeitgeist with her first collection for summer 2017, which featured the renowned ‘We Should All Be Feminists’ T-shirt.
‘I wouldn’t say it’s a politicised house, but it’s so inspiring to work for two women, Victoire de Castellane [who designs Dior’s jewellery] and now Maria Grazia, who are grown-up, they have children, they have a career and they have a point of view,’ Finch says. ‘Fashion is a reflection of the time we live in, and how we dress is an expression of how we want to live our lives,’ she continues. ‘That is what is so great about Maria Grazia – she’s brought the dialogue into fashion in a very real way.’
Born and raised in New York, Finch was in fact named after the city where her parents met. As a child, her mother, who was Australian, would take her and her brother on annual holidays to Sydney, where life centred around the beach and surfing. ‘I think being a dual citizen has given me this split fashion personality that correlates directly to how I’ve lived: one very sophisticated existence in New York City, and a more bohemian beach life in Sydney,’ she says. ‘It’s funny, because that still comes through today; my daughter always says to me, “I can tell when you’ve been in Los Angeles Mummy, your Los Angeles wardrobe is so different to your London one.” I definitely have a more restrained style that’s black and serious, and then I have this very colourful collection
that’s probably closer to my true self.’
Despite her position at Dior, Finch says she is ‘not a big brand person’, but loves discovering new labels that resonate with her more bohemian side, including Soler and Duro Olowu. ‘I suppose I tend to mix high and low like every woman does now. I never wear one straight Dior look: I pair the pieces with a Zara top or fun shoes.’ Today is a case in point – she is impeccably dressed in white Converse, skinny Dior jeans and a soft grey T-shirt by Isabel Marant.
‘I’ve worked for these beautiful houses, but I do find myself, almost like a magpie, shopping for things off the beaten track,’ Finch continues. She buys a lot of vintage clothes from stores around the globe, from Rellik in London to Venice Vintage Paradise and Decades in LA. ‘They’re not necessarily super-expensive items; some of my favourites were just $20!’ Similarly, the unusual mix of furniture in the house, including elaborate chandeliers and burnished mirrors, has come from years of trawling markets like Alfies Antiques and Clignancourt fleamarket in Paris.
Finch admits that she is particularly attracted to vintage jewellery and she is always on the lookout for unique pieces, such as a pair of beautiful 18th-century diamond earrings she fell in love with on a recent trip to Lisbon. She is also an avid collector of photography, as a quick tour of her house
reveals. In her bathroom alone is a Brigitte Lacombe, a self-portrait of her friend Tierney Gearon that takes up an entire wall, and a picture taken by the model Jacquetta Wheeler. Elsewhere hang photographs by Lartigue, Weegee and Terry O’Neill, plus a set of shots from a portrait session of Sydney and Oona, shot by Lord Snowdon. ‘I never really liked the photos themselves, but I thought it was interesting to frame the contact sheets where you can see he’s marked his preferences.’
But the majority of the images on the walls show women photographed by other women. ‘I’ve always gone to all-women schools and I went to an all-women college at Columbia – women’s issues have always been close to my heart. I don’t really have a serious collection, nothing is museumworthy, but I do think collections are about what you love and they’re enriched by your own passion.’