For his part, the man who was given £30million from a trust fund on his 25th birthday in October 1999 and who once had Kate Moss and Jade Jagger fighting over him, had a faraway look in his eye.
Sadly however the young sculptor, who was 14 years his junior and the daughter of leading architect Tim Boyd, has been found dead at a private London psychiatric hospital just three months after Dan, 42, called off their engagement after three years together.
It is a tragedy and one which no doubt will have devastated the man who in 2001 was named GQ magazine’s Most Stylish Man but who looked until recently as if he was finally about to settle down. With his pixie looks and desire to shock, Viscount Macmillan of Ovenden was the unexpected scion of an ancient titled family.
The eldest child and only son of Alexander Macmillan, 2nd Earl of Stockton and his first wife Bitta, Dan was born in 1974 and leapt into the public eye in his early twenties after a very revealing appearance on the catwalk while modelling a pair of Alexander McQueen’s trademark “bumster” trousers. He then set up his own provocative fashion label – Macvillain – which featured T-shirts printed with inappropriate logos.
“I am obsessed with my style,” admitted the man who could one day look like a closet punk and the next a Native American. “But I would never try too hard. That’s the worst thing you can do.”
He certainly partied hard and relished his position at the centre of the fun, anchored by the reassuring knowledge that he was heir to an alleged £200million publishing fortune, if not the family publishing business itself. His father sold Macmillan to a German publisher in the 1990s.
Growing up Dan spent most of his time at the former family seat of Birch Grove House, a 14-bedroom mansion set in 700 acres on the edge of Ashdown Forest in East Sussex, the setting for AA Milne’s tales of Winnie The Pooh.
His great-grandfather doted on him and it was not uncommon for the young Dan to attend dinner parties stuffed with “all sorts of interesting people – politicians and artists”. At the age of seven he is said to have poured gravy all over Margaret Thatcher’s pudding, believing it to be chocolate sauce.
When he was 17 and a boarder at Eton his parents divorced, but he is remembered for his relish in dressing up for school plays, particularly if he had to play a girl. Dan was dyslexic, loved art and disliked sport. “At school I was always the one hiding from rugger practice, the wimpy one,” he once explained.
His family had hoped he would go to university but instead he went to Central St Martin’s, the art school alma mater of designers Alexander McQueen and Stella McCartney.
He followed this up with a fine arts degree in New York where in the mid-1990s he became a model, including appearances in advertisements for Paul Smith. “I didn’t enjoy modelling very much,” he said. “But I was a student and I could earn a lot in one hour.” And women loved him. Sensuous not stuffy, frivolous rather than faithful, Dan’s “naughty toff” frolics were said to make gossip columnists rub their hands together with glee. Perhaps inevitably his private life was always racy.
“Good personal hygiene and a sense of humour are essential,” explained the man who is said to have dated supermodel Kate Moss and socialite Jade Jagger at the same time. The rumoured overlap in the sharing of his romantic affections is said to have led to a rapid cooling in the relationship between the two women with Jagger finishing her relationship with Dan on New Year’s Eve in 2000, but not before she dubbed him the “vulgar viscount”.
Moss followed suit a few months later. “I’d say I’m very much like a naughty schoolboy,” he said of his louche antics.
Upon receiving his inheritance he renovated his £2million penthouse in London’s Vauxhall and stuffed it with family antiques.
At 30 he also set up his Soho-based art gallery and clothes shop, Zoltar the Magnificent, which sold his provocative fashion collections. But it was the shop’s interior, with its swastikas and machine guns covered in McDonald’s logos that really got people talking.
After two years it folded after Dan got fed up of menial tasks such as sewing on buttons. He then dated several beautiful women with names like Sasha Volkova, Stella Schnabel and Astrid Munoz.
In recent times perma-tanned Dan has looked less carefree with a harder, more mature edge emerging from his former elfin looks. “I don’t even go to parties that much now,” he revealed shortly after he met Daisy.
“Anyone who lives in a city in their twenties has a bit of a wild time but you grow up.
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