It's nuclear Wintour v Icy Alex: Everyone's talking about fashion's frostiest feud - but what's the background to the disagreement?

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This is the fashion clash of the titans everyone is talking about. Bad blood has long been rumoured between Anna Wintour, 66, editor-in-chief of U.S. Vogue, and Alexandra Shulman, 58, editor-in-chief of British Vogue.

Now it appears to have bubbled into public view with tonight’s TV show Absolutely Fashion: Inside British Vogue. So what is the truth about their long-running rivalry?

Bad blood has long been rumoured between Anna Wintour, 66, editor-in-chief of U.S. Vogue, and Alexandra Shulman, 58, editor-in-chief of British Vogue

NOT-SO-HUMBLE BEGINNINGS

Alexandra Shulman’s father Milton was the London Evening Standard’s theatre critic for over 40 years. Her magazine writer mother, Drusilla Beyfus, wrote books about etiquette. Alexandra, who went to the exclusive fee-paying St Paul’s Girls’ School, had early ambitions in music.

Anna Wintour’s father Charles, known as ‘Chilly Charlie’, edited the Evening Standard. American mother Eleanor was noted for her charity work. Her brother Patrick is diplomatic editor of The Guardian. Anna attended the fee-paying North London Collegiate School and left at 16 to join a training scheme at Harrods.

DIVORCED, DARLING?

Both are divorcees with children. Alexandra Shulman was married to the journalist Paul Spike when she got the top job at British Vogue. They split when son Samuel was three and she was a full-time working single mother.

She now has a long-term partner, writer David Jenkins, once described as ‘a drugs-crazed youth on Penthouse who could be relied upon to deliver brilliant copy several months late’.

They live together in Queen’s Park, North-West London. Shulman says: ‘It happened at the right time and I am so very lucky.’

Anna Wintour’s first husband was child psychologist David Shaffer, with whom she had two children — daughter, Bee, and son, Charles

Anna Wintour’s first husband was child psychologist David Shaffer, with whom she had two children — daughter, Bee, and son, Charles.

In 1997, however, she met phone tycoon Shelby Bryan at a political fundraiser and embarked on an affair.

A year or so later, the affair was discovered. Both Wintour and Bryan returned to their respective spouses. However, within a few months, Wintour and Bryan decided they could not bear to be apart.

She and Shaffer divorced in 1999. Bryan, who generally wears a tired expression at public events, can usually be seen trailing five paces behind his wife.

WHO’S FAIREST OF ALL?

Anna Wintour is ferociously well-turned-out — all muscles and helmet hair. She famously rises at 6am, works out, plays tennis, has her hair professionally coiffed and then at 8am gets a car into the office.

Lunch every day is rare steak or a bunless burger. She used to eat only smoked salmon and scrambled eggs.

Alex Shulman wavers between a size 12 and 14 and says she hates spas and beauty treatments

As Vogue contributing editor Andre Leon Talley once observed: ‘Miss Anna doesn’t like fat people.’

Aside from the dark glasses, she wears couture dresses, often Chanel. She is the embodiment of high fashion.

By contrast, Alex Shulman wavers between a size 12 and 14 and says she hates spas and beauty treatments.

She told an interviewer: ‘I’ve got to the point where I don’t judge myself on my appearance because that way madness lies. I know so many people who are upset about not looking as good as they used to, but you’ve got to find something else to be interested in.’

THE FEUD

This spring, Alexandra Shulman appeared to outflank Anna Wintour.

Shulman was going to run an image of Rihanna as the British Vogue May issue cover, but then she discovered the singer was going to be on the cover of the upcoming American Vogue. In a fit of fury she dumped her planned April cover of Kate Moss and used Rihanna instead, thus robbing Wintour of her exclusive.

The story is told in tonight’s show. Shulman said: ‘I don’t know their exact publication date and I don’t know any of the details of that. All I know is that we agreed that we would have Rihanna.’

Filmmaker Richard Macer says there was drama behind the scenes. He admitted: ‘Alex phoned in a furious mood, threatening to pull the whole project. She’s angry that I might talk to Anna Wintour about the Rihanna cover; she thinks I might be about to betray confidential information. But the last thing I want to do is get on the wrong side of the editor-in-chief of British Vogue.’

A Condé Nast spokesman said the spat over Rihanna had not been personal. She said: ‘The cover swap was purely to preserve an exclusive — the decision to do so would have been the same were it any other women’s monthly glossy. In the case of Alexandra and Anna, the editors only have the greatest respect for each other.’ Their rivalry seems to have begun when Shulman was appointed editor of British Vogue in 1992 — Wintour had previously done her job and was said to be among the many voices who complained that Shulman, formerly editor of British GQ, simply didn’t have the fashion pedigree.

The pair together at a fashion show. A Condé Nast spokesman said the spat over Rihanna had not been personal. She said: ‘The cover swap was purely to preserve an exclusive'

And let’s not forget the curious party in 2011 which was thrown by the then PM’s wife Samantha Cameron and Anna Wintour at London Fashion Week — seen as a clear snub to Shulman.

ICE QUEENS

It is a matter of legend that Vogue staffers are thrown into a panic if they ever end up sharing a lift with Wintour. She doesn’t make chit-chat and apparently it is safest to avoid even smiling.

Three full-time personal assistants shield her from her own staff and long time Vogue creative director Grace Coddington says she is intentionally intimidating and never backs down.

English actor Freddie Fox said recently: ‘She terrifies me. She’s so punctilious and observant, like a kestrel on a telegraph pole.’

Alexandra Shulman, then-French Vogue editor Joan Juliet Buck and editor Anna Wintour at Karl Lagerfeld's couture house party in 1998

Shulman is less pathologically chilly than Wintour — but still far from friendly. ‘She is professional but she won’t bother to try and put you at your ease or even say hello,’ a former colleague told me.

Another attributes her apparent froideur to insecurity, but says: ‘She’s very private. There are people who’ve worked with her for years who had no clue how she felt about them until they left and she’d thrown them lavish parties.’

Staff are very loyal to Alex, and it is said that if you cross her you are finished in the business.

KARDASHIAN QUESTION

A moment of fashion history was made in 2008 when American Vogue put a non-model (actress Renee Zellweger) on its cover for the first time in 110 years in the all important Fall Fashion issue.

A British Vogue cover featuring Rihanna, left, came out a month before a US Vogue cover featuring Rihanna, right - because Alexandra wanted to pip Anna to the post with it

British Vogue largely resists this temptation — the magazine tends to feature models. Exceptions are made — everyone remembers the stunning cover featuring Princess Diana photographed by Patrick Demarchelier, and for its 100th anniversary this summer the magazine secured a shoot with the Duchess of Cambridge. The celeb trend reached its apex — or nadir — when Wintour put reality TV vulgarian Kim Kardashian and husband Kanye West on the cover in April 2014.

That magazine sold poorly and created horror among Vogue devotees who accused Wintour of tarnishing the brand.

Asked about Kim Kardashian, Shulman couldn’t have made her disapproval clearer. Asked why the pair were chosen she said: ‘I don’t know. It wasn’t my cover.’ Would she have them in British Vogue: ‘We haven’t had her. It’s never come up.’

WHAT’S NEXT?

Shulman has written two chick-lit books, which may indicate she is thinking about slipping back into a less glossy life after Vogue. By contrast, Wintour has been mooted as a possibility for the next British Ambassador to the United States — an appointment which would make her even more stratospherically powerful than she is already.