Michael Howells
Master of illusion who designed the sets for ITV’S Victoria and fashion extravaganzas for Galliano
MICHAEL HOWELLS, who has died aged 61, was an award-winning production designer who ranged across fashion, film, ballet, theatre and television; Stephen Fry compared his work in “range, scope, vivacity and imagination” to that of Cecil Beaton, but observed that “Michael is so much less of a bitch.”
Howells was a master of illusion and connoisseur of elegance, with a razor-sharp wit and absolute attention to detail. He worked on more than 20 films, from Stephen Fry’s Bright Young Things (2003) and Emma Thompson’s Nanny Mcphee (2005) to Douglas Mcgrath’s Emma (1996), starring Gwyneth Paltrow, and Sally Potter’s Orlando (1992) with Tilda Swinton.
Most recently he created the sets for the ITV series Victoria (2016), for which he built a wing of Buckingham Palace in an aircraft hangar near Leeds, filling it with sumptuous looking carpets and wall hangings, chandeliers, antiques, pictures and flowers. “We had all the carpets printed, based on the real carpets at the palace,” Howells recalled. “We had all the chandeliers made in the Czech Republic, all the furniture made in Malaysia. We used 3,500 square feet of gold leaf while filming and burned 12,000 candles.”
In the fashion world he was instrumental, with designers such as John Galliano at Christian Dior, in redefining the fashion show as theatrical extravaganza. His own favourite was Galliano’s 1998/99 “Pocahontas meets Elizabeth I” show, staged in Paris at the Gare d’austerlitz.
Howells had been inspired by a postcard he had once seen of a 19th century train crash in which the steam train, which had overshot the platform, had gone through the back of the station and fallen down into the street. For the show, Howells recalled, “we had an entire steam train belching blue smoke come crashing through a wall with Pocahontas strapped to the front. It was one of the bigger opening numbers I have done.”
Howells revelled in colour and luxury, often to the point of excess. Once when he was working in Spain a colleague asked him how good he was at Spanish. “‘Mas lentequelles por favor’ [more sequins please] is all I need,” came the reply.
Michael Howells was born on January 13 1957 at Droxford, Hampshire, to Victor and Mollie Howells. When he was six months old the family moved to Malawi and when he was six they moved to New Zealand; his earliest memories were of sailing back and forth from New Zealand to England, watching films projected on to white sheets on the deck. Returning to England, the family settled at Stroud, Gloucestershire.
His career as a set designer was inspired at an early age by an item on Blue Peter. “I remember it vividly,” he recalled, “I saw [production designer] Eileen Diss on the programme, showing her designs for The Count of Monte Cristo, and she explained how it went from idea to model to thing. It was then I realised ‘I want to do that’.”
His interest was encouraged by his parents. When he was about 10, his father bought him a large dolls house and he proceeded to design and decorate the interior, trying out many different styles.
During his time at Marling Grammar School, Howells designed sets and made props for school plays. While there he completed a Constance Spry correspondence course in floristry and as a result was commissioned by several brides to make their wedding bouquets. Howells enjoyed life in Gloucestershire, entering flowerarranging competitions at local fetes and disappointing members of local Women’s Institutes when he kept winning.
In later life he declared that if he ever won the lottery he would devote the proceeds to restoring village halls round the country.
After his A-levels, Howells did a year’s art foundation course at Cheltenham Art College, and then studied at Camberwell School of Art and Design.
His first major design job was as assistant art director on Peter Greenaway’s lusciously filmed 1989 crime drama The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, and by the late 1990s he was production designer for big budget films including Ever After: A Cinderella Story (1998), An Ideal Husband and Miss Julie (both 1999).
Of his collaboration with Galliano, Howells remarked: “With a film or theatre you have the script, with ballet there is the music, with [Galliano] you would have a line of poetry, a painting or photograph, and that would be the only inspiration you would work from.”
His spectaculars for the fashion designer included mise-en-scènes with paper butterflies exploding over the Palais Garnier in Paris, cabarets, film sets and boudoirs. In 2007 Howells created an oversized Dior boudoir for Galliano’s Madame Butterfly-inspired haute couture show.
“We’ve always tried to make it feel like: You don’t just go see a show,” Howells was quoted as saying in Dana Thomas’s Gods And Kings: The Rise and Fall of Alexander Mcqueen and John Galliano, “you actually enter into this world, this sort of 20 minutes or hour, whatever, that time you’re there that you’re enveloped by the perfume, you’re enveloped by the music, and the touch, and the sound, and the taste. The whole idea is that you yourself actually become part of the performance.”
Howells worked with Galliano and the photographer Nick Knight on the Dior advertising campaigns, and with Mario Testino to create Christopher Bailey’s Burberry campaigns. He also did fashion shows for Alexander Mcqueen, Anya Hindmarch, Mulberry and Christian Lacroix and contributed evocative settings for Vogue fashion shoots for more than 25 years.
In 2007 he won the inaugural Isabella Blow award for fashion creator of the year.
A striking and elegant 6ft 7in, Howells enhanced the impressive overall effect with a penchant for three-piece Savile Row suits and long, pointed shoes. Despite his size, he was a good dancer, with a natural grace, who would often show the models at catwalk shows how it should be done.
On stage he worked closely with the contemporary dance company DV8 and the Ballet Rambert, where he was an associate designer. Among other projects, in 2005 he collaborated on Constant Speed (Sadler’s Wells), Mark Baldwin’s ballet based on scientific theory and set to music by Franz Lehar. In 2012 he created the costumes for Ed Hall’s production of Chariots of Fire, which premiered in Hampstead Theatre and transferred to the Gielgud Theatre.
Howells’s other commissions ranged from Kate Moss’s 2004 “Beautiful and the Damned” 30th birthday party, to Gwen Stefani music videos and museum exhibitions including an award-winning design for “Hats, an Anthology” (2009), a collaboration between the V&A and the milliner Stephen Jones, and “Hair by Sam Mcknight” (2006), a major exhibition at Somerset House celebrating the famous stylist’s career.
Every summer Howells would break his schedule to be the resident creative director at the Port Eliot festival in Cornwall, a position he held until 2017.
Michael Howells was unmarried.
Michael Howells, born January 1 1957, died July 19 2018