Hamish Bowles

Hamish Bowles
Born 1963
Occupation Fashion journalist

Hamish Bowles ( /ˌhmɪʃ ˈblz/; born 1963) is the International Editor at Large (formally European Editor at Large) for Vogue and involved in the worlds of fashion and interior design.

Background

As the International Editor at Large for Vogue, Hamish Bowles is recognized as one of the most respected authorities on the worlds of fashion and interior design. After beginning as Vogue’s Style Editor in 1992, Mr. Bowles was promoted to European Editor at Large in 1995. His current role includes overseeing all interior-design features, writing profile stories, and covering fashion and contemporary culture, as well as the history of fashion and style for the magazine. Mr. Bowles also contributes to Vogue.com through his rubric “The Hamishsphere.”

English-born Mr. Bowles was educated at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design. Prior to joining Vogue, Mr. Bowles began his career at London’s Harpers & Queen magazine in 1984, working as Fashion Editor and rising to Style Director in 1989.

In April 2001, Mr. Bowles was creative consultant at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, with responsibility for organizing and mounting the internationally renowned and critically acclaimed Costume Institute exhibition, “Jacqueline Kennedy: The White House Years—Selections from the John F. Kennedy Library Museum.” In April 2002, this popular exhibit was reopened at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Mr. Bowles has spent the last year curating “Balenciaga: Spanish Master,” an exhibition on the work of Cristóbal Balenciaga for the Queen Sofía Spanish Institute in Manhattan. An expanded version of the exhibition, “Balenciaga and Spain,” opened at the de Young Museum in San Francisco in March 2011.

Works

Mr. Bowles has written for and contributed to countless articles, reviews, and books on fashion history, art, lifestyle, and interior design. His books include Jacqueline Kennedy: The White House Years (2001); Carolina Herrera: Portrait of a Fashion Icon (2004); Vogue Living: Houses, Gardens, People (2007); Yves Saint Laurent Style (2008); The World in Vogue: People, Parties, Places (2009); Balenciaga: Spanish Master (2010); and Balenciaga and Spain (2011).

His lectures include “The Dandy” (1984) at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; “The Newest Art” (1998) and “The American Century: America’s Fashion Ascendancy and Its Roots” (1999) at New York University; “Molyneux” (2008) at the Fashion Institute of Technology, New York; “The Line of Beauty” and “Yves Saint Laurent and the Influence of Christian Dior” (2008 at the de Young Museum, San Francisco); “My World in Vogue: Reporting and the Fashionable Life” (2010) at Savannah College of Art and Design; and “Balenciaga: Spanish Master” (2010) at the Fashion Institute of Technology.

Mr. Bowles has an extensive private collection of historic haute couture and fashionably significant clothes. He has lent pieces to exhibitions at several museums including the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Fashion Institute of Technology, and the Museum of the City of New York in Manhattan; the Palais Galliera and the Musée de la Mode et du Textile at the Louvre in Paris; and the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Museum of London.

In 1998 he had a cameo in Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon as a young David Hockney. In 2006 he had a cameo in Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette as a courtier. In 2010 Bowles appeared as himself on Gossip Girl Season Four and in Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.

He resides in Manhattan.

References