Hilary Alexander, HFM’s editor-at-large, jumps up to make us a cup of coffee when we meet at her south London home. “The research took forever,” she tells us, of her debut book Leopard: Fashion’s Most Powerful Print, as she plunges the cafetière.
“I started by making a list of anyone I thought would have worn leopard, like Joan Collins, then I’d endlessly Google images of them,” she continued. “Also, I went to the National Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery, the V&A and the British Museum to research African tribes, Genghis Khan and the print’s history. I found that absolutely fascinating; because I didn’t know much about that part – it was fantastic fun,” she says, with a genuine enthusiasm.
Of course, Hilary had plenty of knowledge about the print’s fashion…
