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PENNYMARTIN
Penny Martin is a London-based editor, writer and curator. For over a decade, she has been at the forefront of
modern fashion media, developing and executing award-winning online, curatorial and print projects. She is editor in chief of the acclaimed women’s magazine The Gentlewoman. Previously, she spent seven years as editor in chief of Nick Knight’s fashion and art website SHOWstudio.com.
In addition to her editorial projects, Penny consults to several luxury brands – most recently, H&M, Roksanda, Victoria Beckham and Giorgio Armani – and regularly presents at international conferences and symposia on fashion media. She has conducted public talks and live broadcasts with figures including Juergen Teller, Bjork, Margaret Howell, Tracey Emin, Viktor & Rolf and Vivienne Westwood, and she was one of the host speakers at Miuccia Prada’s pop-up women’s club, the-miu-miu in 2012. Penny has published many essays, articles and profiles and is a contributor to numerous magazines and newspapers including W, Fantastic Man and The New York Times’ T.
Prior to working in fashion, Penny started out in museums, as a curator
of photographs in the collections of The National Museum of Photography, Film & Television and The Women’s Library. Her specialism in historical fashion photography led to her appointment as editor of SHOWstudio.com in 2001. Over seven experimental years there, she commissioned and executed over 300 of the earliest interactive, motion and live fashion projects for the Internet. Penny collaborated with many of the most progressive figures in fashion and design, including Alexander McQueen, Peter Saville, Kate Moss, Hussein Chalayan and the estate of Erwin Blumenfeld among hundreds of others, winning a Webby Award in 2003.
In 2008, she left to become chair of fashion media at London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London, where she curated two major exhibitions during 2009: When You’re A Boy: men’s fashion styled by Simon Foxton at The Photographers’ Gallery and SHOWstudio: fashion revolution at Somerset House. Returning to the industry in 2010, she launched The Gentlewoman with Jop van Bennekom and Gert Jonkers, the founder-owners of pioneering men’s magazines BUTT and Fantastic Man, with whom she continues to work on the flourishing women’s title today.
ConsultingP enny has conferred her unique perspective to several brands and institutions, drawing upon her depth of experience in fashion, publishing and the arts. From crafting marketing and press strategies, to providing intelligent creative direction, to authoring internal brand strategy guides for clients looking to define their identity, and composing external language for clients to connect and engage with their audience through their content and marketing, Penny can consult on several levels of engagement.
Chole Attitudes Exhibition Catalogue
Palais de Tokyo, Paris. 29 September - 18 November 20123Worked with exhibition’s curator to produce press materials to publize the show and its collaborative and digital project. Catalogue by Penny Martin (excerpt on the right)
Pollini Exhibition
Museo Minguzzi, Feburary 2013Co-curated exhibition and catalogue; consulted on social media event and press
Presenting& Moderating
Miu Miu Women’s Tales Venice Film Festival
For the past three years, Penny Martin has moderated conversations between directors, actresses and artists for the Miu Miu Women’s Tales Venice Film Festival
2014, Miranda July and So Yong Kim
2014, Dede Gardener, Kate Mara and Felicity Jones
2015, Whitney Cummings and Sia
2015, Stacy Martin, Hailee Steinfeld and Julia Garner
2015, Agnes Varda, Alice Rohrwacher and Alba Rohrwacher
2016, Aska Matsumiya and Crystal Moselle
2016, Dakota Fanning and Juno Temple
2016, Grace Gummer, Ellie Bramber and Zoey Deutch
Hello, My Name is Paul Smith
15 November 2013 – 22 June 2014 DESIGN MUSEUM LONDONWritten for a BBC Art Fund filmhttps://vimeo.com/18259675
Penny Martin walks us through the exhibition celebrating the work of famed fashion designer Paul Smith titled Hello, My Name is Paul Smith at the Design Museum in London. With a curious eye and enthusiasm for the designer Martin gives us a brief history of the icon’s legacy. Martin hones in on details like colored buttonholes, to explain Paul’s impact on the fashion world –
Martin also highlights the ephemera from Paul’s personal collections, “And there’s also Paul’s creative life beyond designing the clothes. What make this show so unexpected are the most personal installations; his art collection, the fantastic window display for which he’s known, a re-creation of his famously chaotic London office.” Statements like this harbor a fascination with the exhibit’s less publicized components.Other parts of Paul Smith’s oeuvre are explained by Martin with the same emphasis on his vision, “What unites the many projects Paul Smith takes on is his common touch. Collaborations with artists are common in the fashion industry, but he prefers to partner with less elitist companies; more aligned with his personal more part cultural, and sporting interests.” Which she ties into the larger story of the designer and his visual cues, pointing out specifics like his signature colored stripes, “In this collaboration with Mini for example, he brought his color palette, that signature stripe that says Paul Smith to the icon British manufacturing design.” Martin’s ability to relay the finer points of the exhibition while still maintaining an air of adoration for the designer keeps the viewer engaged and excited throughout the video. Her design knowledge coupled with her congenial and warm disposition make Martin a great spokesperson for the museum.
“This military jacket, quite classical in its form and yet with the little details, the colored button hole for instance, a kind of code that they’re wearing something different from the men around them.”
The Glamour of Italian Fashion 1945 - 2014
5 April - 27 July 2014 Victoria and Albert MuseumWritten for a BBC Art Fund filmhttps://vimeo.com/183521082
“The show isn’t all about glamour and image though. Italian fashion has always promoted textiles and manufacturing, as much as its design. Technical expertise, ambition, and imagination all come together to create this, a 1972 ensemble featuring possibly the most famous textile pattern of all time. The zany palate, the graphic lines, it positively screams Missoni, the company known for making these amazing outfits to this day. By the 1980s, the bold designs of Italian fashion perfectly matched the glamour of the decade. The era of label conscious consumption was at its zenith. This Armani suit, it harks back to the one that was worn by Richard Gere in the 1980 film American Gigolo. It’s incredibly elegant, it’s very sophisticated and relaxed, and it was meant to reflect not only the elegance of the character that he was playing but also the economic health of Italian fashion of the time. This is the decade in which Italian fashion would come to represent success, cool, glamour, and above all, confidence.
What’s so surprising for this exhibition for me is that it doesn’t try to conceal the tension between history and modernity in Italian fashion. . Of course during turbulent times, the industry is going to fall back on its artisanal and craft brands. But for progressive thinking designers who are more interested in the working women, that’s standing in the way of progress. The glamour of Italian fashion is a fantastic legacy, but is it a great future?”
Today, the Italian fashion industry finds itself in a rather different position. Should its future be about modernity and innovation, or should it rely on heritage?
The John Edwards Lecture 2013
5 December 2013 Tate ModernModerated for The Architecture Foundation https://vimeo.com/82075179
On December 5th 2013 the Architecture Foundation held their annual headline event at the Tate Modern. The purpose of the event was to foster a trans-disciplinary dialogue between an architect and a peer of their choice. For this edition New York based architect Peter Marino invited fashion designer Marc Jacobs — the conversation was moderated by Penny Martin.
Writing
The Gentlewoman, Fall/Winter 2016
“The Crystal Ashtray” Text by Penny Martin
But to fill a fine ashtray with pennies would be to conceal its singular decorative identity and to mask the undeniable craftsmanship that goes into making one. After all, it takes a novice cutter at Ireland’s feted Waterford Crystal factory five years to master the crystalline wedges and lacy intrica-cies of an Apprentice Bowl. More importantly, to fiddle with the crystal ashtray’s function would be to undermine its unapologetic personality and to weaken its provocation to flout the rules.
“Telling me not to smoke makes me smoke more,” warned Ms Davis — a woman who seems to have owned an object for every occasion and known there is an occasion for every object.
Like the perfect pop song, the perfect swing consists of three minutes of pure pleasure, to which there is nothing to add. It’s far from being the best cardio workout, burning only 200 calories per hour. But swinging in the park at twilight – high above the trees, perhaps after a small glass of wine - who’s counting?
The Gentlewoman, Fall/Winter 2014
“Swings” Text by Penny Martin
Tilda Swinton must be an expert at entertaining. There seems to be a steady flow of guests who make the pilgrimage to her home in the fishing port of Nairn, in the northeast fringe of the Scottish Highlands, where she lives with her artist boyfriend, Sandro Kopp, and her teenage twins, Xavier and Honor. The gossipy taxi driver who picks me up from the tiny airport in Inverness – the nearest to Nairn – one brisk November afternoon says I’ve missed Viktor & Rolf by only a couple of days. The Dutch fashion designers have been friends with the Oscar-winning actress since she performed in their Tilda-themed catwalk show in 2003. And just a few weeks before their visit, Brad Pitt took time off from filming in Glasgow to pay his Burn After Reading co-star a house call (Angelina came too). So when Tilda draws up at my hotel in an aged Land Rover full of springer spaniels, wearing a corduroy hacking jacket, cotton breeches, swathes of muslin scarf and a very tall pair of wellington boots, it should come as no surprise that she has a fun day out in store.
“Oh, good, you’re wearing trainers,” she says, gesturing with one arm for me to clamber into the front seat while she restrains an eager puppy with the other. “I haven’t checked the tides, but it’s a fan-tas-tic day. I thought we could go down the beach for a walk.” The beach is the magnificent Culbin Sands, a vast strip of unspoiled shoreline along the Moray Firth. Extremely flat with the tide out, the Sands is a designated Site of Special Scientific Interest and an important nature reserve owned by Britain’s Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. Eider ducks, common scoters and ringed plovers are all ‘star species’ now at risk along this silvery coastline.
The Gentlewoman, Spring/Summer 2012
“Tilda” Photography by Alexander Huseby Text by Penny Martin
Snowdon, 2014
“A portrait at 83” Penny wrote a creative biography (excerpt above) and edited 22 pages where she se-lected the imagery to accompany her text, for the “Snowdon” book by Rizzoli.
“A conversation with Snowdon is always full of such twinkly self-deprecation and good-natured joshing. After sixty-three years in the public eye, jolly diversions are vital tools for fending off intrusion in a well-mannered way...”
Editing
The Gentlew
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The Gentlewoman
Fall/Winter 2011 Issue
Curating
SHOWstudio Fashion Revolution Exhibition
17 September - 20 December 2009Somerset House, Lodon, United Kingdom
When You’re A Boy
17 July - 4 October 2009The Photographers’ Gallery, London, United Kingdom
Press
“At Work With: Penny Martin, The Gentlewoman” Published on 10 March 2014.
It’s easy to understand The Gentlewoman in opposition to mainstream women’s magazines, but where do you look to for positive inspiration?
I think less about other magazine forms and more about the women interviewees as a starting point. Perhaps that’s a little disingenuous – obviously, I’m working with an extremely experienced and knowledgeable team and you only need to mention a typeface or a particular histori-cal shoot for everyone to immediately understand what you’re thinking. But there’s a strong institutional emphasis on not repeating either ourselves or anyone else and in not looking back (“yesteryear” is probably the worst insult in our editorial meetings) so you have to look to the little details of modern life for ideas about the way the people you are writing about live and think. You know, the piece on the folding coat-hanger in the current issue (above). That started as an unfortunate incident when my Celine blazer came back from the coat-check with a new hump where it had been slung on a hook. For me, that’s far more interest-ing than a piece about, I don’t know, the trend for floral patterns. That said, maybe floral patterns could be a great story if they were photographed close-up by brilliant pho-tographers like Maurice Sheltens and Liesbeth Abbenes, who often do our still life stories. You see? The most inspir-ing thing isn’t actually the clothes, for me it’s people.
The Gentlewoman is the first magazine you’ve ed-ited. Have you been enjoying the process of making a magazine?
I did edit a website, of course, which isn’t a million miles away and even curating an exhibition has some similarities to the process and hierarchy of information. But yes, there was a lot to learn and the early stages were quite nerve-racking; I am so respectful of the other magazines in our stable – Fantastic Man and BUTT – that I didn’t want to be responsible for besmirching the brand in any way by pro-ducing anything lacklustre or worse. I must say, I absolutely love it – working with such intelligent people is the best job in the world. But I don’t think I’ll ever feel completely at ease; I quite like the feeling that I haven’t learnt everything there is to know and the sense that we haven’t made our best issue yet.
The photography in The Gentlewoman has a stillness that is both arresting and reassuring(Portia Webb)
“Getting To Know Penny Martin, The Gentlewoman” by Kate Finnigan. Published on 17 February 2013.
Over a decade ago she did a PhD on 1980s fashion magazines at the Royal College of Art while working part time in the Fawcett Society Women’s Library, an archive containing the world’s biggest collection of women’s magazines. ‘I was a real specialist; I knew my magazines and I read magazines from cover to cover and I remember a time when they were less of a feel-bad experience,’ she says. ‘That feeling of closing a magazine and thinking, “I’m the wrong class, the wrong age, the wrong size, the wrong economic background, the wrong educational background.” You know, that crushing disappointment. And meanwhile the sound of shoes-shoes-shoes ringing in your ears,’ she says with a laugh. ‘Grim.’
...
She has captured a conversational tone in the magazine. ‘I think it is very important that you can hear the way women sound. I think women talk to each other very differently when men aren’t in the room and I wanted that sound of their voices,’ she says. ‘What I wanted to reproduce was that thing when women sit down and say, “God, I love that.”’ She mimes pulling at a jacket. ‘You know, they touch each other.’
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The Gentlewoman is the magazine equivalent of Slow Food. After some passionate debates, it is decided which of the most interesting, admirable women of the world will make it into each issue. As well as Beyonce, the new one features a characteristic mix: the Carry On film actress Fenella Fielding, the broadcaster Kirsty Wark, the designer Isabel Marant and the herb farmer Jekka McVicar. ‘I don’t think they realise what a thorn in their side we’re going to be,’ says Martin. ‘We spend almost the full six months with them, interviewing, reinterviewing, photographing and re-shooting.’
Her favourite profile so far - though you sense it’s like picking your favourite child - is Angela Lansbury. ‘She was on my list when I went for the job interview and I feel it was important for a number of reasons. To have a woman of her age on the cover of a magazine when it’s not an ‘Age Issue’, it clearly spoke to a lot of people. Also, my dad died in the middle of making the issue so it was a tough one to get produced. So that’s got a little personal story in it. But they’re all really personal because they’re about our taste.’
The editor in chief of The Gentlewomantalks fall fashion, her unexpected subjects and reimagining what working women wear.
“Indenpendent Women: Penny Martin” by Matthew Schneier.
A wise woman among frothy fashionites, Penny Martin came from the worlds of curation and academia before launching The Gentlewoman with Fantastic Man’s Gert Jonkers and Jop van Bennekom. (She also helmed Nick Knight’s groundbreaking showstudio.com.) Martin’s own style hews to the no-nonsense mold, but she’s quite happy to push the envelope in print, surprising readers with unexpected subjects (like Adele, her most recent issue’s cover girl) and new treatments of familiar themes.
Harper’s Bazaar: You’ve worked in other fields before and while editing The Gentlewoman. You were a curator, then edited Nick Knight’s fashion Web site, showstudio.com. How does that inform The Gentlewoman?
Penny Martin: It’s interesting. People often say to me, You’ve kind of gone backward; you were in online, and you
worked in museums, and you’ve done curatorial projects and advise on brands. But my specialty is and was imagery, or at least as far as a different project like The Gentlewoman. Actually, there’s a lot of parity in the way you approach all of those things. I’ve probably got quite an analytical approach to journalism, boiling it down to what it is. The approaches can be quite similar. It’s about having a really clear perspective and an idea of what it is you’re trying to say. I think that probably I approach curating an exhibition in the exact same way as doing a magazine. It’s just that the medium is different. You don’t revere the medium too much; you don’t get scared of it. It allows you to slip and slide across platforms, and I think that’s very important if you’re working in media today.
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