Hello, I'm Kirstie Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Disks from BBC Radio 4.

For rights reasons, the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.

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Radio 4. My castaway this week is the editor of Vogue, Alexander Shulman. Think of a fashion

forward deadpan, stick-thin, couture-clad style style maven and then think again in spite of being in charge of our

leading style Bible for more than 20 years she has built her reputation on being well

normal she thinks designers cut clothes too small, she refuses to

let superstars have photo and copy approval, indeed when she was first appointed

editor, she'd never even been on a fashion shoot.

Yet during her tenure, Vogue's circulation has increased.

Her first job as editor was with the Men's magazine, GQ,

and she's had spells at Tatler, the Sunday Telegraph and writing a weekly column for the daily mail.

She says, Vogue is not my personal taste really.

I think of it more as a kind of newspaper, reporting on what's out there. So Alexander Shulman, if style is a simple way of saying complicated things, what are you saying to me today with what you're wearing?

Well, I've got a rather kind of vivid sort of lime-greeny top which is saying hey

it's sunshine out there and well I'm quite a kind of smartly dressed woman because I'm

wearing a kind of knee-length skirt and

I've got a bit of a kind of modern heel rather than too much of a kind of

of kitten-healy look on so I've got all kinds of messages and my clothes.

And do you subscribe to that notion that actually when, particularly a woman getting dressed in the morning,

but I suppose a man too, is sending subtle signals to people who understand the language about who she is and what she stands for?

Oh, completely. I mean, I had a lot of thinking about what I was going to wear today, even though I'm on the radio.

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