Confessions of 90s Vogue: As The Devil Wears Prada returns, SHANE WATSON reveals what it was REALLY prefer to be a member of Glossy Posse

For those of us (a small group, admittedly) who have worked for Vogue, the release of The Devil Wears Prada 2 brings the memories flooding back.

I was there in the early 1990s when British Vogue occupied most of the building on the south-east corner of Hanover Square in London’s West End. There was no Miranda Priestly in a glass office on the fifth floor, but there were many unspoken rules, codes and status brags you were expected to comply with: labels you should be wearing; brands and bands and books you should be loving; people you should know about and places you should be seen.

Part of being a Vogue employee was understanding you were expected to instinctively know the difference between white hot and merely current, and then be prepared to go to almost any lengths to get yourself the necessary status props – whether that was a pair of shoes, a haircut, or a ticket to a club.

Your job, aside from your job on the magazine, was to look the part and live the life. It wasn’t about fitting in, so much as demonstrating that you’d ‘Got It’ every day.

So while City traders were sweating at their desks making deals, we were sweating the status flexes in the office and outside, proving we had what it takes to be part of team Vogue.

Lest you should need reminding, these were the days before Pilates and yoga, athleisurewear and trainers with everything. Were there gyms? There probably were, but no one on Vogue was taking any sort of exercise, other than the balancing act that was required to walk on Manolo Blahnik heels.

The word ‘fit’ was not in our vocabulary. Slim was the expected norm and you kept your weight down by running around stressing about missing the next big thing, skipping meals and rejecting the bread basket in restaurants. Being model sample size (in those days an 8-10) was definitely a status flex.

Needless to say, what you wore was noted from the moment that you spun through the revolving glass doors of the Vogue House reception.

Starting from the top there was no proscribed haircut, but a bob would have been social death, and you probably wanted to be regularly seeing Nicky Clarke or the second best stylist at Daniel Galvin. Status flex number one was cool hair.

Status flex two was whatever your favourite fashion editor was wearing – usually something like a white shirt with masculine black trousers (Joseph would do, Helmut Lang would be better), and then your shoes were all important.

There was no getting the fake version on Vogue, you had to have the real thing to get the status points: Manolos (any); Patrick Cox Wannabe loafers (any) or Gucci loafers (men’s) with a snaffle bit.

And, of course, there was no Vinted, no thriving second-hand market, you had to beg borrow or steal and rely on the sample sales every season to stay ahead.

The Manolo Blahnik sample sale was the highlight of the Vogue staffer’s calendar. You would cancel a holiday or discharge yourself from hospital to be there. Then you would buy the heels you had to have even if they were too big, and stuff them with tissue, or buy them too small and stuff yourself with Nurofen – the pain was worth it for the gain of owning the perfect Manolos.

These were the days when Jimmy Choo was still a small elite London brand, although the shoes were worn by Princess Diana and very much on the radar of Vogue’s accessories editor, Tamara Yeardye, later Mellon.

Cut to a few years later and she was co-owner of the company and Jimmy Choo was a byword for glamour and Choos were the only heels to be wearing on Oscar Night.

The early 90s came before the It bag moment (praise God we weren’t obliged to have one of those until later) and there was no real status bag pressure that I can remember. But then, as now, you couldn’t go far wrong with a Chanel 2.55 bag.

No fakes from Canal Street in New York, mind you.

When Anna Wintour was editor of British Vogue, a bit before my time, the rumour was that she had banned all the staff from wearing anything Chanel since she herself was partial to a Chanel suit and bag.

Even after Anna left, there wasn’t a lot of Chanel in the office and my one big regret is not having somehow clawed together the funds to buy a Chanel jacket, but then again, I wouldn’t be able to get my arms into it now anyway. Grooming (apart from hair) was not yet a status flex, even in Vogue House. Tweakments, Botox, fillers and the rest were still way, way in the future. Most of us cared about make-up about half as much as we cared about clothes, apart from stylist Isabella Blow, who was never seen without a gash of sticky scarlet lipstick, but there was a vogue for wearing Christian Dior’s Eau Sauvage eau de toilette for men.

Status flexes didn’t stop with what you wore. You drank Perrier in the office and Chardonnay out of it, and you weren’t a Voguette if you didn’t smoke (Marlboro Lights, Marlboro Reds if you were staggeringly cool). I’m not condoning it, but cigarettes were vital accessories then.

You scored points for carrying a whiff of decadence and misspent nights about you. We were nothing like the clean, health-conscious Americans.

We didn’t have the equivalent of the Starbucks takeaway cup in The Devil Wears Prada either.

Instead, we had our own hatch in the wall, one floor down next to the post room (a post room, imagine!) where you bought something a bit like coffee in a Styrofoam cup or cans of Coca-Cola.

A lot of Coca-Cola was drunk behind the scenes at Vogue House, it being the world’s best hangover cure.

Clubbing, or being able to say you had been to Ministry Of Sound the night before, or Subterania, was a status flex.Knowing a DJ like Jeremy Healy scored you points, or hanging out with an ex-member of The Clash – which you might because in those days celebrities spread themselves around without fear of being caught on camera.

Martinis were a status flex, as were black taxis (no Ubers then), Philip Treacy hats, and browsing in Harvey Nichols (where you might see Kate Moss at the upstairs bar).

A status flex was getting tickets to a hot Press screening or staying at The Royalton in New York (with the company paying) or looking good in a pair of Levis and a suede fringe jacket (which came from Portobello Market). Food was not something anyone was very interested in – this was before cooking became fashionable.

Although we loved restaurants and we all admired and aspired to the Anna Wintour diet, whether or not it was an urban myth: steak tartare always, or just steak, salad on the side, without the dressing.

Kate Moss was photographed by Corinne Day for Vogue in 1993 when I was working there and those pictures of her in her vest and pants standing against a radiator – now infamous for ushering in the era of the waif – were shocking to the outside world but not to us.

The biggest status flex of them all at Vogue then was to have a collar bone that put a dent in your necklace and hip bones that created a gap between your hips and your hipsters.

If you really wanted to fit in, you were skinny and you didn’t waste money you could be spending on shoes on food.

It was a different time indeed.

As we queue up to see The Devil Wears Prada sequel, us old Voguettes will of course be focused laser-like on the clothes.

I guarantee we’ll emerge just as desperate to own the most gorgeous pieces as we ever were – can’t wait.