They don’t make fashion editors like Hilary Alexander anymore. The former fashion director of the Daily Telegraph, who has died aged 77, was minted on hard news and punishing newspaper deadlines and came of age in the glory years of Fleet Street. Before the internet disseminated fashion news to anyone and everyone, editors like Alexander were the main source of fashion news for millions of readers and wielded huge power, especially during Fashion Week.

Newspapers were a boy’s club and fashion editors like Alexander were often the most high-profile women working on the paper. Alexander’s determination to get the scoop, was evidence of how hard women had to work to carve and keep their space on male-dominated national newspapers. Her terrier-like tenacity when in pursuit of a celebrity quote or a designer interview was only matched by her devotion to her 1M daily readers. Her reviews, often splashed on the front pages, were not as waspish as some commentators – she loved fashion too much to take it down – rather her skill lay in translating the joy, wonder and creativity of the catwalk to a broad audience. She was a natural broadcaster, never at a loss for words, and was a favourite commentator of mainstream channels and Style.com.

In the eighties and nineties, when every other fashion editor wore black, Hillary embraced maximalist colour and print (in 2018, she penned a book about her love of leopard print). Dressed in her signature boho dresses, jangling with tribal beads and feather boas, she cut a distinctive figure on the front row. With her glasses perched on the end of her nose, nodding her Louise Brooks bob in time to the music, she was one of the fashion’s big characters. Puffing on an ever-present cigarette or loudly encouraging her colleagues to have one more drink in the Principe bar before retiring to bed, Hilary was unstoppable.

During one New York Fashion Week, the lights at a Diane Von Furstenberg show fell from the ceiling and landed on her head but even this disaster couldn’t deter her from filing her copy. After a quick stop in the emergency room, she was back on the front row (driving between shows in a green Bentley, courtesy of DVF). Her energy was almost superhuman. She never seemed to get tired or suffer hangovers.

She joined the Daily Telegraph in 1985 and became its fashion director in 2003. She was held in such high esteem, that when she stepped down in 2011, Anna Wintour threw her a retirement party. Not that it was the end for Hilary, who was defined by hard work and enthusiasm. Alexander was awarded an OBE for services to fashion journalism in 2013 and became the honorary president of the Graduate Fashion Foundation in 2019.

Alexander started her journalistic career aged 16, in her native New Zealand, before moving to Australia and working as a reporter for the Ballarat Courier and Wollongong Mercury. The front row of Paris Fashion Week couldn’t have been more far away, but that’s exactly where her determination and energy propelled her.

@10magazineaustralia