New Harper's Bazaar editor Justine Picardie is no devil in Prada

She drinks tea, wears Uniqlo and takes the Tube to work. Justine Picardie, new editor of Harper’s Bazaar, is no ordinary fashion editrix, says Maxine Frith
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Maxine Frith28 November 2012

Justine Picardie is trying to come up with her perfect shopping spree in London, and cramming all her favourite destinations into one day is proving somewhat difficult.

“Well, if it’s clothes, I do love Chanel … but then if I needed to buy jeans or a T-shirt it’s normally Gap … oh, but then I’d probably start off in Crouch End buying food … and I love Hampstead, but then I’d want to go to Harvey Nichols because my friend Paula Reed is now fashion director there,” she says, reflecting her eclectic tastes and love of the city in which she has lived all her life.

Today’s outfit is testament to her style. She may be the new editor of Harper’s Bazaar — her first issue is out on Monday — but 51-year-old Picardie is not a wear-it-once fashionista.

“This is my uniform,” she laughs, drinking tea from a mug in her offices off Carnaby Street and name-checking her “ages old” black Chanel jacket, faded skinny jeans by Jil Sander for Japanese chain Uniqlo, striped shirt from Made in Heaven and Jimmy Choo shoes.

“I love fashion but I also like being able to throw this on. I’ve got jackets from Chanel that I bought 15 years ago and I’m a big Dior fan, but Reiss and Whistles are fantastic for things like a really good silk shirt — Britain has such a great high-street scene.”

Can the capital still compete with Paris, New York and Milan?

“Oh yes, it’s better than ever. There is an amazing energy around London, with people such as Christopher Kane, Jonathan Saunders, Simone Rocha and all the people coming out of places like Shoreditch.

“The interesting thing about London Fashion Week is that people used to say it was creative and interesting but that it was always chaotic and not very commercial. This year it was phenomenally well organised and yet it kept that buzz.”

All of which makes her excited about her new job. It’s the culmination of a career that has taken in newspapers and Vogue, as well as writing books on subjects as diverse as life after death, Daphne du Maurier and Coco Chanel.

Sample-size petite she may be but she is friendly in a way that’s unusual for the fashion industry — and the contradictions don’t end there.

The born-and-bred Londoner now divides her time between her Crouch End home and her new husband Philip Astor’s vast Tillypronie estate in Scotland, where she will be celebrating Christmas this year with her two adult sons from her marriage to musician Neill MacColl.

She and Astor were married at the Aberdeenshire estate in July this year (she wore Chanel, he a kilt) and after her divorce from MacColl, she is happy and content with life.

“I’m never going to be one of those people who says they’re bored with living in London — I love it — but I think it makes me appreciate the wildness and beauty of Scotland more because I’m not used to it,” she says. For Picardie, London is a city of memories. Her parents met and fell in love at first sight when her father was appearing in A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre in 1963.

They were married just weeks later and the little black dress her mother wore, made up from a Chanel pattern by a Hampstead dressmaker, later became one of the staples of Picardie’s own wardrobe.

She was born nine months after her parents married and her sister Ruth three years later, with the family moving from Hampstead to Marylebone High Street. The area still makes her feel connected to Ruth, who died at 33 from breast cancer, leaving two children.

She says: “The other day I had a facial at Vaishaly’s nearby — I was walking back through Paddington Square Gardens and it just reminded me so much of Ruth because we used play on the swings every day.

“In my memory, every day seemed to be a summer’s day, having a picnic in Regent’s Park with Ruth and feeding the ducks. Then when both our children were little we used to take them to feed the ducks, so there is this sense of her when I’m there.”

Her mother was a stylish woman who imbued her own love of fashion in her daughters. “I get the Tube to work each day and then walk past the Liberty store, which reminds me of my mother because she used to go there and buy Tana Lawn remnants to make us clothes,” she says. “She was a very good seamstress. When I was little she made me this crocheted silver skirt using lurex thread which I loved. As I got older it got shorter and shorter — it started off well below the knee and then I became a punk with blue hair and wore it as a tiny mini-skirt. I must have worn that skirt from the ages of five to 18!”

She is still close to Ruth’s children and clearly adores her own sons — Jamie is the guitarist with the band Bombay Bicycle Club while his younger brother has just left school.

Clothes shopping aside, Picardie is a north London girl. A recent weekend involved going to the farmer’s market at Alexandra Palace with her son. If she’s out for dinner with her sons she’ll head to Banner’s, a Crouch End institution, but if it’s a night out with long-term friend Annie Lennox her favoured haunts are the Reading Room restaurant at Claridge’s or The Wolseley.

So will Harper’s change much? She says she wants to honour a reputation for featuring great writers. Already commissioned is one of her favourite authors, Susan Hill, for a future issue.

“I think our readers are grown-ups, they are a range of ages, they are intelligent, they don’t want to be talked down to and they are interested in a wide range of issues.

“My sister was very much a feminist and in a way I’ve pursued a different career path going into fashion journalism, but I think magazines like Harper’s can be inclusive and celebrate women. I like the word sorority, the idea of sisterhood.

“I don’t want to be a tyrant.”

Picardie is anything but.

An exclusive look at Picardie’s first Harper’s Bazaar issue, out Monday.

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