Alison Settle

She was the second child of Margaret (Maggie) Campbell Munro and Georg Friedrich Gotthilf Fuchs, Premier Lieutenant of the Landwehr and descendant of the Central European aristocratic family Monod de Froideville. Her older brother was the zoologist Harold Munro Fox. Settle intended to read History at the University of Oxford, and won a bursary to Somerville College, but was unable to attend because of lack of funds.[3] In 1914, she became engaged to the barrister Alfred Towers Settle, marrying him four years later in November 1918. Alfred died of tuberculosis in 1925, leaving Settle with their two young children Margaret and John. She never remarried.

In 1926, Settle became Editor of British Vogue, working for Edna Woolman Chase, the American editor-in-chief of the three existing Vogue editions, staying in her position for the next 9 years.[4] Under her management the magazine first employed influential writers including Virginia Woolf, Edith Sitwell and Vita Sackville West.[5]

Settle left Vogue in 1935 under strained circumstances, spending the subsequent year writing the book Clothes Line, published in 1937. In that year she also became the Fashion Editor of The Observer, retiring in 1960. A year after her retirement she received the OBE for services to the journalism of fashion.[6] She was also a fashion columnist for The Lady for 27 years until 1972, stopping after a serious accident in Paris. Settle's book Fashion As A Career was published in 1963. Settle had moved to Steyning (Sussex) after World War II. She died in Worthing on the autumn of 1980, at 89.[7]