A fashionable life. Justine Picardie returns to Blenheim

Sitting quietly watching the Dior catwalk was Justine Picardie, editor of Harpers Bazaar, who was more gratified than most at the show’s unanimous success, having orchestrated the event herself.

Six years in the planning, Justine had chanced upon photographs of the last Dior show at Blenheim in 1954 during research for a book, and was determined to resurrect the event, persevering with her plan to re-merge the Parisian couture house with the English aristocracy.

“I found cuttings from The Oxford Times which proved that the show had huge audiences – 1600 people. It was big news. So I mentioned restaging the Blenheim fashion show both to Dior and the former Duke Of Marlborough.”

What grasped Justine’s attention further was an undeniable sighting of her in-laws quite at home in the trendy aristo crowd. Alongside the likes of Princess Margaret.

(Her new husband Philip Astor, also has a vast estate in Scotland (yes the parallels are uncanny)

“The fashion show was held by the Duchess of Marlborough in aid of the Red Cross and I thought it was such an amazing story, that such a quintessential Parisian couture house could look so at home amidst the aristocratic setting of Blenheim

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Palace and thought it would be a lovely thing to replicate and commemorate.”

Her fascination with Blenheim doesn’t end there. While researching another book ‘Coco Chanel the Legend and The Life’, Justine wanted to prove Coco’s enduring friendship with Winston Churchill, as his great pal was her lover the Duke Of Westminster, but where was the evidence?

She finally found what she was looking for in the Winston Churchill archives, records of the many happy times Coco spent salmon fishing on the Duke’s Scottish estate, with none other than Winston himself.

Suitably dressed for the occasion in tweed, Justine is convinced that Coco’s Scottish fishing trips massively influenced the famous French fashion designer, and that her iconic Chanel jacket, is but one example.

“Coco introduced tailoring usually associated with the English aristocracy and translated it into her designs for women, giving them a sartorial dignity not evident before then. But she also did away with corsets and petticoats, introduced trousers and turned tweed jackets into beautiful items of clothing, so it’s an interesting story and and one I will be discussing at Blenheim this week.”

Justine is giving extensive talk on the subject at Blenheim Palace Festival of Literature, Film and Music on Saturday and is the keynote speaker at the opening dinner tomorrow, which at £150 a head has already sold out.

Picardie’s fashion origins were perhaps less stately, but equally as vivid, her mother marrying in a little black dress, and dressing her daughter in designs she copied from fashion magazines with material bought in Liberty’s. “My mother insured that I had an innate sense of the possibilities of fashion and clothes,” Justine agrees. “But for me it’s as much about the people behind the clothes. Take the little black dress; that is as much a story of Coco Chanel who introduced it in the wake of her own heartbreak after Boy Capel died, amid the many women wearing black and in mourning post WW1. It is the emotional subtext that brings that story alive.

“I love the research part. It’s like going on a treasure hunt. So when I went through the Winston Churchill archives, it was only a hunch.”

Justine’s storytelling bent suits Harpers and Town & Country, both literary champions of new stories. “There is an extensive literary legacy running through both magazines which I am very proud of. I see my role as taking care of that legacy for the next generation which is a wonderful challenge,” she adds.

A daunting one though? “I saw it as scary and exciting, daunting and challenging, but when I took on the editorships I was in the right place. My two sons (from her former marriage to musician Neill MacColl) had left school, one had left home (her eldest is Bombay Bicycle Club’s Jamie MacColl) and I had more scope to be totally involved. I know lots of working mothers do a brilliant job but I’m not sure I could have done it before then.

“And I was 50, had edited magazines in the past so I knew what I was letting myself in for. I was a grown-up and had a lot of experience to bring to the job,” she smiles.

Picardie’s historical interest is still unusual in an industry usually so preoccupied with the future and what’s next. “Personally I don’t think we can understand where we are going if we don’t know where we have come from, and that’s what shapes the future.”

And while she peruses the archives, Justine also travels around the world interviewing the most famous contemporary fashion designers in their homes in some extraordinarily revealing and intimate conversations with the likes of Georgio Armani and Karl Lagerfeld at home. “It was a great privilege to interview them myself,” she admits “and for that I feel incredibly lucky.

So does she worry about her magazines’ future in the wake of the print-phobe technology revolution?

“It’s like saying that because of fast food no one wants to go to a decent restaurant or cook at home. It’s just not an either/or scenario,” she says.

“The luxury end of the print market is surprisingly buoyant because the product is different to what you will find online. Obviously we have a high social media profile, but the magazines’ physical form has real power so is proving remarkably resilient.”

As for coming back to Oxfordshire, Picardie grew up here as a child so knows it well, presumably where her fascination with Blenheim began and even her thirst for knowledge.

“My father was a sociology professor at Pembroke and we lived in Jericho. I went to Bishop Kirk School in North Oxford and then Cambridge to do English so wasn’t there for long, but I loved it, Oxford is such a charming place.”

Blenheim Palace Festival of Literature, Film and Music runs from October 13-16. blenheimpalaceliteraryfestival.com