Deborah Milner (born 1964) is a British fashion designer active since the 1990s. Since 2000, she has focused on ecologically awaredesign, founding Ecoture, her ecological couture line in 2005. In the early 2010s she was head of the Alexander McQueen couture studio. Milner studied at Central Saint Martins and the Royal College of Art. Whilst she gained a reputation among fashion insiders as a creative designer who used unusual materials, including a skirt made from film negatives, and garments using wire and steel mesh filters, and was recognised for the superb cut of her clothing, she was not immediately successful. Eventually, whilst sharing a studio with the milliner Philip Treacy, Milner became principally a designer of wedding dresses. Her highest-profile wedding dress was a 1997 beaded lace gown worn by Estelle Skornik as 'Nicole' in the final instalment of the Papa & Nicoleadvertisements for Renault, which was estimated to have been seem by 23 million viewers.

Experience

 Renault subsequently donated the dress and accessories to the Victoria and Albert Museum. Another of Milner's wedding dresses, an ecclesiastical silk coatdress worn in 1998 by Selina Blow with a huge golden headdress by Treacy, was featured in the Museum's major Wedding Dress exhibition in 2014. In 1997 a purple velvet Milner evening coat was chosen by Isabella Blow as part of her selection of garments representing 1997 in the Fashion Museum, Bath's Dress of the Yearcollection, alongside designs by Treacy, Hussein Chalayan, Julien MacDonald, and Lainey Keogh.[6] Blow also owned a red velvet coat by Milner that she wore in a photograph that would later be the lead image for a posthumous exhibition of her wardrobe at Somerset House in 2013. Daphne Guinness, Blow's friend and organiser of the exhibition, told Vogue that she thought the coat "epitomised Isabella, somehow," hence the decision to use it as the main publicity image. Women's Wear Daily declared the coat one of the highlights of the Blow exhibition. In 1998, Milner designed a Dior-inspired purple corset-bodice dress for Helena Bonham Carterto wear to the Oscars. Bonham Carter later commented "I've never before attached that much importance to what I wear. Now it's monumental," after having her dress praised by Newsday and Vogue. That same year, Donatella Versace signed Milner up to head up a design studio at Versace. The Victoria & Albert Museum showed her work in 1999 as part of the Fashion in Motionproject, describing Milner as a 'leading British designer' in accompanying publicity.