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Obituary
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Anne Trehearne
Fashion editor at the forefront of 1960s style who transformed The Avengers look
Veronica Horwell
Tuesday September 19, 2006
The Guardian
When the comic strip Flook decided to satirise far-out fashion in the early 1960s, the artist Wally Fawkes and the writer George Melly took as a model Queen magazine with its cast of debs, plebs and proto-celebs. It was Queen, not Vogue, that first dispatched the new snappers to shoot swinging styles in gritty settings. The inaugurator was fashion editor Anne Trehearne, who has died aged 81. As her colleague Ann Barr recalled, Trehearne once refused to cover the Paris collections: "She said it was too boring; that was unheard of for a glossy magazine."
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As was usual with Queenettes, Trehearne came from a proper background: educated at Roedean, she was evacuated to Canada in the second world war and joined the Queen as a fashion assistant in 1948, when it was a trad county-and-season ladies' publication. Trehearne, however, identified with the Chelsea set, and the art school and bistro crowd dressed from 1955 by Mary Quant.
Trehearne had risen to fashion editor by 1957, when Jocelyn Stevens bought the mag for £10,000 as a 25th birthday present to himself, dropped the "the" and brought in Mark Boxer as art editor. They liberated Trehearne from any remaining ladylike constraints, and published Quant's snaps of a friend modelling her designs, which other glossies derided as non-fashion. Trehearne's novel role was directorial; she put together outfits from a range of sources, scouted a location or devised a narrative with the photographer. Essentially it was the stylist's job; the whole tone had to come together.
Trehearne left Queen in 1962 to work as fashion consultant to the advertising agency Collett Dickenson Pearce. Television contacts from this work led in 1965 to the assignment that made her a heroine to generations of pop-culture students: she became fashion coordinator to the television series The Avengers. A minor London designer, Frederick Starke, had done the clothes for Honor Blackman in the first two series, in a striking, sombre style that borrowed from beat wear and Travis Banton's fetishistic concoctions for Dietrich's Hollywood movies.
The results had influenced what women wanted to wear in Britain and the US, and ABC Television (which made the programmes) agreed to the US distributor's demand to retain the black leather kinky gear for the next series, with actor Diana Rigg cast as Emma Peel. It was soon evident that the heavy leathers would have to come off; Mrs Peel already appeared passé.
Trehearne mediated between ABC and the new designer John Bates, proposing that Mrs Peel should have a wardrobe of 35 interchangeable garments plus accessories rather than a sequence of "costumes". She backed Bates when he refused to lengthen the miniskirts to soothe nervous executives and overrode the cameramen's querulousness about the op-art dazzle. She suggested that promotional pictures should be shot as on a fashion shoot.
Trehearne helped broker the arrangement for the entire Bates collection, down to stockings and target beret, to be manufactured for sale in the shops. Alun Hughes designed the clobber for the second Peel series; again, some outfits were available retail, notably the catsuits that still excite fashionistas. No previous big- or small-screen entertainment had made such a direct transition to viewers' backs and few have dared try it since.
She returned to Queen in 1966, after Stevens fired Claire Rendlesham, who reacted by throwing a typewriter out of the window. Trehearne's contemporaries remember her daily arrival by taxi with pug dog and what editor Willie Landels described as an "unusual larky personality". Photographers as different as Helmut Lang, Brian Duffy and Norman Parkinson admired the humour and unconventionality. She looked fab in front of the camera, too.
After Stevens sold Queen, Trehearne became PR director for the Park Lane hotel, and supervised its successful rebranding. It was her last formal job.
· Anne Trehearne, fashion editor, born June 22 1925; died July 2 2006
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Anne Trehearne
Fashion editor at the forefront of 1960s style who transformed The Avengers look
Veronica Horwell
Tuesday September 19, 2006
The Guardian
When the comic strip Flook decided to satirise far-out fashion in the early 1960s, the artist Wally Fawkes and the writer George Melly took as a model Queen magazine with its cast of debs, plebs and proto-celebs. It was Queen, not Vogue, that first dispatched the new snappers to shoot swinging styles in gritty settings. The inaugurator was fashion editor Anne Trehearne, who has died aged 81. As her colleague Ann Barr recalled, Trehearne once refused to cover the Paris collections: "She said it was too boring; that was unheard of for a glossy magazine."
Article continues
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As was usual with Queenettes, Trehearne came from a proper background: educated at Roedean, she was evacuated to Canada in the second world war and joined the Queen as a fashion assistant in 1948, when it was a trad county-and-season ladies' publication. Trehearne, however, identified with the Chelsea set, and the art school and bistro crowd dressed from 1955 by Mary Quant.
Trehearne had risen to fashion editor by 1957, when Jocelyn Stevens bought the mag for £10,000 as a 25th birthday present to himself, dropped the "the" and brought in Mark Boxer as art editor. They liberated Trehearne from any remaining ladylike constraints, and published Quant's snaps of a friend modelling her designs, which other glossies derided as non-fashion. Trehearne's novel role was directorial; she put together outfits from a range of sources, scouted a location or devised a narrative with the photographer. Essentially it was the stylist's job; the whole tone had to come together.
Trehearne left Queen in 1962 to work as fashion consultant to the advertising agency Collett Dickenson Pearce. Television contacts from this work led in 1965 to the assignment that made her a heroine to generations of pop-culture students: she became fashion coordinator to the television series The Avengers. A minor London designer, Frederick Starke, had done the clothes for Honor Blackman in the first two series, in a striking, sombre style that borrowed from beat wear and Travis Banton's fetishistic concoctions for Dietrich's Hollywood movies.
The results had influenced what women wanted to wear in Britain and the US, and ABC Television (which made the programmes) agreed to the US distributor's demand to retain the black leather kinky gear for the next series, with actor Diana Rigg cast as Emma Peel. It was soon evident that the heavy leathers would have to come off; Mrs Peel already appeared passé.
Trehearne mediated between ABC and the new designer John Bates, proposing that Mrs Peel should have a wardrobe of 35 interchangeable garments plus accessories rather than a sequence of "costumes". She backed Bates when he refused to lengthen the miniskirts to soothe nervous executives and overrode the cameramen's querulousness about the op-art dazzle. She suggested that promotional pictures should be shot as on a fashion shoot.
Trehearne helped broker the arrangement for the entire Bates collection, down to stockings and target beret, to be manufactured for sale in the shops. Alun Hughes designed the clobber for the second Peel series; again, some outfits were available retail, notably the catsuits that still excite fashionistas. No previous big- or small-screen entertainment had made such a direct transition to viewers' backs and few have dared try it since.
She returned to Queen in 1966, after Stevens fired Claire Rendlesham, who reacted by throwing a typewriter out of the window. Trehearne's contemporaries remember her daily arrival by taxi with pug dog and what editor Willie Landels described as an "unusual larky personality". Photographers as different as Helmut Lang, Brian Duffy and Norman Parkinson admired the humour and unconventionality. She looked fab in front of the camera, too.
After Stevens sold Queen, Trehearne became PR director for the Park Lane hotel, and supervised its successful rebranding. It was her last formal job.
· Anne Trehearne, fashion editor, born June 22 1925; died July 2 2006
