Shulman spoke as part of a panel on ‘Women, Business and Fashion’ at Newnham CollegeNewnham College

In fashion, the editor has become a cult figure as important as the magazines themselves. This year Alexandra Shulman not only invited TV cameras into her office to film a BBC2 documentary Absolutely Fashion but also published her diary, Inside Vogue: A Diary of My 100th Year. I ask her whether she feels uncomfortable with this level of attention: “You can choose how much you reveal of yourself. I’m not someone who thinks of myself as a particularly public persona. Although, by default I seem to have become one – I’ve been allocated the role of the ‘normal’ editor but I’m really no more normal than anyone else.”

Indeed, as I talk to Shulman, sat on a plush armchair in Newnham Principal’s Lodge and pristinely dressed in an on-trend inky velvet jacket and ivory silk shirt with perfectly blow-dried hair, she looks positively regal and far from the anti-fashion, fusty, mid-heel-wearing image the media has created for her. But can a woman who rubs shoulders with Victoria Beckham and wears Prada to feed her cat really be considered normal? The morning of the talk she posted an Instagram of her Louis Vuitton valise poised at the bottom of her leafy London pathway. So far, so Vogue.

Despite all this glamour and gloss, Shulman is keen to point out she is an underdog. Speaking as part of a panel on ‘Women, Business and Fashion’ at Newnham College, the most powerful woman in British fashion described how as a child she was a “relentlessly low flyer”. She was told at a parents’ evening that she should become a nursery school teacher and was pressured by her parents to go to the University of Sussex, where she got a 2:2 in Social Anthropology, “which is pretty well a miracle because I wasn’t there for most of the time”.

Interestingly, Newnham graduate Felicia Brocklebank, ex-Goldman Sachs executive and director of Papouelli shoes, who spoke alongside Shulman, had a corporate sheen that was far more intimidating. “You can tell which one of us is a Cambridge graduate”, she joked, comparing her scrappy piece of paper to Brocklebank’s perfectly bullet-pointed notes.

This is what 300 books for signing looks like. Job done. Into the shops @penguinukbooks @poppynorth

A photo posted by Alexandra Shulman (@alexandravogue) on

Shulman has recently launched her book, 'Inside Vogue: A Diary of My 100th Year'

Shulman never wanted to be the editor of Vogue. “All my jobs have come about by default”. Fired from various jobs in the music industry in her 20s, she found a temporary job as a secretary to the editor of Over 21 magazine. She sat at the end of her desk and “watched everything she did for a year and a half”. It was this sort of “dogsbody” work that put her in good stead when she went on to pitch her own ideas to magazines, and a successful stint at Tatler followed.

In 1990 and at the age of 32 she became the first female editor of GQ: “They couldn’t find a man who wanted to do the job at a glossy magazine. All the decent journalists didn’t want to write about aftershave. All the fashion guys who loved Armani tailoring had no editing ability. I could do both”. Later, she became editor of British Vogue when Suzy Menkes turned the position down. She has now held the role for “an incredibly long time”. 25 years to be precise: a quarter of the magazine’s existence.

As an editor, she describes herself as a “conductor” to an orchestra of people, and her challenge is to spot other people’s talents and nurture them. She spends her days making decisions, from budgets for Mario Testino shoots to what food they have at special lunches. Although the documentary seemed to show the final decisions being made by old white men at the top of Condé Nast, Shulman insists that she wears the trousers: “I’ve never felt in my job that everything is controlled by men.”

In her time as editor Shulman has overseen huge change in an already fast-moving industry. “Fashion has exploded in the last 20 years. We didn’t use to have half the high street brands that we have now.” There is now a newfound “fashion literacy” to contend with; fashion isn’t niche anymore and the public know who designers are. People who think fashion is trivial “are just wrong" says Shulman “We’re one of the biggest industries in this country.”

And as with all of the UK’s biggest industries, there is the very pressing matter of how to go about business in a post-Brexit world. “It’s important when you look back at Vogue that you can see the major things that have happened but I don’t see any point in writing stories about how worried and ghastly it all seems to be. People buy Vogue because they want to feel good, they don’t buy it to read something negative."

Shulman spoke alongside Felicia Brocklebank, director of Papouelli shoesNewnham College

“I have a gut feeling that we might find ourselves British-focused and with an emphasis on homegrown talents, brands and stories. Our job will be to find the interesting cultural things that will come out of it. It will be a fantastic well of inspiration. There’s nothing better for the arts than to have something to grind against.”

Business as usual, then. Indeed, the existential purpose of the magazine is to keep its finger on the heart of the pulse: ‘Buy nothing until you buy Vogue’, as the tagline goes. Rather than seeing a new digitalised era as a threat to the print publication, Shulman seems excited by the future: “I think that this is a real opportunity for us to look at the magazine differently and carve up territory in a new way.”

But can the luxury high polish of a glossy fashion magazine really be translated into the lowly realms of click-bait culture? “It’s a juggling act. The high and the low have to work together. Our Alexa Chung documentary series was the golden egg. It merged Alexa’s click bait appeal using somebody very intelligent and of the world of Vogue but not totally entrenched in it.”

This kind of realistic pragmatism is undoubtedly the key to Shulman’s longevity as editor. She has a real human touch, advising students to “remain true to yourself, never change yourself for a career”, and she emphasised the importance of nurturing everything outside your job. Personally, Shulman thinks ‘career’ is a “bland, uncharming word”, and prefers to see herself as having “lived and living a life”. And isn't that fabulous?