Nicholas Coleridge
STILL IN
FEATURES
VOGUE
N
icholas Coleridge looks very chic for a hoarder. At work, he is the guardian of 3 million historical artefacts, seven miles of museum corridors, and Elton John’s spectacles. At his Worcestershire home, Wolverton Hall, he is the collector of fashion photographs, 18th century Indian art, and every magazine he has ever published. All 4,000 of them. They’re grouped into 500 volumes, shelved in chronological order, and colour coded. Condé Nast Traveller is bound in green, Vogue in red, and GQ in blue. It’s an archive of his 32 years at Condé Nast – what he calls the “golden age” of glossies.
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When we meet at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), Coleridge, 62, is wearing a double-breasted suit, turquoise tie, and buffed leather shoes. His eyebrows dance mischievously across his forehead, and his grin makes you feel like you’ve been let in on a private joke. We walk through drifts of tourists to a passageway which leads to an elevator which leads to the members’ room. It has windows overlooking the red brick courtyard and a glass ceiling so long and so high it can only have been built by the Victorians. As we sit down and share a pot of tea (English breakfast), he discuss-
IMAGE: ZHOU ZHANG
After 27 years at the helm of Condé Nast, Nicholas Coleridge tells Megan Agnew about swapping glossies for galleries