It’s more shabby than chic as Harry shows his styles
SPORTING painted fingernails and dressed in ripped jeans, pop star Harry Styles shows off his dishevelled Soho-chic as he strolls in London’s West End with American actress girlfriend Olivia Wilde. The One Direction singer, 28, window-shopped with Ms Wilde, 38, who he has been dating since last year. She was dressed in a blue knitted jumper and pinstripe shirt for last week’s trip, pairing them with navy trousers, orange-tinted sunglasses and Converse trainers.
Styles, who wore a vintage Playdium Skate Club bomber jacket, also carried a bag from his own company, Pleasing. He launched the gender-neutral cosmetic brand, which includes nail varnishes, in November and opened his first Pleasing pop-up stores last week in London, New York and LA.
Ms Wilde, who met Styles while directing him in the forthcoming movie Don’t Worry Darling, is living in the UK with the singer while estranged husband Jason Sudeikis films the third series of the comedy drama Ted Lasso. She has her two children in London while he is working on the Apple TV programme, set in the UK.
‘Ironically, it is Jason’s work that means they can be together,’ said a source, adding that friends are expecting Harry and Olivia to marry.
FOR decades it has been a byword for glamour, elegance and style. It was also one of the very few places where Princess Diana could truly relax and be herself. If walls could talk, what a tale those in Vogue House, the sevenstorey Mayfair HQ of publishing giant Conde Nast, could tell. Ducking through the tradesman’s entrance, Diana would take a lift up to the offices of Vogue to rootle through the legendary ‘fashion cupboard’. There, among rack upon rack of clothes that had been called in for her to peruse, she would linger and pick her favourites off the hangers.
Before the Princess, the offices were frequented by all the big names of Britain’s fashion world – Jean Shrimpton, Lord Snowdon, Twiggy, David Bailey and so many more. However Conde Nast, which runs a number of upmarket magazines including GQ, Tatler and Vanity Fair, is relocating much of its workforce from Vogue House and is reportedly seeking to sell the remaining 75-year lease on the building.
If the sale proceeds, it would spell the end of a remarkable era as one of the most famous business addresses in the world. As Nicholas Coleridge, Conde Nast’s editorial director from 1989 to 2019, wrote in his memoir: ‘When the lift doors opened, it could be anyone inside. The Princess of Wales, Kate Moss, Linda Evangelista, processions of male models on their way to castings, interns collecting coffees, posh totty walking dogs, interior designers delivering lampshades to House & Garden Magazine… this was the daily traffic of Vogue House.’
British Vogue was launched in 1916, with its features on ‘hats and frocks’ soon joined by articles by celebrated writers such as Virginia Woolf, Bertrand Russell and Vita Sackville-West. And it moved to Vogue House, just off Regent Street, in 1958 when the building was newly built.
It was where Swinging Sixties photographer David Bailey met his muse – and later lover – Jean Shrimpton, and where a young Anna Wintour, Vogue’s legendary editorin-chief and the model for the ruthless magazine boss in the movie The Devil Wears Prada, was brought in to modernise British Vogue.
On her first day she was shown photos of models wearing head bandages and retorted: ‘They look like they have dropped in from Mars.’
And notoriously, the building became associated with the so-called Conde Nasties – a breed of stickthin fashionistas whose love of withering put-downs was matched only by the sharpness of their towering Manolo Blahnik heels.
In one tragic vignette that epitomises life in Vogue House, Tatler magazine’s ‘in-house dog’, a dachshund called Alan Plumptre who had his own Instagram account, was
Wages were so low that only rich girls could afford to work there
horrifically squished to death by the building’s revolving front doors.
The potential move from Vogue House, reported by property trade magazine Estates Gazette, comes as Conde Nast completes a complex global restructuring process which has seen editorial staff numbers pared down and the focus shift from print to online.
A source told The Mail on Sunday that many believe the relocation is imminent, saying: ‘We’re moving from the old to the new.’
Last Wednesday, 120 staff attended a meeting and champagne reception at Conde Naste’s other London base in the Art Deco Adelphi building off The Strand, which is already home to executives and the digital teams. The atmosphere is described as ‘2020s swank’ with free food and a games room, Google-style.
The future of two of Vogue House’s institutions – its veteran receptionist John, a passionate Arsenal fan who has sat behind the semi-circular front desk in the wood-panelled entry for decades, and Tony, who has long run its third-floor cafe – remains to be seen.
For thousands of Britain’s selfstyled ‘beautiful people’, Vogue House represents a lifetime of memories: a place where glitzy careers have been built and lifelong friendships forged. Traditionally, staff wages were so low it was said that only girls from rich families could afford to work there. Coleridge says he was once sent a job application by a young woman who enclosed a photo of herself topless.
Mail on Sunday columnist Alexandra Shulman, who was Vogue editor for 25 years, says: ‘I have very sentimental and nostalgic feelings about Vogue House. It became famous as magazines became more important and magazine personalities grew during the 1980s and 1990s.’
She recalls how, as a young secretary, she and others would go on to the roof at lunchtimes to sunbathe ‘draped in olive oil and lemon juice’.
The building’s location has always been a huge part of its aura.
Shulman explains: ‘It’s near Soho, Carnaby Street, Mayfair and Covent Garden. It was always nice to see what the building meant to so many