Lockdown does not mean dressing down for former Vogue editor-in-chief Alexandra Shulman. She is still enjoying her extensive wardrobe while holed up at home.
“I like to be comfortable in my clothes but I don’t tend to loll around in trackies and pyjamas,” she tells P.S.
When Shulman was appointed British Vogue editor-in-chief in 1992 there was speculation that she might not be experienced enough for the job and didn’t really look the part.
When the company chairman asked how much she spent on clothes a year, she said she thought it was about £4,000, which she admits was around triple what she normally spent.
She later discovered that the chairman had wondered if he’d hired the right person to edit the country’s leading fashion magazine.
Part memoir, part fashion history, her new book – Clothes…And Other Things That Matter – explores everything from the bra to the bikini, and the trainer to the trench coat.
Shulman, 62, also delves into her own life and work to look at how clothes intersect with the larger world, what she wore with each phase of her life and what she still holds dear.
It starts with a count of the clothes in her wardrobe in 2018 – 556 pieces including 34 jackets, 22 coats, and five full-length evening gowns. “It’s impossible to say which is my favourite,” she muses. “I have a pink satin coat by the Italian fashion house Marni that I love because every time I wear it I enjoy myself. It’s special.
“I have an old Gap T-shirt in a pale green that I have owned for probably 25 years which is still one of my favourites.”
And, while the anecdotes flow about how, during her career, she has mixed with artists, actors, poets, royalty and designers, she also reveals that from the age of 20 she suffered panic attacks.
“I began to suffer panic attacks when I was 21 at university,” she recalls. “I didn’t know what they were, but eventually my doctor suggested this was what was causing heart palpitations, dizziness, etc.”
With the first attack she couldn’t swallow, and admits she thought she was going to die. Today, she reflects: “Throughout my life, there have been periods when I have had them more frequently and others when, for years, they have gone underground.”
Was going into the cut-throat world of fashion a step too far then? “All big industries are very competitive and fashion is just the same as many others when there is a lot of money at stake, and when people care about what they are doing. I loved The Devil Wears Prada, but I didn’t recognise my own office in it.”
Since leaving Vogue, she says life has been interesting, and she has been enjoying writing. “But I have also enjoyed the fact I could be in my home more. Perhaps not ideally as much as I am right at the moment!”
Shulman believes the fashion industry will survive in the wake of Covid-19, but maybe more responsibly.
“There will no doubt be changes in the way that some people operate. Some of the massive travel and expenditure on promotional events might get cut back and I think most people would regard that as good.
“But we need clothes, we need the creativity of fashion. The industry was already taken huge steps to consider its sustainability and this crisis will feed into that.”
Alexandra Shulman Clothes…And Other Things That Matter, Cassell, £16.99
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