Getting Dressed: Peter Camp
Architect Peter Camp adores the buildings – and clothes – of India
The first time I saw Peter Camp was a few years ago at the Jaipur Literature Festival, where he was doing a course in photography.
Immaculately dressed in jodhpurs with an Indian waistcoat, he looked so elegant and at home in the outfit that I decided he must be Indian royalty of some sort.
He turned out to be an English architect with a passion for theatrical clothing. He is also keen on Austrian loden jackets, with Tyrolean accessories, from one of the oldest clothes shops in Vienna, Loden-plankl – straight out of The Sound of Music. When he’s in his immaculate white shirt, waistcoat, trousers and Panama, he looks just like a dapper member of the Riviera Set in the 1930s.
Or he can look as if he’s just stepped out of a cornfield in Far from the Madding Crowd, in stout braces and tweed trousers. These last two outfits of his come from the wonderful tailors Darcy Clothing in Lewes, Sussex, who make perfect reproductions of vintage fashions – which customers, including Camp, often find more comfortable than modern cuts.
Camp’s outfit will almost always include a waistcoat: ‘Hard to beat, whether it be Indian or Western style – keeps the body warm while allowing for maximum manoeuvrability.’ He likes some sort of neck covering – ‘I always carry a scarf or cravat of some sort, whatever the occasion; it works every time.’ Some of his most exotic ones come from Joss Graham’s Aladdin’s cave of Indian textiles in London.
Camp likes clothes to make a statement, to be noticeable and to make the onlooker feel good. This could be because he is a second son and spent his growing years wearing his older brother’s cast-offs; everything except shoes. ‘He was obviously hard on shoes because every September I got new ones.’ He is still keen on good shoes, and though he spends a lot on them – buying some of his at Tod’s – he says it is worth it: ‘A good pair of shoes can last 20 years, which in the end is more economical than buying cheaper ones that need replacing every year.’ As a student, he graduated, he says, from ‘humble jumble’ to shopping at the wonderful vintage/antique shop at 282 Portobello Road, where he bought his first dinner jacket. His family lived in Sussex, near Glyndebourne – so he actually needed one. Camp studied architecture and met his beautiful Texan artist wife, Katherine Virgils, a graduate of the Royal College of Art, in 1986, when they lived opposite each other in the same mews in Notting Hill. They married three years later but not before discovering India together. Camp, returning from a visit to his brother in Australia, broke his journey home in Delhi. Virgils flew out to meet him, and India became part of their own story. They have both since worked on many projects there. Virgils became artist in residence in Jodhpur at the request of HH Gaj Singh, the state’s Maharaja and keen supporter of art and music. She has exhibited paintings in India, New York and London, inspired by yogic art. She is currently working on a series of paintings in support of Rajasthani musicians. Camp has designed and restored several buildings in India, including the romantic 14th-century desert fort of Pokaran, now a beautiful hotel.
Camp is the only person I have ever met who has christened a street in London. In his redevelopment of an old garage site in Kennington some years ago, a small unnamed lane was left. Camp called it Silk Mews and sited his new office there – though it took more than one uncomfortable year for the address to be registered and for services to be connected.
Kennington is also the site of one of his most dramatic projects. In 1960, Max Bygraves sang Fings Ain’t Wot They Used to Be in which the lyrics lament, ‘They’ve changed our local palais into a bowling alley…’
Peter Camp has done the exact opposite. He has turned a disused bowling alley and adjoining men’s drinking club into a palace – well, not quite, but into a family house that measures 45 yards from front to back door.
Architecture is a sedentary job and Camp plays tennis (in non-coronavirus times) and walks for exercise. He (again, in ‘normal’ times) has his hair cut by the couple’s friend and hairdresser Patricia Millbourn, in her kitchen. Other friends and customers include Maggie Smith and Michael Heseltine.
At the time our photograph was taken, he had not been able to make an appointment for some weeks!