According to Alex

The editor of Vogue told all to a meeting of adoring beauty journalists. Well, nearly all. Jade Beer was in the audience

You don't have to be mad to work at Vogue, but clearly it helps. "I hire lots of barking people," says Alexandra Shulman, the magazine's editor. "I am quite ordinary and ploddy but I do like to surround myself with those people." Once there, however, people may find Shulman more difficult to work for than her relaxed demeanour suggests. "People come into my office perfectly all right, and leave feeling miserable," she admits.

When Shulman addressed a meeting of beauty journalists, she spoke forthrightly about her magazine, herself, and even her beauty regime. She began by saying: "I cannot convey how much I did not want to be a journalist. I had seen two poverty-stricken people [her parents] who were both journalists, never earning a great deal of money, never having job security, but always, it has to be said, having a very nice time.

"Today, it is all much harder work. My mum used to edit Brides, and I would sometimes go in with her on a Friday afternoon and everyone was always sitting around cracking jokes, getting lots of lovely freebies. Now it's not like that at all – we're all slaving away."

It may be hard to remember now, but Shulman's appointment as editor 10 years ago was somewhat controversial. Previously the editor of GQ, she was seen as a features person in a chair traditionally occupied by people who lived and died by fashion. Vogue's fashion-bible status proved safe in her hands, but her influence over the past decade is evident in a beefing-up of the features content.

Shulman said: "Today, of course, people buy Vogue for the clothes. They buy it for the fashion and the beauty, and that is definitely what propels sales. But actually, a lot of people also like to have the feeling that they are getting something a little more worthy – they like the idea that they are learning about a new architect or artist."

And she added: "It is a much bigger business now. Both beauty and fashion are huge, much bigger than they were when I came into it. People are generally much more style-literate than they were 10 years ago, and that is probably the biggest change."

She admitted that one of her favourite shops is Topshop: "It's a wonderful thing. We can all wear designer copies without having to pay designer prices, and it's good for the designers, too. Every time someone writes about the Marc Jacobs lookalike jacket you can buy in Topshop, his worth goes up."

Her own beauty regime she summarised thus: "I never clean my face, but I do use a moisturiser. I always wear make-up, but not much, and it's always natural-looking." Her biggest regret is a strange one: not having written Carly Simon's song, "You're So Vain". "My defining moment on Vogue," she continued, "has to be the famous Corinne Day pictures of Kate Moss in her old knickers. I was really pleased with them. There were a couple of people who said, 'I don't think you should publish them'. They were taken during the heroin-chic time, and people thought she looked too thin and that they would encourage paedophilia. Now, looking back, they did sum up a change from the big glamorous Eighties to a different, lower-key kind of luxury in the Nineties. Whenever anyone does an anthology of style, they use those pictures."

And the future? "I really hope there is another life for me doing something completely different, but not now." The alternative, of course, is to wait until she retires, something that has been strongly rumoured recently, on her 10th anniversary as editor. But what does the editor of Vogue do next?

"My predecessors have all gone to America, but I don't want to live there, so that's not an option."

And, for those who simply need to know, it was: dress by Marni, slip by Alberto Ferretti, and shoes by Anya Hindmarch.

Jade Beer is the editor of 'Beauty' magazine