Ex- editor blasts ‘weird’ Naomi in glossy catfight
THE fur is still flying in the unseemly Vogue slanging match, I’m sorry to report.
The bust-up entered a new round yesterday when former editor Alexandra Shulman hit back at claims she ran a ‘ Sloanie club’ with a ‘diversity problem’ during her 25 years at the magazine’s helm, branding the accusations ‘offensive and upsetting’.
For weeks, the row has been thundering away between Vogue’s old guard and new editor Edward Enninful’s army of fresh ( and more ethnically diverse) faces.
Leading the charge has been Edward’s friend Naomi Campbell, who took Alexandra to task over comments she made that appeared to take a swipe at ex- stylist Edward’s suitability for the role.
‘I find it racist,’ said Naomi, a contributing editor of Vogue whom Edward describes as ‘one of the greatest models who has ever lived’. She went on: ‘It’s like a vendetta and it should stop. I take it as racial abuse.’
Now, in the week that saw Ghanaborn Edward unveil his first cover, featuring mixed-race model-ofthe-moment Adwoa Aboah, Alexandra has tried to set the record straight. ‘I am upset by accusations of racism,’ she said. ‘It was weird. Naomi is very vocal and she has chosen to take that view. I haven’t got a racist bone in my body. It does infuriate me.
‘I don’t think it is very becoming of somebody who is contributing editor of a magazine to slag off the previous editors.’
And on the issue of her former 54-strong, all-white team at the magazine, said to have been comprised mainly of ex-public schoolgirls, Alexandra added: ‘The idea that there was this posh cabal who were having a kind of tea party… when we made literally hundreds of millions of pounds as profit, I find offensive.’
Alexandra appeared to hint that there was a whiff of hypocrisy behind Edward’s decision to use Adwoa, who attended the £37,000a-year Millfield boarding school, on his first cover. ‘She’s sort of posh Notting Hill royalty,’ she s ai d, adding: ‘ We’d actually offered her the cover and she t urned us down when I was there… maybe she knew she was going to get this cover.’