Molly Parkin, Welsh painter, journalist, novelist and turban-clad muse to generations of style-worshippers. Painted by Darren Coffield, she was besporting herself at the National Portrait Gallery during 2010
MOLLY PARKIN 3 FEB 1932 – 5 JAN 2026
❚ SO SAD TO HEAR OF MOLLY’S PASSING AGED 93. She was my first great mentor when I joined the avant-garde magazine Nova in my first professional job… and in 1973 was able to give her an uninhibited weekly interview spot in the trend-setting Saturday edition of the Evening Standard which rattled the window panes!
In the 1950s Molly Parkin passed through Goldsmiths and Brighton art colleges painting and teaching. As a painter she enjoyed sell-out exhibitions up to the day she threw out her husband Michael and gave up art for the next four decades. From 1965, she became an arbiter of Swinging 60s style as fashion editor of Nova – one of the six postwar magazines that changed the face of British publishing. She liberated fashion journalism from the tyranny of high society, moving on through Harpers & Queen and The Sunday Times to create visionary images with a rising generation of photographers such as Peccinotti, Duffy, Sieff and Feurer. Simultaneously she was running her own Chelsea boutique and Belgravia restaurant while unwittingly inspiring the cub who set out as a trainee on Nova and would one day create Shapers of the 80s.
In the 1970s, as well as being a chat-show celebrity and libidinous novelist, she wrote for Men Only and Spare Rib, plus an interview in the Saturday Evening Standard, indulgently edited by Yours Truly, selecting candidates from her eccentric circle of hedonist friends, among whom Rose Lewis the Knightsbridge corsetiere was but typical.
In the 80s she became an honorary Blitz Kid, compered the Alternative Miss World contest, threw decadent parties every Saturday night in Chelsea and toured a solo stage show. In the 90s she had a facelift and wrote a sensational autobiography called Moll. In the Noughties she returned to extremely vibrant painting and hosted a clubnight at the Green Carnation as a Granny deejay.
In 2010, she was cover-girl on the launch issue of Eulogy, a short-lived(!) magazine dedicated to dispelling the taboos surrounding death. Her memoirs Welcome To Mollywood were published that October. Meanwhile she was exhibiting herself at the National Portrait Gallery, London, in the annual BP Portrait Award show on the noble canvas, above, by Darren Coffield, a painter and gallerist closely associated with the emergence of the Young British Artists (YBA) movement.
OBITUARIES
➢ Guardian: Artist, writer, fashion editor and raconteur whose bohemian lifestyle inspired her bonkbuster novels
➢ HeritageArtHouse: Paintings were her first
and last love – super-aware of emotion in a landscape
➢ BBC News: Parkin was fashion editor of Nova
and Harpers and Queen
➢ Independent: Fashion editor and Swinging Sixties icon
➢➢ Shapers of the 80s ➣➣ 