Hamish Bowles
Hamish Bowles
Hamish Bowlesis an English fashion journalist. Since 1995 he has been the European editor-at-large for the American edition of Vogue...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionJournalist
Date of Birth3 March 1963
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As a boy soprano in the high school choir, I later sang a solo during the carol service at Canterbury Cathedral, but I was too young to secure the Freddy Eynsford-Hill role in our production of 'My Fair Lady' - and far too timid to have thought to audition for it.
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When I think of my childhood, I see my mother, the complete sixties parent, decked in purple frappe silk caftans, the acidic smell of newly stripped pine mingling with incense.
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We're obviously in a strange environment where practically anyone can set themselves up as a pundit of sorts. It's all about sorting the wheat from the chaff, and I'm very interested in reading different points of view, and certainly different generations than my own that have such a very different world view.
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This is how I started: My mom was crazy for antique shops and junk shops, and my sister and I would play this game where, if we were driving with my parents and saw a junk shop or an antique shop, we'd scream at the top of our lungs. My poor father would have heart failure and screech to a halt, and we'd leap out and go and explore.
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Personally, of course it's exasperating when people think you're just swanning around in Europe, going to the occasional fashion show and then being glamorous at a party.
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My obsession with accumulation, which at times has taken on the whisper of a psychic illness - as anyone who has experienced the ode to the Collyer brothers that is my 'Vogue' office will concur - began in infancy.
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I started looking at fashion magazines, specifically 'British Vogue.' I was reading a lot about Cecil Beaton. Then I thought maybe I should start collecting.
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When I started in 1992, I really thought the 'Vogue' fashion department was one of the most frightening places on the planet.
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Possessions. The very word is potent - suggestive as it is of ownership both material and erotic. To possess. Possession. Possessed.
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I have a confession to make. In the beginning, I did not understand the Kate Moss phenomenon.
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Singing for me has always been a joyous but private pleasure that connects me in a lyric thread to my beloved grandmother Alice.
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I was a fashion editor for years in London before I came to 'Vogue,' and I spent my life arranging the folds of a ball gown skirt for a picture and pinning fabric and using all those stylist tricks. And you don't have to do that now because they can do it in Photoshop.
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I think there's much more fashion competition in the more junior levels of the fashion department. And that's exciting and stimulating to see, because it's 'Vogue;' it's great to see people dressed originally and with great style and panache. It wouldn't be 'Vogue' otherwise.
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I was ten years old when my first 'Vogue' cover sang me its siren call and dashed me against the treacherous rocks of fashion obsession.