Battling the Blitz (and Cecil Beaton)

Cool-headed wartime editor Audrey Withers never let ‘Vogue’ miss an issue, despite Nazi bombs and in-house divas. By Lucy Davies

make up their own minds; blows up the notion of the appealing brainless beauty… [it] reflects our acceptance of the fact that the great majority of our readers have a limited amount of money to spend. And Vogue never suggests any regret at this state of affairs. It never sighs for the spacious days.”

Some of the best material comes from the nutty temperaments of the writers and photographers Withers had to manage: Lee Miller consuming five gins over lunch; Beaton stumbling around a bombed ruin with a potted fern and draperies he had brought from home to use as props; Parkinson ripping a transparency in half with his teeth when he didn’t get his own way, or announcing that he wanted to hire two helicopters, from which he and the model would lean out while hovering over Parliament (Withers made sure that he didn’t).

Other prize nuggets include Woolman Chase telling Withers that open-toed shoes were “an abomination”, and the fact that, in post-war Paris, you couldn't get tea, because there was no way to heat water, but champagne and foie gras were in plentiful supply.

Dressed for War works on many levels: as an evocation of an uncommon time; as a celebration of an uncommon woman; as pure, unalloyed fun. I'll leave you with the story that when a former colleague visited Withers in the final decade of her life, she found the nonagenarian dressed in a raspberry-coloured lounge suit, an act of dauntlessness for which I couldn't possibly love her more.

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