Felicity Green, one of the most famous fashion editors of the swinging Sixties, is going back to work at the age of 83.
She will mentor fashion journalism students at Central St Martins, where she taught 20 years ago. The girl from Dagenham was herself totally self-taught.
She recalls the horrors of her first job at Woman and Beauty Magazine, telling People: “Having struggled up on the District Line I had to make the fires and walk the dog even before I made the coffee.” Finally landing a dinner invitation to the editor’s house a few years later, she found it was anything but a chance to mingle with the great and the good. “I had given myself one of the first Toni perms, and the editor wanted me to give one to Mary Wilson, who was coming with Harold, then president of the Board of Trade. While the great and the good had drinks, I did the perm in the bathroom and got a thank-you poem from Mary.”
Elevated to women’s editor at the Daily Mirror, where she became the first female appointed to the board of a national paper, Ms Green introduced Mary Quant, Biba and Twiggy to readers. Following her Mirror glory days, she ran the UK office of Vidal Sassoon. “We were kids together”. She then returned to journalism.
She helped launch Working Woman magazine and advised the boards of the Express, the Telegraph and the publishers of M&S Magazine.