Alexandra Shulman, OBE (born 1958), is the editor of the British edition of Vogue. She is one of the country's most oft-quoted voices on fashion trends. She took the helm of Vogue in 1992, presiding over a circulation increase to 200,000 and a higher profile for the publication. She has also written for The Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail.
Alexandra Shulman's parents are the late drama critic Milton Shulman and the writer Drusilla Beyfus. She was educated at St Paul's Girls' School and Sussex University where she studied social anthropology. She began her fashion journalism career in 1982 at The Tatler, working subsequently for The Sunday Telegraph, Vogue and the British edition of GQ, where she became editor in 1990.
Her tenure at Vogue is known for the "Gold Issue," a December 2000 edition with Kate Moss on the cover in silhouette. The magazine drew criticism in the early 1990s for photos of an emaciated Moss that were dubbed heroin chic, part of a larger ongoing debate over whether fashion magazines present an unhealthy image for girls and contribute to the anorexia problem. In 1997, the watchmaker Omega pulled an ad campaign from Vogue over this issue.
Shulman dismissed these concerns in a 1998 interview with the PBS public affairs television program Frontline, stating: "Not many people have actually said to me that they have looked at my magazine and decided to become anorexic."[1]
She has become more sensitive to the issue in recent years, acknowledging that anorexia is a "huge problem" in a January 2005 interview with The Scotsman: "I really wish that models were a bit bigger because then I wouldn't have to deal with this the whole time. There is pressure on them to stay thin, and I'm always talking to the designers about it, asking why they can't just be a bit closer to a real woman's physique in terms of their ideal, but they're not going to do it. Clothes look better to all of our eyes on people who are thinner."[2]
Contrary to expectations, Shulman describes her own life as work-dominated and not particularly glamorous. In an October 2004 newspaper column on her Telegraph portrait, she said:
"Leaving aside the obvious but unlikely criteria of beautiful and thin, I realised that there was no look that was achievable which was going to make me happy. In my mind I am a free spirit of about 25 wafting around in second-hand cocktail dresses; in reality I am a 47-year-old businesswoman and journalist. The pictures unfortunately, tell the whole story."[3]
She was a regular columnist for The Daily Telegraph newspaper, but started writing a column for the Daily Mail in 2006, which ran until 2009, when she was replaced by Liz Jones.[4]
In 2009 Shulman spoke out over the sample sizes leading designers were producing - some were so small they restricted Vogue using the models they wished in the magazine, resulting in some models being airbrushed to look bigger. Alex Shulman wrote to designers to draw their attention to the situation calling for larger sized samples to be produced. http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/fashion/article6489243.ece
She has a son, Samuel Robert (born 6 April 1995), by the writer Paul Spike, whom she married on 26 May 1994 and from whom she is divorced. She lives in the Queen's Park area of London.
Shulman received an OBE in 2004, which Janet Street-Porter wrote in The Independent was "proof that the honours system is an embarrassment".[5] She also was named "Editors' Editor of the Year" by the British Society of Magazine Editors and is a trustee of the National Portrait Gallery.
Shulman's hobbies include music, tennis and reading fiction. Her favourite author is Rosamond Lehmann and she's an avid fan of the Inspector Wallander novels by Henning Mankell. She critiqued the Wikipedia entry on haute couture for The Guardian in October 2005, rating it a 0 out of 10.[6] She plays the guitar and owns a Nissan Figaro and a Toyota Corolla Verso.
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| Preceded by Liz Tilberis |
Editor of British Vogue 1992–present |
Succeeded by current |