Alexandra Shulman says that she had ‘no desire to write an autobiography’ — so instead she has written about her clothes, and given us some scintillating reading. For despite having edited British Vogue for 25 years, until she retired in 2017, Shulman’s relationship with fashion at times reads less like a love affair than a marital tiff.
Take, for example, the bra, which is the subject of chapter three. ‘There’s a point in most women’s lives when shopping for bras is consigned to one of those special places in hell,’ Shulman writes, revealing that, aged 17, she gave up, and didn’t wear a bra again for 20 years. (‘It wasn’t anything to do with lofty feminist ideals but simply that I hated how they felt.’) She now owns 35 bras, but doesn’t ‘love a single one of them’.
The bikini has also caused upsets (‘body hair and I have a negotiated relationship’); and a psychotherapist would have plenty to say about her relationship with hats: ‘I very rarely wear hats.
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