Sheila Scotter

Sheila Winifred Gordon Scotter, AM, MBE (2 December 1920 – 6 April 2012) was an Australian businesswoman. She was a fashion designer and founding editor of the Vogue Australia magazine. She also founded the Vogue Living magazine. She was famous for always wearing black and white clothing and leaving her hair silver. This earned her the nickname, the Silver Duchess. She was honoured for her journalism and her fundraising for opera.

Sheila Scotter was born in Calcutta, India to parents Harold and Winifred. Harold was a former soldier who had fought alongside T. E. Lawrence and now worked for the Bengal railways. She had two brothers. From the age of 4 she boarded at St Swithun's School, Winchester, England, and saw her parents only once every four years, although she had more frequent contact with her grandparents.

After leaving school, Scotter entered the fashion world as a model, working for people such as Hardy Amies. She came to Australia in 1949, basing herself in Melbourne. She worked as a high fashion buyer, promotions director, and Director of Condé Nast Publications before becoming Editor-in-Chief of Vogue Living and Vogue Australia 1962-71.

She was known for her radio programs (Sheila Scotter's Letters from London on 3AW in the 1970s) and newspaper columns (235 instalments of Sheila Scotter Suggests in The Australian Women's Weekly 1975-80; columns in Melbourne Living from 1982). Her Bedside Cookbook was published in 1980. She was a panelist on the TV program Beauty and the Beast.

She was a member of the board of Opera Australia 1969-72, and the board of the Victorian State Opera 1980-83. Scotter was Foundation Vice-Chairman of the Victorian State Opera Foundation 1982-88, and Chairman of the Dame Joan Hammond Award 1988. She was considered a formidable fund raiser for artistic and other causes.

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