Town at EDO

All been a bit NY-centric here recently, so it’s back to the UK for a little bit of history. The recent Town/i-D/Vogue EDO event gives me an excuse to publish these classic front covers.

At the event, Anne Braybon fluently described the significance of the original Man About Town magazine, placing it against the social and cultural context of late fifties/early sixties London. It’s difficult now to imagine working in an environment that would allow the publication of such bold, simple covers, as the examples here demonstrate (thanks Paul for supplying them).

Robin Derrick followed Anne with an overview of a career that began at i-D, moved to The Face and on to creative director of British Vogue via Italian Elle and Arena. His time in the industry exactly mirrors the massive growth in magazine publishing and its associated industries – PR etc – and while he’s clearly benefited from that growth he made it clear he regretted that it was harder than ever to get celebrities to play ball. That said, if any title can ease that situation it must be British Vogue – I lost count of the number of images of Kate Moss that flashed across his screen. Derrick also offered the refreshing reminder that ‘we don’t work in fashion, we work in publishing’.

Not much response online but I did find this brief review. And here’s a link again to Mark Porter’s review of a previous version of Anne’s talk.

UPDATE: another review here.