Designer (London, UK)
Patrick Kinmonth is an Anglo Irish artist, writer and designer. Leaving Oxford University at the age of 20 with a first class degree in English Literature and Language, he began life as a painter. Meanwhile he has pursued his careers in both fashion and theatre. In the former sphere he has collaborated extensively as a stylist and set designer, working most notably for Burberry, Gucci, Calvin Klein, Valentino, Givenchy and Jean Paul Gaultier for whom he has designed shops in Japan, Missoni for whom he has created fabric collections, Pirelli for whom he created the sets and scenarios for the 2001 calendar. As an art director and stylist his work has appeared in many publications from Vogue to Visionaire.
As a designer of sets and costumes for ballet, theatre and opera, his career began in 1992 with scenery adapted from his paintings for David Bintley’s Ballet Tombeaux for the Royal Ballet Covent Garden and in opera Kata Kabanova for the Canadian Opera Company with Robert Carsen in 1993. Designs for The Sleeping Beauty for Scottish Ballet and other productions followed; Handel’s Semele at the English National Opera, Die Zauberflote in Aix, Lyon and Vienna, and Janacek’s Jenufa in Ghent and Antwerp, Handel’s Tamerlano and Alcina in Sweden at the 18th century Royal Court Theatre, Drottningholm, outside Stockholm, The Cunning Little Vixen, La Clemenza di Tito and the critically acclaimed production of Wagner’s Ring Cycle 1999 which concluded with Gotterdammerung in 2003 and is now running at Teatro La Fenice in Venice until 2008. 2004 included designs for sets and costumes for a new Kata Kabanova with Robert Carsen at La Scala in Milan (Premio Abbiati 2006 Best Production) for whom he also designed La Traviata, which opened the restored Teatro La Fenice in Venice. Patrick continued with further collaborations with Mario Testino including his new book Let Me IN (Taschen 2007), and Pierre Audi at The Netherlands Opera for whom he designed operas by Handel and Rameau 2005 and 2006 in Amsterdam and Stockholm where he designed the film of Rameau’s Zoroastre on DVD Diapaison d’Or Best Opera Design 2006. Operas in 2007 include a new Semele in Zurich with Cecilia Bartoli, works by Monteverdi Il Ballo del Ingrate and Rameau Castor et Pollux in Amsterdam, Elektra by Strauss in Barcelona as well as plans to direct and design Madam Butterfly in Koln 2008, and further productions in Vienna, Paris and New York. Also in New York as Creative Consultant to the Metropolitan Museum he has designed and installed the major fashion history exhibitions for the Costume Institute Dangerous Liaisons: french fashion in the 18th century 2004 and Anglomania: tradition and transgression in British Fashion, 2006, both of which were installed in the main galleries of the Metropolitan Museum and are the most successful exhibitions ever mounted at the Museum where his new interiors for the Wrightsman Galleries will open in October 2007. In July his installation with Antonio Monfreda of a major retrospective of the work of Valentino will open in the Ara Pacis museum in Rome.
