The ‘Twiggy-thin’ regime and Mayfair cut even as a teenager

FOR teenage Anna Wintour, it wasn’t enough to just look good – she wanted to be admired as the bestdressed person in the room, remembers schoolfriend Vivienne Lasky. Her beauty regime, even as a schoolgirl, included regular trips to the Leonard of Mayfair salon in London.

She also took yeast tablets from the trichologist her father saw to prevent his hair loss.

The look of the 1960s was skinny. ‘We wanted to be Twiggy-thin,’ adds Lasky, remembering that she and Wintour ate little more than an apple during the school day.

Together, the friends queued on Saturday mornings for limited-edition outfits at the hip Kensington boutique Biba. It was there that the teenage Wintour landed her first role in fashion.

The experience was to be a short-lived one.

Part of the culture of Biba then was rampant thefts. The absence of a security system, along with the low lighting and busy communal changing rooms, made it easy for customers and staff alike to steal clothes. Wintour had been working there just a few weeks when one of her managers was told to let her go because it was believed that she, too, had been taking clothes.

Her boss certainly didn’t get the impression that Wintour cared about being fired, and she shortly afterwards found work at nearby Harrods.