Clare Marian McCririck, Baroness Rendlesham (1919-1987)
Clare McCririck was a serious mover and shaker within the London fashion scene in the late 1950s and 1960s, both as fashion editor and later boutique manager. As editor of Vogue magazine she commissioned photographer David Bailey and model Jean Shrimpton for a week long shoot in Manhattan which some say changed the shape of how fashion was displayed within magazines. This was the subject of the award winning British film “We’ll Take Manhattan” broadcast on BBC Four in January 2012, in which the late Helen McCrory played Lady Clare Rendlesham.
Jon McIntosh’s grandfather, Harry Bates Prussia, had a number of siblings, the youngest of whom was Clare Hill Prussia. (I’m not sure why she was named ‘Hill’. Her sister Ethel married Major Thomas Henry Hill, Senior Assistant Surgeon of the Indian Medical Department, in Simla in 1890, and he was a witness, possibly best man, at Harry Bates' wedding so I'm assuming that the families were friends within the Simla Scots/Irish community.) Clare married Edwin Godfrey Rivett in 1895. He had been a Cavalry Officer but in his obituary notice he was a director of a company which, I think, made rifles. They remained in India after partition, but she returned to England at some point after her husband’s death in 1940. She died in Lewes, Sussex in 1952.
She and Edwin had four children, the eldest of whom was Nora Muriel. Nora married Lt-Col Douglas Howard Gwyn McCririck in Ambala, India in 1917. He was born and raised in Wiveliscombe, Somerset where his father was the vicar of St Andrew’s Church. Douglas joined the Somerset Light Infantry and rose through the officer ranks. He retired from the Army in August 1944 and they retired to Bayswater, London but he died suddenly in 1947. Nora and Douglas had a number of children, the eldest was Clare, presumably named after her grandmother.
In 1947 Clare became the second wife of Charles Anthony Hugh Thellusson, 8th Baron Rendlesham. He had a daughter, Caroline Elizabeth, from his first marriage; Clare and Charles had four children, a son, and three daughters, of whom three are still living.
Clare became known for her eye for new fashion trends and bold choices as editor of Vogue and then Queen magazines. When she left the publishing industry, she became a boutique franchise owner. Rendlesham managed the first Yves St. Laurent, Chloé and Karl Lagerfeld shops in London.
From the online information about her I gather that she was not the easiest person to work for, and there are a number of reports of her throwing her typewriter out of her office window when she was fired as editor of Queens magazine. I’ve included a number of links below which give some indication of her personality. There are a number of photographs of her on the Web but most are copyright; the most iconic is that of Clare and her daughter Antonia walking next to the Serpentine lake, taken for Vogue by Norman Parkinson in May 1959.
She died on 30th January 1987, living in 62 Glebe Place, Chelsea. Her probate record valued her estate at £1,754,183. Her husband died in 1999. Jon McIntosh is her second cousin.
https://helen-mccrory.com/tag/lady-clare-rendlesham/
https://lineargrey.wordpress.com/portfolio/the-young-idea/