British Vogue cover, April 1924. Courtesy of Vogue
Nearly a century ago, a lesbian couple took the helm of British Vogue, transforming the fledgling magazine into a tour-de-force of fashion, art, literature, and journalism. Dorothy Todd and Madge Garland masterminded it all, bringing the most luminous figures of the day into the fold; from Virginia Woolf, Edith Sitwell, and Gertrude Stein to Man Ray, Jean Cocteau, and Le Corbusier, the stellar line up of contributors was unparalleled. In conjunction with LGBT History Month in the UK (as well as the new exhibition Virginia Woolf: An Exhibition Inspired by Her Writings at Tate St Ives) we look back into this little-known chapter of queer fashion history.
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Our story begins in 1923, when Edna Woolman-Chase – Condé Nast’s director of the American, British, German, and French editions of Vogue – appointed Dorothy Todd to the position of Vogue editor in London. Hailing from Kensington, Todd, then 40, was openly gay and fully invested in women’s rights. As a figure in the Modernist movement, she was on a mission to transform Vogue from a fashion magazine into a journal of the avant-garde. “Vogue has no intention of confining its pages to hats and frocks,” surmised one 1925 issue.
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