Clothes ... and Other Things That Matter

By Alexandra Shulman

Published by Octopus

Many of the revelations in Alexandra Shulman’s memoir come in its first two pages. She lists the contents of her wardrobe, all 556 pieces, including 37 skirts, 22 coats and one pair of shorts. I try hard to envisage that much hanging space.

“Does she reveal if she paid for them all?” asks an acquaintance. The shorts almost definitely — no fashion editor is ever sent shorts — but freebies are a perk of the job and bespoke outfits abound in the 352 pages chronicling Shulman’s life in clothes, 25 years of which were spent editing British Vogue.

Three years after leaving her job and publishing Inside Vogue: My Diary of Vogue’s 100th Year, this book sets out to remind us that what we wear matters. Obviously the timing is unfortunate. While Rome burns, 62-year-old Shulman is cast as the unapologetic poster girl for keeping up appearances and spending habits.

With most of us pyjama-wearers social distancing from our irons, she recently posted a selfie of her ironing in her garden to her nearly 97,000 Instagram followers. Of her compulsive fashion buying, she writes in the book about a recent Prada purchase: “I didn’t even want a new skirt. But there it popped up in a glorious rose print and I heard it calling my name.”She is a one-woman retail stimulus package, albeit one with a tin ear for her clothing carbon footprint.

Happily Shulman can craft a good story and has an eye for great pictures. The book’s 38 chapters follow a format that mixes fashion history with personal anecdotes, starting with the Red Shoes of her privileged Belgravia childhood, and ending with the morale-boosting properties of Jewellery.

In between she dispenses nuggets of fashion Shulmanisms. Black? “It can make us feel both invisible and . . . highly visible.” Dressing gowns? “The transit lounges of dressing.” Tights? “Part of women’s liberation.” The Hairdresser’s Gown and Aprons chapters are more tangential, while the one on Brooches, Badges and Pins serves largely to remind us that Shulman was appointed an OBE and a CBE; the medals now repose in her scarf drawer.

As in her Vogue diaries, in which her problematic boiler almost stole the show, Shulman is at her most engaging writing about life as seen through the eyes of a well-heeled eccentric. In the chapter on The Bra she claims, “I did once have nice breasts. They pleased me,” before revealing she went braless for 20 years, until the age of 37, because she hated how bras felt. Such enviable sartorial confidence was not without its challenges, especially when “one’s erect nipples were attracting a certain amount of covert attention” in meetings.

A bag of contradictions, Shulman portrays herself variously as the carefree bohemian cycling to the shops in her Toast dressing gown, as the Vogue editor relying on Valium or Xanax to counter panic attacks, and as the childlike fashion lover who is left breathless at the arrival of another new pair of white Manolo Blahnik court shoes.

Just don’t expect any Tina Brown-style killer anecdotes about those who inhabited her gilded world. She is too socially savvy to blot her contacts book for that.On meeting Kate Middleton to talk wedding dresses, Shulman notes only that she was “taller and slimmer” than imagined, if that’s even possible. Seated next to Richard Gere at a Karl Lagerfeld dinner in the 1990s, she barely manages a “hello”, explaining she is “always struck completely dumb in the company of anyone famous”.

She comes closest to ruffling fashion feathers when reopening old wounds with the man who took her job. Rightly aggrieved at always being labelled a size 14 editor, she couldn’t help firing this shot: “I have been intrigued by the fact that my successor Edward Enninful does not, as a man, seem to have any observations about his appearance written about him, and definitely not about what he might weigh.” Ouch.

This is a book that will doubtlessly be divisive. As the ever-blunt Shulman said in a recent interview in The Times, some will think, “Who is this complete tosser who thinks lipstick’s important?” Certainly those who believe the planet-destroying age of conspicuous fashion consumption is over will be less than enthralled.

For others, who consider clothes to be a source of happiness, it will make perfect lockdown reading, an opportunity to shut out the real world and meander through the Arcadian years of fashion, expertly guided by a woman who has been there, done that, got the complimentary T-shirt.

And coats.