Hamish Bowles experienced a message for longtime visitors of The Earth of Interiors. “I have not occur into this storied title to wreak egomaniacal havoc,” he reported, talking by cellular phone past week from the publication’s London offices.
Final slide, Mr. Bowles was named editor of the beloved decorating magazine, and this month, the to start with concern less than his steering hits newsstands.
After 30 decades at Vogue, serving as worldwide editor, writer and editor of the short-lived Vogue Residing spinoff, as perfectly as Anna Wintour’s consummate meal companion, Mr. Bowles eventually has a journal of his have to operate.
The second delivers with it a twinge of anxiety for the title’s 55,000 print subscribers, quite a few of whom appreciate how The World of Interiors has been resistant to improve.
Mr. Bowles is only the 3rd editor in its 41-year heritage. And in a print earth a great deal diminished by the brutal economics of the net, The Earth of Interiors continues to be a gorgeous physical item: printed on creamy 100-gram paper, fantastically photographed and designed, featuring an editorial combine that has retained its eclecticism, wit and notice to just about every term.
“Will The World of Interiors get a intestine reno less than Hamish Bowles?” New York journal questioned soon after Condé Nast, which publishes the magazine, appointed him final drop.
Perhaps that is why, in his debut editor’s letter and below in his initially job interview given that having the helm, Mr. Bowles struck a tone of reassurance.
Longtime lovers of the magazine will locate “a spirit of continuity and coherence,” he mentioned, “but maybe some surprises, which is inescapable, due to the fact I’m not Min and I’m not Rupert.”
Min Hogg, the founding editor, developed the magazine’s glance of previous-world bohemianism, together with its catholic solution (“everything from palaces to pigsties”). Rupert Thomas was her protégé, and edited the journal for the past 22 decades with intelligence, resourcefulness and a monastic devotion to developing just about every challenge. He skipped the social gathering circuit and stayed off social media.
Mr. Bowles, 58, on the other hand, comes with the type of celeb and huge personality that was as soon as common to journal editors, primarily at Condé Nast. A fixture on the worldwide social and manner scenes — and best-dressed lists — the foppish Mr. Bowles has curated an exhibition on Jackie Kennedy’s White Household a long time for the Metropolitan Museum of Art and escorted Sarah Jessica Parker to the Fulfilled Gala.
When he turned 50 in 2013, he threw himself four parties on two continents, including a supper in New York organized by Ms. Wintour to which he wore a customized 3-piece suit in sherbet pink by Ralph Lauren.
For proof of Mr. Bowles’s stature as a celebrated man of type, glimpse no even more than three of his apartments have been featured in The World of Interiors, including a Manhattan duplex intended by the business Studio Peregalli, which graced the include of the November 2014 issue.
As to how he arrived to be named its editor, Mr. Bowles said the tale is fairly clear-cut: Ms. Wintour questioned him.
“Only an editor with Hamish’s grounding in the historical past of design, the arts, architecture and trend could lead Environment of Interiors,” Ms. Wintour explained in an e mail.
Given that turning into Condé Nast’s worldwide chief content material officer in 2020, in addition to editing Vogue, Ms. Wintour has centered on the company’s electronic and international future. That is evidently her temporary for Mr. Bowles. “We are all looking ahead to him bringing his verve and mindset to WOI’s social channels and electronic projects,” she stated.
At Vogue, Mr. Bowles has been activity to check out new varieties of storytelling. He starred in a video series, “Vintage Bowles,” that had him procuring the earth for outfits, and Ms. Wintour cast him in brief clips that enjoy up his dandy image to comic impact, this kind of as one particular in which he shoots hoops with Amar’e Stoudemire. (Ms. Wintour referred to as him “a purely natural on video clip.”) More a short while ago, Mr. Bowles hosted the podcast “In Vogue: The 1990s.”
Now, like each and every other journal editor, he have to lure younger, electronic-initial people from TikTok, and create a thorough technique that goes outside of an interesting Instagram account or occasional video clip clip.
Mr. Bowles was not all that distinct about how he would make The Globe of Interiors 3., expressing only, “We’re in the extremely early stages,” and promising that digital material will be rolled out in a sturdy way in the fall.
But presently, the bare-bones website has gotten a makeover. The magazine is also starting off a weekly electronic mail publication this thirty day period.
“I could see podcasts with pillars of the journal and exciting voices from the globe of tradition and style,” he extra, “and movies as a way of amplifying print visuals of an natural environment.”
As incoming editors do, Mr. Bowles has also manufactured several new hires, amongst them Gianluca Longo, formerly of W journal, as type director Benjamin Kempton, a veteran of Wallpaper, as decoration editor Elly Parsons, a further Wallpaper alum, as digital director and Mitchell Owens as U.S.-based mostly editor, replacing the role held by Carol Prisant, who died last 12 months.
If the April challenge is any indicator, readers have to have not get worried that Mr. Bowles will muck it up. The tale combine, which features options on 1960s tropical modernism in Lagos a trend designer’s Bloomsbury townhouse a stunning Genoese palazzo lovingly restored and a pictorial celebrating wild garlic — is as eclectic and luxurious as at any time.
A New Age compound that the Italian American filmmaker Tao Ruspoli has made in California’s Yucca Valley has a youthful vitality to each issue and pics, when the Lagos piece, shot by the Nigerian photographer Amanda Iheme and created by Kojo Abudu, a critic and curator, is component of Mr. Bowles’s desire to carry “global visions and voices,” as he wrote in his editor’s letter, to a magazine whose lens can normally be Eurocentric.
Following 3 a long time of traveling all-around the earth for Condé Nast, and developing many of the house tales for Vogue, Mr. Bowles has an spectacular network of photographers and decorators to connect with on, and a mental listing of attention-grabbing homes that he may possibly someday aspect. Numerous of the stories in his initial situation came on suggestion from his good friends.
Mr. Bowles will keep on in his part as Vogue’s worldwide editor at significant. Continue to, he explained, the pretty precise environment of Vogue and its celeb-socialite topics are quite various from his new title.
“At The Planet of Interiors, out of the blue it is the earth of interiors,” Mr. Bowles claimed. “This incredible breadth of topic make any difference and substance is opened up. That is the DNA. You flip a site — or click on a mouse — and you’re in a totally distinct planet.”
