Barbara's Passion for Fashion
Part I
Barbara's Passion for Fashion
Part I
| "I suppose it would be true to say that fashion
began for me when I was very young. My mother and father were both
smart, and liked clothes, and so I quickly picked up on this, I believe.
In any case, since then I have known a lot of designers and a lot of clothes!
When I was growing up in England, children were always given new clothes for Whitsuntide, and on Whit Sunday we were taken to church and to see relatives in order to show off those clothes. Easter was another occasion when little girls were given new Easter bonnets. I had a lot of bonnets then. Not today! I hardly ever wear hats. A reporter once asked me what I was like as a child, and I said I was ironed from top to toe, meaning that my mother always kept me looking very pristine and well dressed when I was a child. I liked to look nice, and was always very careful to keep myself clean. Except when I was sixteen and a young reporter on the Yorkshire Evening Post. My mother bought me a new trenchcoat, and then caught me dragging it around in the garden. She was horrified and scolded me. I explained, very seriously, that I needed to have a 'dirty trenchcoat' in order to look like a seasoned reporter. I don¹t think she appreciated my answer though! Later, on the Yorkshire Evening Post, I was a fashion writer as well as a general reporter, then became a women's page editor. But I still liked to cover the fashion beat, despite my other duties. At twenty I became fashion editor of a leading
women's magazine in London, and covered the London and Paris fashion shows."
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| "Here I am at aged four all dressed up for Whitsuntide in my new clothes. A pale-green coat over a buttercup yellow silk dress, a pale yellow leghorn straw bonnet and new beige leather Mary Janes. My mother, as you can see, is fitted out in a smart toque hat, a fur jacket and houndstooth check dress in black and white with a white collar. I notice, in the picture, that I¹m wearing kidskin gloves. I¹m a very smart four-year old." |
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| "Miss Barbara looking very sultry in a strapless, pale blue brocade evening gown, with long white silk gloves. I was 16." |
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| "Here I am at eighteen popping out of the fashion dept. 'dress' cupboard at the Yorkshire Evening Post. I posed for the paper wearing a white summer dress trimmed with black lace. Then I wrote the story." |
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| "When I left the Yorkshire Evening Post to go to Fleet Street in London, the cartoonist on the newspaper, Arthur Day, did this cartoon of me looking like a really chic fashion editor, with black suit, notebook and pen." |
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| "I was seventeen when I first went to Paris to cover the shows with the fashion editor of the newspaper (before she left and I took over). I am shown here outside Christian Dior, wearing a pale blue dress with a shawl collar, a brown hat and gloves. Please note the slim umbrella and bag." |
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| "This was always one of my favorite dresses. It's navy blue silk with white polka dots and white collar and cuffs. This was taken in Yorkshire in the late 1980s." |
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