Serena Sinclair
Vivacious Telegraph fashion editor who reported on the ‘youthquake’ of the Swinging Sixties
SERENA SINCLAIR, who has died aged 89, was, for 24 years
from 1960, fashion editor of The Daily Telegraph. In his memoir, Life, Love, Laughter,
Liberty, John Osman described her as a “stunningly pretty and superbly dressed American” who possessed “Hollywood star quality”. The
Telegraph’s former fashion director Hilary Alexander, whom Serena Sinclair had recruited to the paper in the 1980s, described her as a “vivacious go-getter, with a great smile” who “spoke at nineteen to the dozen”, hated “hype” and was “always after the story”.
Gifted with an inquisitive mind and an eye for a striking simile, Serena Sinclair was a general reporter before she started specialising in fashion, and during her time at The Daily Telegraph, as well as her reports from the fashion front line, she contributed sparky travel pieces, interviews, film and restaurant reviews, together with the occasional fashion-themed addendum to general news reports.
During a strike by Treasury civil servants in 1981, she urged readers not to be too concerned on the taxpayer’s behalf by a press photograph of an elegantly dressed female picket in Whitehall. “The lady picketer is not in fact clothed in Missoni or Chloe at vast cost,” she reported, “but in a raincoat very like those which C&A assure me they still have in stock in polyester/ cotton (khaki or cream) for about £26. Her boots of suede lined with acrylic fur can be bought with crepe rubber soles at Saxone for £30. The handbag is almost certainly plastic of the sort Marks and Spencer sell for around £7.99.”
Serena Sinclair had arrived in Britain in the late 1940s to work as a feature writer on London’s evening paper The Star and worked as fashion editor of the Daily Herald, then the
Woman’s Mirror, before joining The Daily Telegraph.
In an interview she recalled the 1950s as “the last era in which a girl wanted to dress and look like her mother”. Fashion journalism was staid and dominated by French haute couture: “Newspapers offered dress patterns ‘derived’ from Paris couture, and I was invited by London store buyers to Valentino’s salon the morning after his first Rome show, to help choose suits and coats British customers might buy. The copied suit retailed here for £14. This was stultifying for ambitious young British designers, doomed in their first jobs to ‘modifying’ Dior.”
Her arrival at the Telegraph coincided with what she described as “the youthquake” in Britain, with Mary Quant and others designing clothes for young women who definitely did not wish to look like their mothers. She spent much time out of the office keeping eyes and ears open for trends, reporting from the Chelsea boutiques and social events such as Henley and Royal Ascot.
She covered all the big fashion shows, from Paris to Milan to New York to Tokyo, conveying the latest news in upbeat, amusing and often spikily caustic reports (“Brace yourself for a sugar-sweet spring with baby pastels as abundant as sugared almonds at a Continental christening party,” she exhorted readers after seeing one catwalk collection). Fashion PRs would quail in terror if Serena Sinclair took out her powder compact during a show to inspect her make-up – a sure sign that she had seen enough.
But the emphasis of much of the newspaper’s coverage under her leadership, and that of her colleagues Ann Chubb and Avril Groom, remained driven by practicality and value for money, and she always had a soft spot for less well-heeled readers. There were reports on “budget dressing for a big day” and on a Tesco fashion range. The paper went into business offering well-chosen clothes by designers such as Jean Muir and Roland Klein at excellent prices, by mail order.
She was born Serena Dunn Kamper on March 29 1926 in Santa Barbara, California. Brought up as a Christian Scientist, she attended Wellesley College, Massachusetts, and later Principia College, Illinois, a private college for Christian Scientists. She began her career at the Santa
Barbara News-Press before moving to London in the late 1940s. In 1952 she married Kenneth Sinclair, a fellow Christian Scientist.
In later life she recalled that as a £14-a week fashion journalist in the 1950s, she was often “rather broke” and struggled to find affordable smart clothes for the big shows: “A dress was £3 at Chanelle Shops (a High Street chain where you could buy a dress which today could pass for basic Ralph Lauren),” she recalled, “and I was slim enough and lucky enough to be invited to buy samples from Starke, Frank Usher, Horrocks and Polly Peck. With enormous difficulty I persuaded my paper to shell out £7 for an evening dress to cover royal film premieres.” Her experience gave her a lifelong sympathy for those struggling to keep up appearances on a budget.
She remains the longest serving fashion editor in the Telegraph’s history. In 1979 she co-authored the book Fashion Genius of the World.
Her first marriage was dissolved, and in 1983, while on a travel assignment in America, she met Earl Lesley, manager of Kalaloch Lodge, an ocean-front hotel in Washington state, who became her second husband later the same year. She left her post at The Daily
Telegraph to return to the US, and launched a new career as a freelance writer. She made frequent visits to Europe, where she kept a house in France and a flat in London, continuing to contribute to British newspapers and magazines, and to American publications, including the
Christian Science Monitor, on topics ranging from travel to food and from fishing to fashion.
An avid reader, she would, in her words, “devour” three or four books a week, and she remained knowledgeable about world affairs into her eighties.
Her husband predeceased her.
Serena Sinclair, born March 29 1926, died January 6 2016