The A-list once jostled for space on the front row, now it’s for a home tour with Architectural Digest. Stylist’s Meena Alexander meets the woman behind the phenomenon
When Amy Astley joins my video call from her glass office in lower Manhattan, it takes everything I have not to welcome her with a cheery, ‘Hi, AD!’ I’ve seen Gwyneth Paltrow do it, opening the huge Crittall doors to her Montecito mansion. I’ve seen Lily Allen do it, too. And Serena Williams, Kendall Jenner and Naomi Campbell. When you let the most influential voice in interior design into your home, shouldn’t you greet them accordingly? Astley can only see the rectangle of my east London flat that’s visible behind me – but, to be fair, that is most of it. I rearranged my bookshelves especially.
At 56, Astley is one of the most powerful women in publishing, overseeing a brand that’s more than a century old and has become a global household name under her editorship. She’s a less instantly recognisable face than her peer and mentor, Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, but her CV – and perfectly blunt fringe – are just as impressive. Astley worked her way up to be a director at Vogue during the fashion boom of the 1990s, before founding and editing Teen Vogue for 13 years. Then, in 2016, she accepted a job that raised a few eyebrows among her friends in the New York style set.
“Everyone was like, ‘Why would you go to Architectural Digest? Isn’t that for dentists’ offices and grandmas?’” Astley laughs. “They saw it as stuffy and old, but I saw nothing but potential. I knew it was a sleeping beauty, and I’d always been obsessed with homes and interiors, which is why Anna asked me to do it. I was ready for the challenge.”
She didn’t wait long to shake things up, creating a debut issue that was so off-piste the printers sent it back, assuming there had been a mistake. “I had six weeks to pull together my first edition of AD, so I just hardcore leaned into my fashion connections,” she says. “Marc Jacobs is a friend and I knew he had a beautiful apartment, so I called in a favour. I’m still thanking him for it now.” The result was a striking image of the designer’s bull terrier in his hallway, with the headline ‘Follow me @nevillejacobs’. Putting an Insta-famous dog on the cover sums up Astley’s professional mantra: move with the times and give the people what they want.
STAR POWER
In 2023, it’s impossible to deny her mantra is working. What was once a self-serious, slightly dreary magazine brand has become a cultural touchstone with 6 million YouTube subscribers and almost
