I was a fashion editor for years in London before I came to 'Vogue,' and I spent my life arranging the folds of a ball gown skirt for a picture and pinning fabric and using all those stylist tricks. And you don't have to do that now because they can do it in Photoshop.
You should have seen me in my Catholic school girl skirt with my knees knocking together.
As a kid in the eighties, I didn't need much disposable income. I went to Catholic school - white shirt, plaid skirt - so fashion choices were limited. But youth finds a way. For me and my schoolmates, neon argyle socks were a crucial barometer of coolness. Hair ribbons, too, and they didn't come cheap.
I stress out so much about the red carpet and interviews and pictures, and, you know, not getting my skirt tucked in my knickers.
I looked back on the roaring Twenties - with its jazz, 'Great Gatsby,' and the pre-Code films - as a party I had somehow managed to miss. After World War Two, I expected something similar, a return to the period after the first war, but when the skirt lengths went down instead of up, I knew we were in big trouble.
Being a Scotsman, I wear a skirt quite a lot, but we're allowed. I have an incredibly loud Hawaiian shirt that's pink and a particularly disgusting turquoise, but I just wear it on days when I'm in a strange mood.
There is Twitter outrage at everything. Be it a pair of trousers or a short skirt, somebody, somewhere, will not like it.
We are very lucky to work in fashion and not work in a hospital or something where the biggest deal we come across is perhaps the length of a skirt.
