THE DRESSING GOWN

In 1992 when I was appointed to edit Vogue, Jonathan Newhouse, then chairman of the company, asked how much I spent on clothes in a year. I had no idea. It was a calculation I had never even thought of doing but I was pretty sure that, whatever the sum was, it would not sound very impressive to him. This was not a company where thrift in matters of personal appearance was rewarded. So I told him that I thought it was about £4,000, which was probably around triple what I truly spent.

Only later did I learn from my immediate boss Nicholas Coleridge that it was at this point that Jonathan wondered, no doubt not for the last time, whether he had hired the right person to edit the leading fashion magazine in the country. Somebody who, as he saw it, spent such a paltry amount.

A 1992 newspaper cutting announcing Alexandra’s appointment. ‘I rushed out to buy this Lolita Lempicka jacket; I thought it was the kind of thing a Vogue editor would wear’ pockets. It felt protective but also soft as a cloud.

In the early autumn of 2016 I had set off to the Suffolk town of Aldeburgh to move into a flat I had rented overlooking the North Sea. I had just finished the heavy lifting involved in British Vogue’s 100th anniversary year: an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, a book, a fashion festival, a BBC TV documentary, a gala dinner and a special centenary issue.

After all this exhilarating activity, life seemed a bit flat, and I was searching for something different, although I had no idea what. I had plans to write poetry, paint bad watercolours and just be me.

On the first morning, I wrapped up in the dressing gown, made a pot of coffee, poured it into a Thermos and walked with it across the road on to the shingle beach, where I sat watching the sun rise above the sea. Glorious.

I wore it to walk to the beach for freezing but invigorating morning swims and to scuttle back to the warm flat. Sometimes I wore it to cycle down the high street to buy the morning papers. It was what I reached for when I woke, pottering first into the kitchen with the portable radio and then into the sitting room, where I could spend hours studying the gulls nesting on the tiled roofs.

Aldeburgh was where I realised that what I was looking for was in fact a new life, and for that I must leave Vogue after a quarter of a century. It was where one morning I woke up and realised that the future without Vogue was not the dark and frightening place I had previously thought but a bright, empty space ready to be filled with new adventures.

Three months after arriving in Aldeburgh I resigned and about six weeks after that, in late January 2017, I was allowed to announce the news to my staff. I was terrified of that moment. It was like abandoning a family. It was, though, nearly four months more until Edward Enninful was announced as my successor.

By spring another dressing gown, in a thinner cotton with a blue and white African block print, had replaced the plaid for my Aldeburgh mornings. Both my boyfriend David and I