Plum Sykes

Victoria "Plum" Sykes is a British-born fashion-writer, novelist and New York socialite. "Plum" was a childhood nickname (the Victoria plum being a variety of that fruit).

Early years and antecedents

Sykes was born in London on 4 December 1969, one of six children, and grew up in Sevenoaks, Kent. Among her friends at Ide Hill Church of England primary school was Rowan Pelling (b.1968), who became the editor of the Erotic Review (see Daily Telegraph, 21 April 2005). From there she went to Sevenoaks School, an independent school founded in the 15th century, and thence to Worcester College, Oxford in 1988, where she graduated in modern history.

Sykes' mother was the dress designer, Valerie Goad, from whom her father Mark, an old Etonian, separated while Plum was at Oxford. Her grandfather, Christopher Sykes (1907–1986), was a friend and official biographer (1975) of the novelist Evelyn Waugh and son of the diplomat Sir Mark Sykes, sixth baronet (1869–1919), associated with the so-called Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916, by which Britain and France provided for the partition of the Ottoman empire after the end of the First World War. An 18th century forebear, the second baronet, Sir Christopher Sykes (1749-1801), was a major figure in the enclosure movement that transformed the appearance and management of the English countryside.

Vogue

Plum Sykes became a fashion assistant at British Vogue where, in 1993, she was featured with, among others, designer Bella Freud and model Stella Tennant in Babes in London, a photographic shoot by the American Steven Meisel (who had been responsible in 1992 for the singer Madonna's controversial collection, Sex), which was produced by the rising fashion guru Isabella Blow.

In 1996 Sykes became a contributing editor on fashion for American Vogue, of which Anna Wintour, also British, had been editor-in-chief since 1988. She became a familiar figure on the New York social scene, being frequently described as an "It girl" (e.g., New York Magazine, 5 April 2004; Observer, 16 May 2004).

Lauren Weisberger's novel, The Devil Wears Prada (2003), written after the author had spent several months working as an assistant to Wintour, was widely assumed to be an exposé of life at Vogue during this period. However, Weisberger claimed that the subject-matter of the book (the basis of a film in 2006: see David Denby, New Yorker, 10/17 July 2006) was fictional, while others have suggested that its depiction of overbearing management was, in any case, insufficiently rounded given the nature of a creative business. (For example, Tina Gaudoin, who had also worked at Vogue, queried whether those at the top of any comparable industry hired "dull, safe, mediocre staff. Do their CE ^*s give out milk and cookies? I doubt it": Times 2, 10 July 2006.)

Novelist

The world of New York fashion was the setting for Sykes' first novel, Bergdorf Blondes (2004), which was one of the most successful examples of "chick lit" (or "chic lit" as some dubbed Sykes' writing) and sold a quarter of a million copies worldwide. It took its title from the Bergdorf Goodman store in Upper Manhattan, founded at the end of the 19th century.

A second novel, The Debutante Divorcée, was published in 2006. Sykes publicised it with an array of personal appearances at stores in New York (Chanel, Ralph Lauren, Frederic Fekkai, Ferragamo, Neiman Marcus and Oscar de la Renta).

Some have seen Sykes' books as lying in natural succession to Sex and the City, Candace Bushnell's column in the New York Observer, which was the inspiration for a highly successful television series (HBO 1998–2004). However, despite their satire, others have regarded them as too rooted in Sykes' own Park Avenue "set" to be reflective more generally of women's lives in post-9/11 Manhattan (see, for example, "Plum duff", Private Eye, 26 May 2006). Anita Loos' Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1925) is perhaps a closer, if incomparable, antecedent. Sykes hereslf has been compared to Holly Golightly, the character in Truman Capote's novel, Breakfast at Tiffany's (1958), who was immortalised on film in 1961 by Audrey Hepburn (see Gaby Wood, Observer, 14 May 2006).

Family

Sykes' twin sister Lucy, who also moved to New York in 1996, became fashion director of Marie Claire, and later a designer of children's clothes. In the late 1990s Sykes and her sister were sometimes described as the "twin set", Plum later joking, with reference to the heiresses Paris and Nicky Hilton, that "Lucy and I were Paris and Nicky without the sextape" (New York Magazine, loc. cit.) (an allusion to a video recording purportedly of Paris Hilton and a former boyfriend that had been posted on the Internet in 2003).

In 2005, Sykes married entrepreneur, Toby Rowland, son of businessman "Tiny" Rowland, at Sledmere House (1751), her family's ancestral home in the East Riding of Yorkshire. Her dress was designed by her friend, Alexander McQueen, of whom she was sometimes described as a muse. Sykes and Rowland are currently expecting their first child, a girl, due in September 2006.

Novels written under the name Plum Sykes

Bergdorf Blondes (2004)
The Debutante Divorcée (2006)

External links