My style secrets from 25 years of editing Vogue
Twenty-five years ago, when i learned that i had won the coveted job as editor of British vogue, the first thing i did was rush to the shops and buy something new to wear. yes, i had clothes, many of them, but nothing that i felt was right for this big role.
what did i buy? A black wool jacket with shoulder pads and zips all over the place and a tight pencil skirt. i thought they would make me look like the right kind of person, whatever that person might be.
But they didn’t succeed. i neither looked nor felt as i wore them like the person the world imagined was the editor of British vogue. if there is one thing i have really learnt from a quarter of a decade in a role where your taste in clothes is part of the job description, it is that the cliched observation is true — you must wear the clothes, they must never wear you.
no matter how many people look at what you are wearing, comment on it
or criticise, you will always feel and perform your best in clothes you feel are an extension of yourself rather than some expensive carapace.
Change the accessories, update the proportions, enjoy experimenting, but the key is in the word enjoy — if you can’t enjoy getting dressed in the morning, you are missing out on one of life’s great pleasures.
That was the first — and most important — rule I learnt.
here are eight others . . .
You CAN wear what you wore at 17
There is a maxim that you shouldn’t wear a look you’re old enough to have worn first time around, but that is nonsense. It’s possible something that suited you then will also suit you now, though it may need a careful recalibration.
Age and appearance are uncomfortable bedfellows, and I think when most of us look in the mirror, we still see ourselves through a forgiving filter that knocks off at least a decade, and in my case probably several more.
This is nature’s way of letting us down gently, and is supported by the way we view old friends and family.
So long as you bear this in mind, there is no reason to avoid the kind of look you adopted at 17.
I was a teenager in the mid-Seventies, and I’ve only to glimpse a high-waisted, flowing hippy gown, a Biba-style suede boot or a rainbow stripe to get a craving.
My complete weakness is for tie-dye. I find it almost impossible to resist.
There was a satisfying moment a couple of years ago when there was a lot of graded colour around — referred to as ‘ombre’ — which ticked my tie-dye box in a sophisticated way, but sadly it seems to have disappeared again.
It doesn’t take a therapist to understand the Proustian hit I get eyeing colourful patterns that take me back to when I started going out with boys and suddenly the world seemed an exciting place.
I spent hours with a plastic washing-up bowl and boxes of Dylon, tying and untying white T-shirts and leaving them to brew overnight, hoping for the perfect mixture of swirl and starburst.
If the eighties was your teen moment, it’s likely to be a batwing sleeve or padded shoulder and oversized jacket (very now) that beckons you from across the shop.
It’s fine to keep buying whatever this might be; you just have to wear it differently. A head-to-toe retread of how you looked when you got your O-level results is probably not wise, but everything can be updated by mixing it up with more contemporary pieces.
My tie-dye is just about acceptable if I fling a well-cut jacket over a rainbow shirt, but looks tragic if I wear it with a khaki parka or, heaven forbid, the Afghan coat it would have been paired with back in the day.
2 Loose clothes aren’t slimming
Loose clothes look best on beanpoles. If you are larger, huge amounts of material hanging around the place does no favours and won’t disguise the fact you are of a fuller figure. Tents are for sleeping in and not for wearing.
3 Never go ‘event’ shopping
Having to buy something for a particular occasion is everything that shopping for clothes shouldn’t be.
The clue is in the words ‘having to’. As soon as the search for something to wear becomes a necessity rather than a treat, it loses 90 per cent of the appeal. What should be an opportunity to indulge, morphs into a task where the odds are stacked against you.
either you will have a specific vision of what you are looking for in your role as the bride’s mother, or for an appearance at an ex-boyfriend’s 50th, or your best friend’s second wedding, or you will have no idea at all of what you want.
Both situations are unsatisfactory. The first is unlikely to succeed, since invariably the piece you’ve fixed on in your mind will be impossible to track down, or if you do manage to discover your vision, there’s a good chance it won’t look the way you thought it would.
The second condemns you to trailing around websites or stores in a state of increasing desperation, faced with a multitude of choice and becoming more confused and hot and bothered as the hours pass.
experience has taught me to avoid this, but even so, just
before the round of fashion shows, when I am away for a month with engagements day and night in a world where everyone is looking at each other’s clothes, I often end up wandering around a department store on a Saturday afternoon.
4 If you fall in love with it, buy it
THIS leads on from the above. Sometimes you walk into a shop and see something you know is right for you. you don’t even have to try it on. Buy it. It may have no immediate use, whether it’s yet another pair of black trousers or a flimsy summer holiday dress when holidays are a million months away. But no matter.
you won’t regret it, and when the time comes that you do need a new pair of trousers and you have exactly the right pair hanging in the wardrobe, or when you are packing for a holiday and have something you’ve never worn ready for the sun, you will simply be happy.
If I buy things on impulse, struck by a coup de foudre rather than need, I have a different emotional relationship with them. They are for pleasure, rather than for work.
Most of my favourite clothes have been bought like this, often when I’ve been travelling.
Few things give more pleasure than snapping up something you know you’ll love wearing when you didn’t expect to.
Last spring, I bought a navy coat when I had two others in my wardrobe, both tired and faded, and it seemed an erratic extravagance.
now the days are shorter and the temperature has dropped, it’s a relief I don’t have to schlep out and find a new coat when I’ve got no time. There’s one already there, just waiting.
5 Don’t spend hours totting up the maths
You might think you can rationalise buys by calculating wear per pound, but it’s not worth the trouble.
Like politicians, we can always find a way to massage the figures to produce the result we want.
The other day, I fell in love with a handbag in Milan. It was incredibly expensive. I spent three days doing the maths — adding up the cost of the coat, pair of shoes and book that I didn’t buy so I could place this saving against the cost of the prospective bag. Then, naturally, I added in how many years I would carry this bag and how, in ten years’ time, it would still be doing good service, while also converting euros into pounds (currently a depressing experience) and trying to work out whether there would be a price advantage to buy it in Italy, where it was produced, rather than back home. Doing the maths made what was a luscious indulgence into a balance sheet — and the notion of this bag became an additional stress. I didn’t buy it, but I’m still not sure that I made the right decision.
6 Black is a doubleedged sword
WE Tend to think that black is the sensible choice: it doesn’t show the dirt, teams with everything, doesn’t shriek in the way a colour does so can be worn more often without everyone thinking you’re wearing the same old thing. But it can be so dull. There’s a reason shop assistants, bank clerks and waitresses dress in black, and that is so they don’t shine. They merge into the background. you only have to spend a few days at the fashion shows to go off black. While the catwalks are covered in wild and fantastic colour, the audience is likely to be wearing all kinds of expensive black that’s certainly chic and fashionable — but it looks as if everyone has turned up in school uniform. Sometimes, though, black clothes are like a sartorial painkiller: they get you through the day. Whenever you’re buying black, spend the most you can afford. There’s something about better quality fabric that gives black a depth and richness the cheap stuff doesn’t have. Black velvet looks good on everyone, as does black cashmere; black nylon less so. and you can spin it either way. Go for glam with a red lip and let your jewellery do the talking, or go for the palely interesting, I-amnot-making-a-fuss-about-how-Ilook styling.
INSIDE Vogue: A Diary of My 100th Year by Alexandra Shulman (Penguin, 16.99). This article first appeared in The Guardian.