Alexandra Shulman was brought up in London. She attended St. Paul’s Girls’ School and gained a BA in Social Anthropology from Sussex University.

She started her career working in the music industry and then moved into magazines as a secretary on Over21 magazine. She began working as a journalist on Tatler magazine in 1980, leaving in 1986 to become Women’s Editor on The Sunday Telegraph. She returned to magazines as Features Editor of Vogue in 1988, becoming the first female editor of a monthly men’s magazine when GQ launched in the UK in 1990. In 1992 she became Editor-in-Chief of British Vogue where she stayed for 25 years leaving in June 2017.

During that time she launched an annual Vogue Festival, oversaw the launch of Vogues digital programme including Vogue.co.uk and Vogue Video and took the sales of the magazine both domestically and internationally to a record high.

In 2007 she was awarded an OBE for services to fashion journalism and in 2018 a CBE for services to magazines.

Alexandra Shulman has also written two novels, Can We Still Be Friends, and The Parrots both published by Fig Tree/Penguin, and a memoir of the Centenary year preparations for British Vogue, Inside Vogue: A diary of my 100th year. Her last book Clothes….and other things that matter was published in Spring 2020 by Octopus books and was a Sunday Times Bestseller.

She writes a weekly notebook for the Mail on Sunday, regular features for the Daily Mail along with journalism in other papers and magazines and is known as a commentator on female leadership, fashion, and contemporary style.

She was a Trustee of the National Portrait Gallery for eight years, and a Trustee of The Royal Marsden Cancer Charity for eight years. She is currently a Vice President of The London Library and a Trustee of The Wallace Collection.