Brampton's back and seeing Red

Sally Brampton made British 'Elle' a force to be reckoned with. After 10 years away from magazines, can she work her magic on 'Red'? She talks to Jojo Moyes

When Sally Brampton announced she was leaving Elle back in 1989, the sound of beautifully made-up jaws dropping could be heard across the magazine world. The blonde, sassy über-editor had presided over one of the most successful launches in magazine history, turning Elle not just into a fashion magazine to rival Vogue, but into a branding phenomenon. When it emerged that she was leaving with no job to go to, the jaws dropped even harder.

Ten years on, Brampton has managed to send quivers through the industry again - by returning. At the age of 44, she has been appointed editor of Red magazine, charged with performing the same alchemy on Elle's sister publication.

In the confines of the Covent Garden Hotel, Brampton, looking irritatingly similar to her 34-year-old self, says her departure from what was then described as "the most desirable job in magazines" was not as abrupt a decision as it had appeared. "I'd launched Elle and did that for five years. We'd been through four changes of management and by that time the only person who knew everything about it was me and I was spending my whole time in meetings. I wasn't doing the thing I liked any more, which was editing." Getting up at 5am to work on her first novel, she was also exhausted. "I was 34 and I thought... I've got no dependents, no commitments - I could just take the risk."

So she leapt, became a successful freelance writer, and had four novels published. She also married (Carlton Television's Director of Drama, Jonathan Powell) and had a daughter, Molly, now eight. Periodically Brampton's name would pop up, either in feature-length bylines, or in connection with high-profile friends, such as Jasper Conran. It was, she admits, an enviable life. So what tempted her back? "I began to feel quite isolated. I freelanced for 10 years and for eight I loved it. Then in the last year two things happened - I hit a creative hiatus, the book was going nowhere, and I wasn't feeling well. It turned out I had an underactive thyroid (a condition covered in this month's Red)". When put on the drug Thyroxin "it was like someone giving me my life back".

Ian Birch, editor-in-chief of Emap Elan, had repeatedly tried to lure her back to magazines. But, she says, "there was nothing there for me. I loved American Vogue, but magazines for my generation were terrible. They were comfortable and cosy and didn't really inspire me. And newspapers, who were snooty about Elle when it launched, were now becoming women's magazines," she says.

She put it succinctly in a piece she wrote at the time: "No grit, no humour, no bloody style." But then Brampton looked closer at this gap in the market and "felt this kind of excitement... I suddenly thought: why not?" She wrote Emap a 10,000 word radical treatment of what was wrong with the women's market. "I came on really, really fierce, and thought, if they don't like it, tough." But they did. After a month of analysing the market, (and of sleepless nights wondering whether she'd acted in haste) Brampton took the helm at Red. Within two days, she said, "it felt like coming home."

"There was astonishment in the magazine world because I had been so adamant that I wasn't coming back. But a lot of them were very sweet. Alex Schulman (editor of Vogue) sent me a note saying "I'm very worried". Her new staff, who she has "rebalanced" rather than replaced, she describes as "incredibly positive. I think they'd felt pretty rudderless."

Launched in a blaze of publicity in February 1998, Red, while beating off rivals such as the now defunct Frank, has never really taken off in the way it should have done. Its detractors say that given its promotional spend, it should have done better than its ABC of 180,000. Brampton has shifted its targeted age upwards, to 35 plus, and away from the domestic sphere, such as the "my house is chaotic and my husband can't find the sock drawer" confessional columns towards harder, more intelligent and often political features.

This month's edition, the first to incorporate fully Brampton's ideas, features an interview with Tony Blair (an old friend), a polemic from newspaper columnist Suzanne Moore, and new regular features on technology and the arts.

"I think women are interested in politics - not necessarily in the way that politics is written about in newspapers, but I think they are interested in how Tony Blair views family in Britain, for example," she says. "I also felt very strongly that magazines were scared of the arts... but I think they are assuming women spend every weekend reading the review sections... they don't. They're too busy." The new Red also separates itself from its peers by consciously avoiding "parenting" articles. "It's 'me time' - the kid and the husband are not in there," she says. "Child conscious but not child friendly. I want something that feeds into me."

And she is beefing up Red Direct, the magazine's mail-order service, to capitalise on its brand potential. "When we launched Elle, everyone called it Ell-ie, yet within three years everyone knew the magazine. It's about doing the same here. Within the marketplace, unless you can do that, you're losing." Brampton, who says that she edits "by instinct and gut reaction", says Red should now be characterised by three key words: fast, useful, and glamorous. That, and an emphasis on superior writing. Her first edition features a piece by Bret Easton Ellis, author of American Psycho, on the death of political correctness, and future pieces are commissioned from novelists Kathryn Harrison and Rosie Thomas. (It's "mythology", she says, that good writers are expensive - they just need a lot of stroking.)

If anyone can fulfil Red's potential, it is likely to be Brampton. She understands the media world inside out, and she admits that much of the goodwill she now carries, from fashion and beauty houses, for example, is ascribed to the exceptionally strong launch of Elle. She also draws almost universal praise from other editors. (Colleagues in turn describe her as "straightforward but inspiring", "newsy" and "unprecious". Former colleagues remember her for a distinctly unladylike ability to "drink her mates under the table").

She does, however have to contend with the fact that the 35-plus age group have gone from famine to feast, with a plethora of rival launches, such as Eve Pollard's Aura, as well as longer-standing competitors, such as National Magazines' She. Brampton is pragmatic. "We're at 180,000 and I'd like to get it to 200,000. I honestly don't know how much we'll be hampered by the other launches. But I think my estimate is realistic - I don't overestimate the number of women of that sensibility."