New York socialite, Vogue refugee, and author Plum Sykes takes her publicity tour back to England, and things go really poorly. (The Telegraph interview is headlined "Bergdorf Bitch," and the working theory is that Vogue editor Anna Wintour made her evil.) At lunch, the interviewer confesses that Plum's publisher wouldn't send her Plum's new novel, Bergdorf Blondes, and chick loses it:

"You haven't read my book? Oh, my God, I can't believe it. So you don't actually know what I am talking about?" Near hysterical, [Plum] drops her napkin.

"You obviously have no idea. When I interview a famous author for Vogue, I make absolutely sure I have read all their works." She takes a deep breath, then screams at me: "You are so unprofessional - I can't deal with this."

I later learn that Sykes's tantrums are far from unusual, but it was not always thus. There are, it appears, two faces of Plum Sykes. The ordinary, pre-Park Avenue Plum Sykes was a rather sweet girl. "Okay, so she would bitch about someone's haircut or hemline," remembers one old friend, "but most of the time she was amusing."

That was before her life-altering 1997 car ride with Anna Wintour, the ferocious British editor of American Vogue, during London Fashion Week. Who knows what Ms Wintour said to her on the journey, but Sykes, so the story goes, stepped out of the car and promptly donned a pair of sunglasses: Park Avenue Plum had arrived.

Bergdorf Bitch [Telegraph]

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