The eternal Cosmo girl
Deirdre Mcsharry discovered Twiggy, gave Kevin Mccloud a leg up, put some zip into rural life with her magazine Country Living and, as editor of Cosmopolitan in the Seventies and Eighties, taught The Single Girl how to live.
Now in her mid-eighties, she is still, as an artist friend says, ‘the helium in the balloon’, encouraging and supporting artistic endeavours in Bath, where she lives with her lawyer husband.
Next year, Bold Blooms, an exhibition of the work of two of her protégés, Kaffe Fassett and Candace Bahouth, will open at the Victoria Art Gallery, in Bath.
Mcsharry’s story has a touch of Colm Tóibín’s novel Brooklyn. She is Irish, grew up in Ireland in a family without money (her mother was widowed before she was even born) and went to seek her fortune in the US. Before that, she failed an English degree at Trinity College and acted with Dublin’s Gate Theatre – which, apart from anything else, transformed her into a lifelong redhead. ‘I had really thick hair and in the theatre they wanted it RED; so I dyed it and, in the end, everyone just thought I was born that way.’
The theatre took her to Egypt. ‘This was in the Fifties. No one travelled in those days – imagine going from Ireland to Egypt as a young woman! It was in Egypt that my passion for oriental things, especially textiles, was born – such wonderful things could be found in the souk at that time.’
Back in Ireland, she was torn between acting and journalism – which was her mother’s career. (Mcsharry says she learned all she knows from ‘spending my hols in her office, cutting out old mags for my scrapbook’).
She went off to New York to decide – and, when she found a job on the prestigious
Deirdre Mcsharry, wearing a vintage silk ikat coat from Uzbekistan (bought in the West Country), with Twink fashion paper Women’s Wear Daily, the die was cast. After three years, Mcsharry moved to London and was appointed fashion editor of the Daily Express. This is when she discovered Twiggy, in 1966. ‘I remember it so well, I had had a dreadful photoshoot with an appallingly difficult model. I came back to the office and the hairdresser Leonard came to show me pictures of a new hairstyle – and the model had a sweet little face and I thought: we need sweet faces in this cruel world. And that was Twiggy.’ Mcsharry left the Express to go to the ‘soaraway Sun’ (as it was known) which had just been bought by Rupert Murdoch. ‘I remember him as a charming, gentle and extremely hardworking man from Down Under,’ she laughs. From there, she moved to edit Cosmopolitan, which had only recently launched its British edition. Her mother had struggled as a single parent, and Mcsharry saw her mission at Cosmo as helping women manage their own lives in every area. To this end, the magazine not only provided advice on sex – ‘My rule was only one article about sex per month’ – as well as all the usual women’s features, but also published extracts from influential new books (Erica Jong, Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem). With no children, Mcsharry devoted herself to the magazine: ‘It was like a three-ring circus – everyone worked so hard.’ In the Cosmo office, she organised daily exercise classes for the staff. ‘That is probably why I am still here. Now I exercise by
walking up the Bath hills round our flat with my dog.’
Poor health brought Mcsharry’s decade at Cosmo to an end but, after a year’s rest, she was asked by her bosses to launch another magazine: Country Living. It was another huge success for her, and she stayed until retirement. Kevin Mccloud was the multitalented boyfriend of her assistant.
Mcsharry’s red hair is now white and she has it streaked at Hue, a hair salon in Bath run by two sisters from Colombia. ‘Best Colombian coffee – not to mention head massages,’ she says. For skin care, she uses Aesop products: ‘I have never even thought about Botox. I don’t even pluck my eyebrows.’
Mcsharry was never interested in fashion trends, but in the romance of clothes: ‘Sequins, silk roses from Paris, faded brocade and chintz, cosy cashmere with moth holes. I loved the black and white medieval robes of the nuns at my convent. I used to study the folds of their veils in chapel at Mass.
‘It’s a great relief being ancient and wearing my ikat coats and djellabas from textile-dealer friends [Olivia Dell and Anne Hildyard]. In order not to look too dotty, I am a fan of Toast and Maku indigo-dyed clothes. I love earrings, and my great friend Nicky Butler [of Butler & Wilson] sometimes sends me something magic.
‘All in all, 2017 is a splendid time to be an oldie.’