When FASHION QUEENS go to WAR

Catfights. Sabotage. Bullying... As a documentary exposes toxic rivalries at Vogue, why women are too often their own worst enemies in the office

MANY moons ago, when i was but a stripling, i had a notion that i might embark on a career in fashion magazines. i envisioned nothing more taxing than a few fragrant meetings, lunchtimes spent pushing a few leaves around a plate and the occasional heated debate on which shade of lipstick to endorse for spring/summer.

How very wrong i was. After landing what i thought would be a dream job on Vogue’s sister magazine, Tatler, nearly 30 years ago, i lasted precisely eight months — by the end of which i was on the verge of a nerv ous breakdown.

Never in all my years in journalism have i encountered such a vicious, toxic atmos - phere of bitchiness and backbiting as i did during my brief stint at Conde Nast, the - magazine’s parent company. The world of fashion magazines may look like so much froth and frivolity from the outside; but to work on a glossy magazine as successful as Vogue requires a core of cold, hard steel.

To remain at its helm for 25 years — as the current editor-in-chief, Alexandra Shulman, has — is a truly admirable achievement. it’s one that is marked tonight in the BBC’s Absolutely Fashion: inside British Vogue, in which we get a glimpse of what it takes to stay at the top for a quarter of a century.

in a nutshell, nothing short of total dedication, a meticulous attention to detail, the patience of a saint, the skin of a rhino — and the kind of ruthless pragmatism more normally associated with politicians or the mafia than with a group of people whose job essentially consists of choosing frocks.

What makes this all the more astonishing is that Vogue — like most fashion maga

TURN TO NEXT PAGE