“The Influence of Anthony Denney”: Authorship in the Production and Consumption of British Fashion Media in the Late 1950s

Abstract

This article examines notions of “authorship,” cultural “roles” and “position” in discourses of late 1950s British high fashion media. The focus of this discussion is the figure of Anthony Denney (1913–1990), a fashion photographer and interior decorations editor for British Vogue. This article, therefore, examines the position of the fashion photographer and his role as a “taste-maker” in the arenas of fashion, art, design and, in this instance, that of the modern domestic interior. It also addresses Denney’s work for the postwar British furniture company G-Plan, acknowledging the role that Denney played in this brand’s overt media image throughout the 1950s. In doing so, this article brings to the fore the ways in which modern design and avant-garde art were promoted and mediated within a range of overlapping spaces, including that of the domestic interior, the furniture showroom and retailer’s shop floor, and the representational space of the fashion magazine.