The Glossy Years, by Nicholas Coleridge
LYNN BARBER
The Glossy Years By Nicholas Coleridge Penguin £25
Nicholas Coleridge is always smiling in photographs and you can understand why: he has had an enviably charmed life.
His saving grace is that he knows it. He knows he was lucky to be born into a happy and well-off family (his father was Chairman of Lloyd’s); he knows he was lucky to go to Eton and to make good friends there, including Charles Moore and Craig Brown. He and Craig were ‘publicity whores’ and started a club so that they could invite celebs to the school – they got Brian Eno and Elton John. He was lucky, when it was time for university, that Charles Moore advised him that any fool could get into Trinity,
Cambridge, provided he applied to read Theology, which he duly did, before switching to History of Art. And, given that he did very little work, he was lucky to sustain a back injury during Finals that meant he got an aegrotat. But anyway he didn’t care, because he knew where he was heading: magazines.
He’d seen his first glossy magazine when he was 16 and read his mother’s Harpers & Queen. ‘That first couple of hours with a glossy changed my life. I was mesmerised by the wit, by the blend of serious journalism and trivia, by the glamour of the fashion photography, sheen of the paper... I knew in a heartbeat I wanted to make a career in glossy magazines.’ He wrote (by hand) a 1,500-word essay on ‘How to survive teenage parties’ and sent it to the editor – and lo and behold it was published. So he was already on his way.
His first proper job was as an assistant editor on Tina Brown’s Tatler. The magazine was dying when she took over; she revived it by making it ‘an upperclass comic’. Coleridge’s attitude to her ‘hovered between teenage crush and low-level terror’ but she evidently liked him enough to give him a cover quote for this book. Then he went to the Evening Standard as a columnist for four years; at 28, he was offered the job of deputy editor on Harpers & Queen; and, a year later, he was editor. There were no Hollywood interviews or PR deals in those days – ‘We were gloriously uncorrupted’ – though he had to do a lot of sucking up to advertisers. Then Si Newhouse, owner of Condé Nast, invited him to become editorial director of Condé Nast UK, and he jumped ship.
He sacked the editors of Tatler and GQ almost as soon as he arrived. And some time later, when Si came over to eat the new season’s gulls’ eggs at Wilton’s, he watched with glee while the managing director, Richard Hill, revealed that he did not know the difference between the New Yorker and New York Magazine and ‘Si realised he had a blithering idiot in charge’. Soon afterwards Coleridge was appointed managing director as well as editorial director, a job he would hold for the next 26 years.
Si appointed his cousin Jonathan Newhouse as Chair, and before his first visit to Vogue House, his PA sent a message to the security team about how to recognize him: ‘Mr Newhouse will be wearing a bow tie and suspenders.’ Not knowing that suspenders is the American word for braces, the security team waited agog, expecting a vision from the Rocky Horror Show.
Jonathan turned out to be rather scholarly and quiet. Luckily Coleridge got on well with him, and with Si, though Si did make some odd demands. He explained that his pug, Nero, had recently died and been replaced by another, Cicero. Nero had accumulated a lot of air miles, because he always booked a seat for him on Concorde, and he wanted to transfer Nero’s air miles to Cicero. So Coleridge had to ring the Chief Executive of BA and ask if he could effect the transfer.
While Coleridge was Chair of the British Fashion Council, the Department of Trade insisted that he make Prince Andrew an ambassador for British fashion. Coleridge laid on a lunch at Vogue House where all the fashion editors assembled to give Prince Andrew the benefit of their expertise. ‘Let me ask you all a question,’ said the Prince, ordering his private secretary to write down their answers. ‘If you were steering an 8,000-ton Daring-class destroyer into harbour, how far in advance of reaching port would you shut down the engine? Now, come on, ladies. Don’t be shy, I want you all to guess.’ Not surprisingly, they hadn’t a clue and he laughed heartily. So much for the great fashion briefing.
Coleridge recounts that in his first job as a junior reporter on the Falmouth Packet, the editor gave him some good advice. Always list as many names as possible, he said, because a name in print is a copy sold. Unfortunately, Coleridge learned this lesson all too well: this book is jammed with names – over 100 in one footnote alone. Fortunately, there are enough amusing anecdotes – just – to lighten the load, but it does become a bore by the end.