House & Garden Celebrates Seventy Years of Enduring Style

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A trend bible for anyone with a love for interiors, House & Garden magazine is synonymous with the crème de la crème of home design. As an agency specialising in this industry, the pages of this much-loved magazine provide us with ongoing inspiration and go-to information on the most coveted products, brands and designers our there.

Landing on the shelves in 1947 as the Vogue House & Garden Book, this iconic standalone magazine was once bound to its glossy sister title with a flourish of silk ribbon once every quarter. Seventy years on, and battling against the threatening demise of the print industry, House & Garden remains to be one of the most acclaimed home interest publications in the UK.

The magazine launched cautiously into post-war Britain, with its inaugural Editor’s Letter from Antony Hunt. His words spoke of progression and regeneration in poetic fashion; “But now, phoenix-like from the ashes of war, the arts of peace are struggling to rise again. Men and Women are once more dedicating their minds and their energies to creation and to rebuilding. What could be better or more natural than that they should turn first to their houses and their gardens?”

House & Garden First Cover 1947
(Image: Condé Nast Publications)

Targeting both an affluent and aspirational audience, the magazine spoke, and still speaks, of luxury and timeless style. Offering an insight into the homes of the rich and famous, the likes of David Hockney, David Bailey and Valentino have opened their doors to the House & Garden photographers, showcasing the often lavish and inspirational interiors that represented their creativity. Woven in-between signature articles on classic design and high-class abodes, there are quirky features and playfully styled shoots that counteract the seemingly conventional. The magazine’s current Features Director, David Nicholls explains his process of delving through the magazine’s past issues and discovering this opposition of content; “Contained in the archive are signs of an affinity with the offbeat and the eccentric”, “As I flicked through the handsomely bound copies of old issues, I realised how ground-breaking the magazine had been, and how its pages are something of a social history spanning eight decades”.

The cheeky cover of the December 1973 issue and the May 1951 issue featuring
a preview of the Festival of Britain (Simon Vinall)
(Images: Condé Nast Publications)

The early content was both culturally and topically aware, tackling issues associated with its accompanying period, such as ‘the furnishing problem’ presented by televisions – a new addition to many a British home in 1953, and a few months later a feature convincing Britons of the benefits of showering as opposed to taking a bath. The 1947 launch issue also published an article named, ‘A Business Girl’s Flat – A Charming furnished home for one – on a strictly limited income’, which offered a cultural insight into the late 1940s single woman and her city home: “Her first stroke of luck came when a friend offered her an unfurnished flat in a large block in Chelsea. The controlled rent was 35s. a week, inclusive of rates, but exclusive of electricity”.

House & Garden 50s Home
(Images: Condé Nast Publications)

Maintaining its reputation as the matriarch of the home interiors publishing world, House & Garden continues to provide us with inspiring and provocative content, which encourages us to consider our homes as an important extension of our day-to-day lives, and an expression of our creativity. Emerging gallantly into the 21^st century with the launch of its online platform, HOUSE, like many other printed publications, the House & Garden brand has been savvy to advances in the digital evolution. With monthly pages views in excess of 4 million, the web platform for this publishing heavyweight has proven that the magazine’s dedicated readership has transitioned along with its progressive and culturally-aware content, ready for the next 70 years.

“ Many see Vogue as the jewel in the crown of publishers Condé Nast, but I like to think of House & Garden as the chintz on its pelmet. This is no bad thing. As the June issue points out, pelmets are staging a bit of a comeback – and chintz has always been fabulous.” David Nicholls