Julie Summers: Dressed for War – the Story of Audrey Withers

Hold Onto Your Hope, Hold Onto Your Hat

What lessons might a Somervillian who lived and worked through the darkest days of World War Two share with us? Julie Summers, author of a new biography of Audrey Withers, joins us to give the question some thought.

Audrey always put her ability to cope in difficult situations down to the experience of Oxford’s tutorial system.

Over the past few months, I have been asked many times what Audrey Withers’ reaction to the current crisis might have been. Having given the question so much thought, it occurred to me that I might usefully compare these two historic crises,1940 and 2020, with a view to understanding what lessons one of Somerville’s most indomitable alumnae might have for us.

For those unfamiliar with her life, Audrey Withers (1924, PPE) is most famous for her role as the editor of British Vogue, a position which she held from 1940 to 1960. During her long tenure at the helm of the world’s most prestigious fashion magazine, she had to cope with a world war, the death of a king, the coronation of a new queen, the Festival of Britain, and more tantrums among her star contributors than most theatre directors suffer in a lifetime - plenty of material, in short, for developing the kind of stoicism and resourcefulness of interest to us as we weather our own historic crisis.

But let us remain with Audrey in 1940, not long after the government closed down the country, banned all public gatherings, sporting events and race meetings, shut all theatres and cinemas and forbade meetings of more than 100 people anywhere except church – all of which sounds very familiar to our 2020 ears.

Let us, perhaps, be even more precise, and place Audrey at the beginning of the Blitz, days after she has been named editor of Vogue, when nightly air raids and daily warnings disrupted life in so many ways.

Audrey wrote an article about living under those conditions for American Vogue. She described how every night she and her editorial and art staff packed up a large laundry basket with all their ‘treasures’ in case of an air raid, and every morning the basket was unpacked and work began again. ‘If the siren goes, work goes on until the alarm warns that planes are overhead or that guns are firing, with the result that we now take shelter less frequently but more rapidly.’

I find in here a hint of how, in the very early days of the Blitz, much like our own crisis, there had been a touch of panic. However, by early October, when she wrote this article, people had got used to the bombing.

“We grab work and paraphernalia, descend six flights of stone stairs to the basement. We look as if we are going on a peculiar picnic: coats slung around our shoulders; attachécases with proofs, photographs, layouts, copy, mixed up with gas-masks, sandwiches and knitting. The Art Department men carry under one arm a stack of drawings and layouts; and under the other, a stirrup pump, a pick axe or a shovel. It’s a peculiar picnic all right.”

Above: Fashion is Indestructible by Cecil Beaton, June 1941 © The Condé Nast Publications Ltd.

Left: Audrey Withers by Cecil Parkinson, 1944 © Norman Parkinson Archive

The Board of Trade published nearly 200 notices in one year on the subject of women’s underwear alone.

Another clear similarity is that during the war, and especially the Blitz, staying positive was vital – and there were many ways in which to maintain one’s morale. In Audrey’s case, it seems her main defence was a combination of scrupulously high standards and the gallows humour that she shared with her fellow Londoners. During long sessions in the bomb cellar, for example, Audrey always maintained impeccable nail varnish and was rarely seen without one of her beloved hats.

As for the humour, Audrey described in the same article how, when she and her colleagues arrived at the office each morning, they habitually greeted each other with ‘What kind of night did you have?’ At which point, each person would share his or her grisly experiences of the night before for the amusement of the others. ‘A feeble joke makes us laugh, and we’re glad of the chance to laugh at anything; and on the other hand, you get oddly insensitive and callous, and are amused by incidents that normally you would have found macabre.’ She concluded the article by saying that they lived day to day, not looking too far ahead but always trying to be organised and practical. Audrey’s wartime experiences also suggest that heroism is not necessarily essential in coping with this sort of crisis – but that courage, however painfully acquired, is. Audrey was not instinctively brave like her fearless photojournalist, Lee Miller, who worked for her on the ground in Nazi-occupied Europe. But she became brave through sheer hard work and a determination to keep going under any circumstances – and she was organised. Left-leaning, highly intellectual and always outspoken, she was not naturally interested in fashion – but she made herself a good judge of it.

Another aspect of her personality was a deep and furious dislike of cheating of any sort. She railed against people who bribed shopkeepers to give them a little bit extra over the ration and she despaired of Vogue readers who cheated with their clothing coupons. I suspect she would have had something to say about panic buying and, worse still, the scalpers who cleaned out supermarket shelves in the early days of lockdown, then offered the products for sale at a higher cost. ‘Spivs’ are what those people were called during the war and Audrey despised them.

Audrey working in the bomb cellar of One New Bond Street in October 1940. As usual, she was wearing a hat. | © The Condé Nast Publications Ltd.

Just as we are today, so was Audrey overwhelmed by government advice. During the war it was called propaganda and it was sometimes issued three or four times a day. The Board of Trade published nearly 200 notices in one year on the subject of women’s underwear alone. The ministries of food, agriculture, health and so on were equally busy bombarding editors with information. Audrey had to decide what to publish in Vogue, a monthly magazine, and what could be ignored as it had already been dealt with by the daily press.

By the end of 1940, when London had been bombed for 56 nights consecutively, Audrey could be proud that she had managed to get the October, November and December editions of her magazine out almost on time. November had been two days late and December just one. One of her staff, Audrey Stanley, wrote to Condé Nast describing how they had coped during those difficult months:

“We went through such a transitional stage and we did not know exactly what to strive for, as everything was so precarious, and atmosphere and feeling were as fickle as the wind, but now I really think a comprehensive pattern has come out of it all. Audrey Withers is a remarkable person. She has such balance and tact and we all admire her enormously, as being editor just now must be a difficult job.”

As the war progressed, Audrey became more confident in her role as editor and more impressive in the way she coped with the pressure. In 1944 the President of the Board of Trade, Hugh Dalton, described her as the most powerful woman in London. With her editorial style firmly established, Audrey Withers would go on to edit British Vogue until 1960.

Audrey always attributed her ability to cope with difficult situations in her capacity as editor of Vogue down to the experience of Oxford’s tutorial system. She said later: ‘One is out in the open and compelled to draw on one’s powers. Intellectually, it is the equivalent of a sports training and equally necessary to get good results.’ There is no doubt she drew on that training and the experience of her three years at Somerville when things got tough at Vogue.

If we can draw a single lesson from Audrey’s strategy for coping in difficult circumstances, I suggest it would be to keep calm, draw on your inner strength and play fair. And, if you fancy, wear a hat.

A post-war Vogue spread (June 1957) by William Klein © The Condé Nast Publications Ltd.

Dressed for War: The Story of Vogue editor, Audrey Withers, from the Blitz to the Swinging

Sixties by Julie Summers is available now from Simon & Schuster. Dressed for War has also been optioned by Gaumont for adaptation as a television series.