Goodbye, Vogue House!

It's the end of an era in Mayfair. As our UK sibling relocates its headquarters, three former staffers recall office life, British Vogue-style.

GRACE CODDINGTON

I first visited Vogue House in 1959, when I was a finalist for that year’s model contest. My prize was to be photographed by some of British Vogue’s top photographers—Norman Parkinson, Don Honeyman, and Eugène Vernier. I met them all at a rather daunting tea party hosted by Audrey Withers, the then editor in chief, at the photography studios on the sixth floor (the Vogue offices were one floor below). In the same studios, by the early ’60s you might see David Bailey, Saul Leiter, Frank Horvat, and Helmut Newton, while in the café opposite Vogue House, Bailey was often joined by his mates, the photographers Terence Donovan and Brian Duffy— “The Terrible Three,” as they were known—who watched the wannabe models carrying large portfolios and dragging heavy bags in and out of the building. I’d walk past them intentionally, as did so many of those girls.