Please allow me some time to reminisce. To mark one of the most important times in my life and I believe one of the most important in UK magazine publishing. The launch of Elle UK in 1985 may seem a strange landmark to mark and give the attribution of such importance but let me explain. For those of you who see fashion magazines as irrelevant shallow platforms for luxury brand advertising I think I may have something to teach you.

The Elle editorial team was drawn from the Sunday Times and Observer magazines as well as The Face. These experienced hands were joined by a group of young talents either still at art school or having just left. I was in my second year at St. Martin’s when I joined the team on the 6th January 1986. The first issue had hit the shelves in September of 1985. This was not a team of jaded fashion hacks, this was a team of bright, engaged, inquisitive, passionate people determined to make something different. And we did. Photographers? Well what about Toscani, Bruce Weber, Herb Ritts, Don Mcullin and Bailey to start with. Writers? Bruce Chatwin, Janette Winterson and Jan Morris aren’t a bad start. Plus young photo guns like Kim Knott, Pamela Hanson, Nick Knight, Steve Pyke and Andrew MacPherson. Features? Twenty pages on Andy Warhol and the same on Frieda Kahlo to name just two! Fashion? What about the first ever photographs of Naomi Campbell, plus the magazine birth of Claudia Schiffer, Helena Christenson and the Supermodel. Designers? Westwood, Galliano, Armani, Ralph Lauren, Miyake, Kenzo, Yamamoto, Conran, Comme des Garçons, Thierry Mugler and Bruce Oldfield all regularly featured in the fashion well. Elle was at the forefront of all things 80s culture and was not ashamed to proclaim that the new wave of designers, photographers, writers, musicians and culture shape shifters were not only important but essential.

This may seem like a huge bunch of hyperbole but if you were there you know that for a short period of time Elle UK under its brilliant anarchic editor Sally Brampton shone brighter than any other magazine in the 80s. The Face shone as bright as did ID magazine but not brighter they just shone for longer.

This is most of the team that launched Elle (That’s me ringed in grey). Unfortunately, Sally isn’t in the photograph. She was busy elsewhere. The size of the team and youth of those involved may shock those used to the small teams employed to make magazines today. What needs to be understood is how many of that Elle team went on to influence the following forty years throughout the creative industries both in the UK and US and that no computers or internet were available. Typewriters, knives, glue and copious amounts of wine were the order of the day. The launch team had largely dispersed by 1991. New management didn’t appreciate our anarchic approach and the magazine was never the same again. It lost its position as a market leader and its relevance dimmed as other magazines came to the fore taking on board those who had flown the Elle nest.

I know that this is a self regarding post but there is a reason for me to write this now. Forty years later a group of people from the original team came together on the steps next to the ICA on a Sunday morning to recreate that original photograph. We then decamped to The French House on Greek Street in Soho. Bottles of wine were ordered and the barman attempted to quiet us down to no avail. We were back in the Eighties when being quiet was not an option.

We hugged and spoke as if 1985 was yesterday. Our friendships reunited in moments. Laughing, joking, reminiscing and recognising the importance of friendship. And that is the point behind writing this article. Friendships in our industry are long and deep. The people we meet when we are starting out may well be the people we are still close to at the end. We will have worked with the same people, experienced the same highs and lows. Commissioned each other, passed on clients and shared in each other’s success. If you are of my age or close to it you will know this, however if you are just starting out you may not. I therefore pass on this experience as advice to you. Make friends, be nice and recognise that you have begun a long game and enjoy the moment.

As often happens as I sat on the train going home the words of Bob Dylan filled my head “Oh! I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.” If only that was the case…

In memory of Sally Brampton 1955-2016.

Dr.Grant Scott
After fifteen years art directing photography books and magazines such as Elle and Tatler, Scott began to work as a photographer for a number of advertising and editorial clients in 2000. Alongside his photographic career Scott has art directed numerous advertising campaigns, worked as a creative director at Sotheby’s, art directed foto8 magazine, founded his own photographic gallery, edited Professional Photographer magazine and launched his own title for photographers and filmmakers Hungry Eye. He founded the United Nations of Photography in 2012, and is now a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography (undergraduate and postgraduate) at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, and a BBC Radio contributor. Scott is the author of Professional Photography: The New Global Landscape Explained (Routledge 2014), The Essential Student Guide to Professional Photography (Routledge 2015), New Ways of Seeing: The Democratic Language of Photography (Routledge 2019), and What Does Photography Mean To You? (Bluecoat Press 2020). His photography has been published in At Home With The Makers of Style (Thames & Hudson 2006) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.

Scott’s book Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, Orphans Publishing, is on sale now wherever you buy your books.

© Grant Scott 2025