Alison Adburgham

Alison Adburgham (28 January 1912 – 23 May 1997) was an English journalist, author and social historian, best known for her work as fashion editor of The Guardian newspaper, a position she held for 20 years. Along with Prudence Glynn of The Times and Alison Settle of The Observer, she pioneered British fashion journalism in a broadsheet national newspaper; as a bylined columnist, influencing public perception of trends in clothing, the industry itself. She also wrote several books on social history.

Early life and career Adburgham was born Marjorie Vere Alison Haig on 28 January 1912 in Yeovil, Somerset, as the daughter of a doctor and an "unnervingly educated mother".

Adburgham could be disapproving of the foibles of fashion. Writing about the latest collection of hats by Reed Crawford in 1964, she said they "beggar description, especially his cocktail confections: high-standing exclamation pieces stuck through with monstrous hat-pins. Funnier hats have appeared in pantomimes, but not much funnier." In a 1967 interview with Mary Quant, reprinted in 2005, Adburgham grilled the "Swinging London" designer on the line between fashion and vulgarity, questioning some more permissive elements of the 1960s look and asking Quant, "Would you agree that just as there is brutalism in architecture... there is an element of brutalism in fashion today?"

Adburgham's 1997 obituary in The Guardian by Veronica Horwell stated she was not given to fashion excesses herself – describing her as wearing "rather Design Council style" clothes. A letter in response from Fiona MacCarthy said "Design Council approved" was an unfair description of her style, adding, "She turned up at a party of mine in the 1960s looking rather like a dissolute exiled Polish countess in claret-red velvet with cascading ruffles at the neck."

Alongside her career reporting on trends in clothing, Adburgham worked with the fashion industry, serving as a governor of the London College of Fashion. A Punch History of Manners and Modes, 1841–1940 (London: Hutchinson, 1961) Shops and Shopping 1800–1914 (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1964) Women in Print (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1972) Liberty's: A Biography of a Shop (London: Allen and Unwin, 1975) Shopping in Style. London from the Restoration to Edwardian Elegance (London: Thames and Hudson, 1979) Silver Fork Society: Fashionable Life and Literature from 1814–1840 (London: Constable, 1983) A Radical Aristocrat: the Rt. Hon. Sir William Molesworth, Bart., PC, MP of Pencarrow and his wife Andalusia. (Padstow: Tabb House, 1980)