16 Facts About Plum Sykes

Victoria Rowland, known both professionally and socially as Plum Sykes, is an English-born fashion journalist, novelist, and socialite.

Victoria Sykes was born in London, one of six children including a twin sister, Lucy, and grew up in Sevenoaks, Kent.

Plum Sykes has described herself as a "painfully shy" child with mousey brown hair and goofy teeth.

Plum Sykes went to Ide Hill Church of England Primary School and later to a private secondary school, Walthamstow Hall, where she was unhappy, and subsequently to Sevenoaks School, an independent boys' school that had begun admitting girls to the sixth form.

Plum Sykes has published a short memoir of her unsettling first term at university.

Sykes' mother Valerie Goad, a dress designer, separated from Sykes' father Mark while Plum was at Oxford.

An 18th century forebear, the second baronet, Sir Christopher Plum Sykes, was a major figure in the enclosure movement that transformed the agricultural landscape in the 18th century.

In 1993, Plum Sykes became a fashion assistant at British Vogue.

Plum Sykes was featured that year, with, among others, designer Bella Freud and model Stella Tennant in Babes in London, in a photographic shoot by the American Steven Meisel, which was produced by the rising fashion guru Isabella Blow.

In 1997, Plum Sykes became a contributing editor on fashion for American Vogue, of which Anna Wintour, British, had been editor-in-chief since 1988.

Plum Sykes publicised it with an array of personal appearances at stores in New York.

In 2005 Plum Sykes married British entrepreneur Toby Rowland, son of businessman "Tiny" Rowland and co-creator of King, at Sledmere House, her family's ancestral home in the East Riding of Yorkshire.

Plum Sykes's dress was designed by Sykes' friend and protege of Isabella Blow, Alexander McQueen.

Plum Sykes was sometimes described as a muse of McQueen; she modelled for some of his earliest catwalk shows, as well as for photoshoots of his designs.

Lucy Plum Sykes married Euan Rellie, a New York-based investment banker, in 2002.

Plum Sykes attended an anxiety recovery programme developed by anxiety expert, Charles Linden, which she cites as the solution that returned her to working for American Vogue and a full and active social life.