Alexandra Shulman was behind one of the biggest moments in fashion history: deciding which designer the Princess of Wales should wear for her 2011 wedding to Prince William.
"When Catherine and William got engaged, somebody from her office got in touch with me and said she'd love to have a conversation about potential wedding designers," says the former editor-in-chief of British Vogue. "I was absolutely thrilled to bits."
Alexandra recalls the process in her new book, Black Coffee and Red Lipstick: Notes on Living. Sworn to secrecy, she compiled pictures from various Vogue photo shoots of designers she thought might work.
"I didn't know how designer-literate she was, because at this point she wasn't wearing McQueen or Erdem," she says. "Try as I might, I couldn't find a single picture of a British designer who had a lovely conventional white dress. Every one had spooky make-up. Anyway, we talked, and at the end she asked me who I thought would be best."
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"There wasn't a surefire person. I thought Vivienne Westwood would be great, but I thought Vivienne's personality might be hard to marry with the formality of dealing with the royal household. There were the whole tranche of designers who would have been the traditional choices, like Bruce Oldfield or Catherine Walker, but I knew they would be associated with her late mother-in-law, so that probably wasn't going to work."
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There were young designers that she considered too: Erdem and Christopher Kane. "I just didn't think [young designers] would have the set-up to provide the security," she says. "It had to be someone who can deal with the fact that this can be completely under wraps."
How 'strong' Princess Catherine found her wedding dress designer
In the end, Alexandra proposed Sarah Burton, who was then the creative director at Alexander McQueen. "Because she was a woman, and she's got a very strong, but a very gentle personality. And Catherine just nodded and said, ‘Thank you.’"
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The first glimpse Alexandra had of the dress was at the wedding itself, learning the news alongside the 1,900-strong congregation and two billion global TV viewers. "I didn't know that was what she was going to do until she got out of the car and somebody texted me."
Alexandra, who edited Vogue from 1992 until 2017 and is also an accomplished author, still admires the Princess of Wales's sartorial choices. "I think she's got a very sure sense of her style now. I think she's very confident about the way she looks, the choices she makes. She's fortunate in how wonderful she looks at a very glamorous occasion, whether that's a BAFTA dinner or a state dinner. She really suits that kind of splendour."
Alexandra Shulman's personal confessions in her new book
There are further anecdotes in her new book, including Kate Moss cutting her son Sam's hair – Sam, 31, is the son of Alexandra and her former husband, the writer Paul Spike. The book recounts how Mario Testino's pillow used to have its own seat on the Eurostar and the time when Jack Nicholson crashed a Vogue Christmas dinner at San Lorenzo. "He took a shine to one of my fashion editors," she says.
Alexandra’s outlook was altered by a diagnosis of breast cancer in 2021, followed by colon cancer in 2024, instilling a "keener appreciation of the small things", among them black coffee and red lipstick.
"I can't be happy-clappy about getting cancer," she says. "It would be nicer not to have had it. But it does change the way you think about things. It brings into focus the things that you really enjoy."
The book is filled with her experiences of being a woman in the "liminal space between middle and old age", reflecting Alexandra's life now.
"I'm 68," she says, "and I am aware of being in this odd place where you can't possibly think of yourself as young, but you definitely don't want to think of yourself as old. I wanted to write about that."
One of the bigger things she writes about is her recent wedding: in April this year, Alexandra married her partner of 22 years, the journalist David Jenkins. "There's definitely nothing wrong with getting married in your sixties," she says.
"It's kind of great because you haven't got that long to be together. When you get married in your thirties, you're like, 'Oh my god, this could be 50, 60 years.’ That seems like a terrifying amount of time. Whereas I feel we can be new lovers for quite a long time."
Black Coffee and Red Lipstick: Notes on Living is out now, published by Octopus, priced at £20.