Black Coffee and Red Lipstick : Notes on living

Black Coffee and Red Lipstick is a collection of essays that weave ideas about our domestic and daily life - hence the black coffee - with thoughts on style and the way we present ourselves - hence the red lipstick.

It combines anecdotes and observations from Alexandra Shulman's 25 years spent editing British Vogue and her current life as a freelance writer and commentator. She draws on her experiences as a magazine editor but also a mother, daughter, sibling, girlfriend, housekeeper and lover of shopping.

Alexandra left her job at Vogue in 2017 to embark on a different way of life and while this is in no way a book of self-discovery it does touch on the question of things or patterns of behaviour that make us who we are?

The essays will be a mixture of ideas from her quest for the perfect eyeliner, to why picnics are so delightful. How it is that men and women see different things in the home - is there male pattern blindness? - to why our hair matters so much to us. Friendship, siblings, gardening and grey hair will also be explored with Alexandra's characteristic wit and incisiveness.

Author: Alexandra Shulman

Memoirs, Literary essays

Published on 1 Oct 2026 by Octopus Publishing Group.