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At home with Plum Sykes, the author who skewers the rich and famous

At home with Plum Sykes, the author who skewers the rich and famous

The satire in the writer’s novels about wealthy and glamorous women is all the sharper for being written by an insider. From the upcoming summer issue out on October 12.

Author Plum Sykes in the garden of her Gloucestershire home in south-west England. Her satirical novels skewer the well-to-do social set that is her own milieu. Emli Bendixen

Plum Sykes would like to set the record straight. “I am not the English girl in The Devil Wears Prada,” she says via Zoom from her home in Gloucestershire. “It’s a rumour that’s been around for years and it’s just not true!” The idea that Sykes, a former Vogue writer, was the inspiration for Emily Blunt’s character (also named Emily) is a little grating, she says. “For one thing, I was never Anna Wintour’s assistant,” says Sykes. “Isn’t it pathetic that I need you to know that?”

As satires go, The Devil Wears Prada is pretty much the ne plus ultra, but Sykes knows a thing or two about the genre herself. Her latest novel, Wives Like Us, skewers the ultra-rich residents of the Cotswolds, a bucolic protected area of England that, incidentally, includes Gloucestershire and its surrounds. Sykes, 54, moved here 15 years ago from London with husband Toby Rowland, a tech entrepreneur and their daughters, Ursula and Tess. In that time, Sykes saw the area become more and more moneyed – and ever more ripe for the sharp end of her pen.

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Lauren Sams
Lauren SamsFashion editorLauren Sams is the fashion editor, based in Sydney. She writes about lifestyle including the arts, entertainment, fashion and travel. Lauren has worked as a features editor and fashion journalist for ELLE, marie claire and more. Email Lauren at lauren.sams@afr.com

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