Colin Roxburgh McDowell [1] MBE FRSA (born 1936) is a British fashion writer, designer and curator. McDowell is best known for his stint as a highly opinionated Fashion Editor for The Sunday Times , where he became a familiar sight in the front row of fashion shows, and in which capacity he claims to have been banned from more shows than any other writer. [2]
Born in Northumberland, McDowell moved from Alnwick to Gloucester at three years old. [3] He cultivated a strong interest in modern art and architecture as a teenager. [4] He was educated at Durham University (Hatfield College), where he followed the arts stream of the General Studies degree and took courses in English Literature and European History, having turned down a place at Oxford because he wanted to return to the North East. [4] [3] As a student in Durham he wrote for the university newspaper, Palatinate , alongside future Beatles biographer Hunter Davies, and produced the 'Film Notes' column – a review of recent cinema releases. [5] [6] He also rowed for the Hatfield College Boat Club and was the fly half for the Durham University Rugby team that won the Collegiate European University Championship in 1955 and 1956. [3]
After university he worked as a History teacher for a few years and later moved to teach in Italy. [3] He eventually lost interest in this and worked as an actor, appearing in several episodes of BBC Radio 4 soap opera The Archers and TV bit-parts as a generic foreigner. [3] His social life brought him into contact with people in the fashion industry – and he soon became intrigued by their world. [7] By the early 1970s McDowell, after being offered a design job by a friend, settled in Rome, where he started to date fashion journalist, Anna Piaggi, and secured a job working for the couturier Pino Lancetti, who taught him everything he needed to know about the art of Haute couture . [8] McDowell then moved on to work for the National Chamber of Italian Fashion (Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana), then Laura Biagiotti at The House of Biagiotti, where he was responsible for brokering an exclusive deal for Biagiotti to design the uniforms for Alitalia staff. [8]
McDowell returned to London after spending 10 years in Rome. [4] In 1984 he established his reputation as a writer with McDowell’s Directory of 20th Century Fashion, which became a standard reference work for fashion students. [9] He made a foray into journalism by contributing an article to The Observer on Italian fashion, which led to invitations to write for other publications. [4] In 1986 he began to focus predominantly on his emerging journalism career, being appointed a fashion reporter for The Sunday Times. [10] [11]
In 1989, while visiting Cairo for an assignment, he was caught up in a fire that broke out in his hotel, Sheraton Heliopolis Hotel. [12] He escaped by jumping from a second floor window, breaking his ankle in the process. [3] He later discovered a colleague and close friend, Jackie Moore, had died in the fire with two others. To aid his recovery from the trauma McDowell returned to Northumberland and rented a holiday cottage with a view of Lindisfarne, where he would spend the next three winters there writing, first A Woman of Style and then A Woman of Spirit. [3] He has said that his proudest moment during his spell with The Sunday Times was when the designer Giorgio Armani threatened to pull his advertising from the paper (at £50,000 a page) because McDowell had given one of his shows a bad review. [2]
In 2002 he got into what The Guardian described as a 'tiff' with Nicholas Coleridge. [13] After Coleridge criticised fashion editors for being too negative about British fashion, McDowell accused him of being jingoistic. [13] Alongside his work for The Sunday Times he continued writing books on the modern fashion industry and biographies of noteworthy designers, including close friend, John Galliano, Manolo Blahnik, and Ralph Lauren. In total, he has published more than 20 books on style. [14]
In 2003 McDowell set up 'Fashion Fringe', an annual competition to uncover promising fashion design talent and offer them professional mentorship, with McDowell's stating that “We want to invest in a career, to build up a fashion business, this is no Pop Idol! We are not giving the winner £100,000 to follow trends – we want them to set them!” [15] The scheme ended in 2013 when sponsorship became harder to secure on the back of the limited number of long term success stories to emerge from the initiative. [16] He received an Honorary Doctorate from Heriot-Watt University in 2005. [17] In a 2015 interview, he argued authentic criticism in contemporary fashion journalism is now increasingly hard to find, as major fashion conglomerates ensure access to shows and good seat allocation is dependent on positive coverage. [4]
John Charles Galliano is a British fashion designer from Gibraltar. He was the creative director of his eponymous label John Galliano and French fashion houses Givenchy and Dior. Since 2014, Galliano has been the creative director of Paris-based fashion house Maison Margiela. Galliano has been named British Designer of the Year four times. In a 2004 poll for the BBC, he was named the fifth most influential person in British culture.
Hatfield College is one of the constituent colleges of Durham University in England. It occupies a city centre site above the River Wear on the World Heritage Site peninsula, lying adjacent to North Bailey and only a short distance from Durham Cathedral. Taking its name from a medieval Prince-Bishop of Durham, the college was founded in 1846 as Bishop Hatfield's Hall by David Melville, a former Oxford don.
Manuel "Manolo" Blahnik Rodríguez is a Spanish fashion designer and founder of the eponymous high-end shoe brand.
The Elle Style Awards are an awards ceremony hosted annually by Elle magazine.
Edward Hunter Davies is a British author, journalist and broadcaster. His books include the only authorised biography of the Beatles.
Liberty, commonly known as Liberty's, is a luxury department store in London, England. It is located on Great Marlborough Street in the West End of London. The building spans from Carnaby Street on the East to Kingly Street on the West, where it forms a three storey archway over the Northern entrance to the Kingly Street mall that houses the Liberty Clock in its centre. Liberty is known around the world for its close connection to art and culture, it is most famous for its bold and floral print fabrics. The vast mock-Tudor store also sells men's, women's and children's fashion, beauty and homewares from a mix of high-end and emerging brands and labels.
Lady Kinvara Clare Rachel Balfour is an English creative director, producer, writer, and public speaker. She is the second daughter of Roderick Balfour, 5th Earl of Balfour, and Lady Tessa Fitzalan-Howard. Balfour is a niece of the Duke of Norfolk.
Maud Frizon de Marco is a fashion designer specializing in women's shoes. She began her career in the 1960s as a model for Parisian Haute Couture Houses of Nina Ricci, Jean Patou, and André Courrèges. At the time models had to provide their own shoes to match the clothes designers assigned them for their runway shows and photo shoots. Frizon disliked the available shoes from other designers, and in 1969 elected to create her own and opened her first boutique in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés district of Paris.
André Leon Talley was an American fashion journalist, stylist, creative director, and editor-at-large of Vogue magazine. He was the magazine's fashion news director from 1983 to 1987, its first African-American male creative director from 1988 to 1995, and then its editor-at-large from 1998 to 2013. Often regarded as a fashion icon, he was known for supporting emerging designers and advocating for diversity in the fashion industry; while the capes, kaftans, and robes he wore became his trademark look. Talley also served on the judging panel for America's Next Top Model.
Christopher John Kane is a Scottish fashion designer based in London.
Laura Biagiotti was an Italian fashion designer, and the founder of the House of Biagiotti.
Dana Thomas is a fashion and culture journalist and author based in Paris. Her books include Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster, Gods and Kings: The Rise and Fall of Alexander McQueen and John Galliano and Fashionopolis: The Price of Fast Fashion and the Future of Clothes. She also wrote the script for Salvatore Ferragamo: The Shoemaker of Dreams, a feature-length documentary directed by award-winning Italian filmmaker Luca Guadagnino. It had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival on September 5, 2020. She hosts The Green Dream podcast on all things sustainable.
Timothy Colin Harvey Luckhurst is a British journalist and academic, currently principal of South College of Durham University and an associate pro-vice-chancellor. Between 2007 and 2019 he was professor of Journalism at the University of Kent, and the founding head of the university's Centre for Journalism.
Rupert Sanderson is a British shoe designer.
William Tempest is a British fashion designer.
Liam Fahy is a shoe designer from Zimbabwe.
Niall McInerney is a fashion photographer, best known for his international catwalk photography.
Lachasse was a British couture firm operating from 1928 until 2006, making it one of the longest surviving high fashion houses in London.
Tamsin Blanchard is a British fashion journalist, author, and lecturer. She is particularly known for her work on sustainability and ecological issues in fashion.
AngloMania: Tradition and Transgression in British Fashion was an exhibition curated by Andrew Bolton at the Metropolitan Museum of Art that ran from May 3 to September 4, 2006. The exhibition featured fashion from throughout Europe in the eighteenth-century that was influenced directly by British attitudes, ideas, and trends. However, these were not accurate depictions of British fashion, but idealized depictions of "a nation's notorious vanity, a romance with itself, and the eccentric desire of English designers to re-establish the establishment." The exhibit is composed of nine "theatrical installations containing clothed mannequins and paintings" that contrasted historical and modern aspects of fashion.
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