Elspeth Champcommunal

[4] She was a friend of Virginia Woolf – who called her 'Champco' – and the Bloomsbury Set artist Roger Fry, who helped her sort through her husband's paintings and would later stay in her home in the south of France.

[6] Champcommunal was in the Bavarian Alps with her two friends and the American journalists/writers Solita Solano and Janet Flanner at the outbreak of World War II and the group managed to return to London via Switzerland.

[8] Produced in Europe to bypass shipping restrictions and paper shortages, the British version was largely a reproduction of the American edition initially, but Champcommunal thought it important that Vogue be more than a fashion magazine and it later included articles on health and beauty, society and sport, as well as travel and opinion pieces.

An image of a Worth London outfit by Champcommunal, comprising pussycat-bow blouse and slim tailored suit, originally photographed by the Ministry of Information in 1945, remains part of the Imperial War Museum archive.

In 1949, Worth London designs featured in the lighthearted fashion-themed romance Maytime in Mayfair within a fashion show sequence promoting the work of IncSoc members.

Elspeth Champcommunal outfit for Worth London, 1945, photographed by the Ministry of Information to promote utility designs created by IncSoc members source: IWM