NEWS
FELICITY GREEN - A WOMAN AMONGST BOYS
05/03/2010
It’s off to deepest Marylebone to meet Felicity Green, The Media Society’s legendary fashion journalist who worked her way up to executive level in Fleet Street – the first female ever to do so. Now, journalists absolutely love meeting each other. Being incurable gossips, we’re always hoping for some insider info – or even a chance to swap contacts. However, ideally this would be done over copious amounts of booze, with no copious notes necessary. If you interview another journalist, especially one so senior, nerves could threaten to spoil the fun; and you worry in case she should scoff at your technique.
Looking on the bright side, while reading Felicity’s cuts I’m slightly overawed by her achievements and realise what a privilege it is for me to be able to meet her. Plus, I’m already anticipating the chance to use the word ‘redoubtable’ in my copy, which I’ll enjoy.
Settled onto a vast sofa in her almost all white flat, we talk through the edited highlights of her 60 year career. Her apartment is impeccably furnished; crammed with art and glossy coffee table books on photography (and more art) but also politics, and something by Will Self.
She begins by explaining how her work came to be shown at the V&A. "My secretary Sheila at The Mirror had kept books and books of all my articles over the years." “Ooh” I squeal “did you go through and read all your old copy?” Felicity frowns “No I don’t much enjoy reading my own copy. I didn’t even know Sheila had been keeping the cuttings. Sheila stayed with me for 21 years and was the most wonderful assistant throughout.”
Felicity started her career as a shorthand typist before applying for a job at Woman and Beauty, the first ever glamorous pocket magazine, well ahead of its time. Editor in chief Phyllis Digby Morton called Felicity in. “She interviewed me for about an hour. In those days I used to design all my own clothes, I was wearing a nifty little brown barathea suit. At the end of the hour she said ‘I’m going to give you a job but you have to promise me one thing.’ And I said ’Anything!’ She gave me a long hard look. ‘Pull your stomach in!’ And I’ve been pulling my stomach in ever since.”
Felicity’s calm face – serious expression, perfect eyebrows – changes as she talks about people she’s particularly fond of. “I stayed at Woman and Beauty for two years and my wonderful boss turned me into a journalist and a fashion editor. [smiles] I started by walking her dog, then making the tea, then I worked my way up from there. Then – disaster struck! The boss told me she was leaving for The States but she gave me a note addressed to the chairperson of Crawford’s, the famous advertising agency. It simply said: ‘This is Felicity - give her a job.’ So she did.
"Well, my first PR client was Dannimac the well known raincoat company. The boss and I went up to Manchester to meet the Managing Director. My boss introduced me: ‘This is Felicity; our new press officer, she’s going to get you a lot of publicity for your coats.’ Whereupon Mr Cohen of Dannimac brought out a selection of the most hideous coats I’d ever seen – they looked like they’d been cut with a knife and fork. So when he asked me what I thought of them I decided honesty was the only policy, so I immediately replied, ‘they’re dreadful!’ My boss nearly fell on the floor. ‘What’s wrong with them exactly?’ asked Mr Cohen, ‘everything!' I replied ‘Who's your designer?’ ‘My father and I design everything’ he told me with an audible touch of pride. ‘Well,' I told him, 'you need to get a designer.’ So I got them a designer. And the designer I persuaded to take the job on was Hardy Amies.” At this I gasp; Amies at that time was The Queen’s tailor and is now a cherished incumbent of the fashion hall of fame – Felicity clearly had ‘fixing’ nous – the sort of character that pushes beyond a job description – the kind that gets you places.
“After a spell in at Crawford’s Advertising Agency, my next job was associate editor on Women’s Sunday Mirror, the first modern newspaper for women published by the Mirror Group. After a year I was moved to the Sunday Pictorial, which shortly became the Sunday Mirror.”
Another move – and this time Felicity became associate editor of the Daily Mirror which at that time had a circulation of five million copies a day, and a readership of 15 million! “It was a very, very exciting time in the world of tabloid journalism and The Mirror was influential world-wide. The atmosphere in the office every single day was wonderfully exciting! All the rules were being broken all the time.
“In those heady days there were no women executives. This was the first time we were given our chance – and it wasn’t popular with everyone. Lee Howard my first editor at The Mirror gave me a very valuable piece of advice. ‘Look out for the rocks,’ he warned me – ‘you’re going to have a lot of men older than you who find themselves working for a younger women and they’re not going to find it easy; so if you have to give a man a bollocking, make sure he leaves the room with his balls intact.’
“After ten years I was appointed director of the Mirror Group Newspaper in charge of press and publicity, events as well as the company television campaigns and became the first ever woman on the main board of a national newspaper.”
At this point Felicity was persuaded to leave journalism and spent two years as managing director, Europe of the Vidal Sassoon hairdressing business. But after a further two years Felicity was persuaded to rejoin Fleet Street and had two year spell as associate editor at the Daily Express during which time she remembers working with no fewer than four different editors!
“Then Max Hastings who had only just taken over as editor invited me to do a short sharp three month term on the Telegraph, covering for his newly pregnant features editor. I had only been there just a week when Max told me I had been given two blank broadsheet pages to fill every day for a week ....Panic! .... Luckily for me I remembered it was the Queen’s 60th birthday that very week so I decided to cover a decade of her life every day. Then....ha ha ha...that went wonderfully well with The Telegraph readers and everyone in the office thought I was practically a genius. I was originally asked to stay for three months and I remained there for 10 years!”
Sitting spellbound, I try to imagine being that powerful. As well as the fact that there was no precedent for anyone of Miss Green's gender to follow – the media has always been cut-throat and anyone who gets to that level has to be extraordinary in some way. Redoubtable, you might even say.
“Although fashion has always been a passion of mine – a real interest, it was never a religion for me in the way that it is for some fashion journalists. It was journalism that I loved – the word industry, rather than the clothing industry.
"In fashion, all editors love clothes – but these days seem to me they fall into three camps: stylists who work with photographers, calling in the clothes and creating the shoot, ‘fashion editorial’ as these glamorous features are known; then there are journalists who may branch out to styling celebrities, private clients or even advising individual designers; then there are the writers, the ones who pass judgement on the shows and craft the copy, create ‘fashion features’ as well as dealing with the breaking news.”
When Felicity started out there was no such delineation. “We did everything. Just everything. We wrote the copy, went to the shows, interviewed the designers and created the ideas for the shoots. You’d turn up at the studio, there’d be a model girl or two and a photographer. No hair or makeup artist – the model would do all that herself often bringing her own accessories. The model put on the fabulous clothes and away we went. She frequently had to change in the back of a car – or a loo, or wherever we could find.”
Felicity has strong views about the way things are run these days. “The PRs really do control everything. Nowadays magazines make their money from advertising, not from the cover price so journalists have to be much more careful not to offend the advertisers. It was nowhere near as strict back when we started.”
Longing for my own snippet of Felicity gossip I ask about the designers she met. Who were the 'best' ones to interview?
“The most famous fashion names I remember best are the ones that set London alight in first the 60's then the 70's and then the 80's. They became my friends – Mary Quant of course who gave the world the mini skirt. In fact Mary’s first minis weren’t all that short – just above the knee in fact. But her fame certainly put London on the international funky fashion map. Then there was – still is – the flamboyantly colourful Zandra Rhodes. Zandra is currently designing wonderful opera productions coast to coast across the States, as well as in London. But perhaps my all-time favourite will always be the late great Jean Muir whose beautiful dresses, classically styled in jersey, always made every woman look her beautiful best. But then what about Barbara Hulanicki, the unique Biba who invented the boutique and changed the look of the British high street forever? Biba's funky original styles, selling back in the 70's and 80's for about a pound now sell for a hundred times that amount on Ebay!
“But I suppose the internationally famous names will always be the great Parisians. I remember interviewing Givenchy, Ungaro and Courrèges. Courrèges was perhaps the most exciting.”
Because you liked his clothes the best, or because of his personality?
“I loved the clothes. You had to love them. So exciting. And he was a great one to interview as well. Such an handsome, virile man. He really loved women, and he talked about fashion as though it was sex. For Courrèges it was all about the girls; not technical, fashion talk. But mostly if I wasn’t careful it was all about football!”
Having risen from office dogsbody to Fleet St executive and one-woman powerhouse she reached retirement age with more than enough respect from her peers to sit back and polish her awards. But Miss Green was having none of it, she has sustained a career in the world of consumer magazines; she has continued to work apace for Redwood for 20 years and has edited various magazines. Memorably she was the launch editor of the Marks & Spencer magazine.
Even at this stage Miss Green has decided to put her energies into yet another stage of her career – identifying and mentoring journalistic talent As a teacher of fashion journalism at Central Saint Martins for many years she is now, with the college’s co operation, building a mentoring programme for fashion journalism students.
In her time, She has hand-picked some of journalism’s biggest names. “Mentoring is wonderful,” (those eyes light up once again) “identifying talent, nurturing talent. It’s like having a garden and watering the flowers. You identify where they want to go, and support and encourage to the best of your ability.”
We run through a brief roll call of some of her most successful mentorees Kate Phelan (UK Vogue), Jeremy Langmead (Wallpaper and The Times), Eve Pollard (former editor of ELLE, The Sunday Mirror and The Sunday Express) and Ollie Picton-Jones (The Sunday Mirror, among many others).
Experiencing a pang of a jealousy, I think - I want a glamorous mentor, a steely eyed fashion version of Miss Jean Brodie. But I can’t complain; I’ve certainly come away with more than a few pearls of accumulated wisdom. And, with those tucked into my giant notebook, it’s off back to Baker St with me. Relieved she didn’t mention my taking notes longhand, or furrow those brows at my questions, and thinking . . . I hope I’m like that when I’m 83.
Naomi Attwood
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