The former editor of Vogue took a recent trip to Sainsbury’s at 3pm. “And to me that was so interesting. I’ve not been in a supermarket on a weekday afternoon for 35, 40 years or something. I was just interested in who was in there, what people are buying, what the parking was like. I’m interested in all this stuff.”
Since standing down in June from the magazine she edited for 25 years, Alexandra Shulman has been having the loveliest time. She has taken holidays, attended cultural events and, she says: “I have that sort of slightly horrible sort of happy-clappy feeling about me, you know, smiling everywhere as if I’d found God. It’s not like I was longing to be free from Vogue,” she adds hastily. “I just thought, 25 years is such a huge amount of your life to spend sitting in the same building.”
She greets me with a demob-happy glow of contentment. The 57-year-old pads around her north London home making coffee, and laughs that even something as mundane as replacing her faulty doorbell feels exotic. She looks surprised when I ask if she misses the power of her former position. “No, I’m not really interested in power. I am interested in having a voice.” By the time I leave, though, she is looking increasingly uneasy about how what she has to say will be received.
For more read the full of article at The Guardian.
