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revert to a boring black trouser suit.When Anna Wintour and I werepregnant at the same time, in 1985, Iwas deeply jealous of her neat couturebulge under a long Chanel jacket, whileI was the size of a helium balloon.The women I wanted to look likewere nothing like me – Diane vonFurstenberg with her sultry eyebrowsand wild, crinkly hair, MichellePfeiffer curled up on the cover of VanityFair in the gold chain-mail CalvinKlein minidress that flew out of storesas soon as the issue hit the newsstands.My own wardrobe’s power surgesusually came after Annie Leibovitz andMarina styled me up for photoshootscelebrating the success of Vanity Fair.For an Advertising Age cover story asEditor of the Year in September 1988they dressed me in a tight red JackieRogers wraparound dress and replacedmy goody-goody pearl earrings withhuge gold suns. Marina also produceda sea-green Ralph Lauren jacket anddraped it over a black turtleneck,adding a black pencil skirt and threestrings of heavy pearls. “It made mewant to trash all my sedate trouser suitsand dress-for-success jackets, andva-va-voom to the office every day,”I recorded. “Except I’d never do it. Trueelegance is a real time-suck, and flairmisfires are worse than being dull.”``````By then, I possessed a repertoire ofballooning Arnold Scaasi gowns andsharp-shouldered, herringbone Oscarde la Renta suits. Having worked sohard to look like the New York glamoureditrix par excellence, I hated it whenBritish journalists wrote about me asif this image were real. The diaries showa woman always at war with her ID.My dream was only to escape to ourhouse at the beach in Long Island withGeorgie and my husband, Harry.I continuously noted the dark side ofthe Reagan spending spree, representedby the growing presence of the homelesson the sidewalk. Aids stalked the worldsof fashion and culture where VanityFair reigned. I was always at funerals.In January 1987, the magazine madetremendous impact with a difficult story.At the time, the stigma of Aids was sogreat it was never mentioned in obituariesas the cause of death. After painstakinglysecuring the agreement of parents andpartners, we decided to run two photospreads of all the brilliant young menin arts and culture we had lost to theillness. It remains one of Vanity Fair’sproudest moments of the 1980s.The market crashed in October ofthat year and I recorded it with a senseof relief. It seemed fitting irony to methat, one week after Black Monday,Christian Lacroix mounted the hottestfashion show of the decade whereall the Marie Antoinettes of Manhattandanced on the lip of the volcano wearing$25,000-a-piece puffball dresses.``````Today, when I look back on the furious,acquisitive pace of this era, juggling twochildren, a magazine turnaround anda high-octane social life, I wonder whenI slept. Yet I do feel nostalgia for thoseconfident, striving days of pre-9/11America, albeit, where did we all thinkwe were going, dressed to the nines atthe top of a spinning world?I still have one or two of my va-vadresses from the 1980s. My favouritehas a tight black beaded top attachedto a frothing taffeta skirt that PatrickKelly made for me for Vanity Fair’sfifth-anniversary celebration, inMarch 1988. The party was at BillyRose’s Diamond Horseshoe clubbelow Ian Schrager’s ParamountHotel. I remember now the wonder ofremoving it from the tissue paper inthe box that arrived from Paris. Andthe sadness of what happened later;Patrick died in 1990 of an Aids-relatedillness at the tender age of 36.RIP the 1980s. QThe Vanity Fair Diaries by TinaBrown (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £10)is published in paperback on June 28``````Tina with SINewhouse Jr,1991, and, right,with NormanMailer, 1988``````In 1983,during herlast year atTatler, and,below right,two yearslater inNew York``````Brown and AnnaWintour in 1989``````Partying Versace-stylewith Sylvester Stallone andJennifer Flavin in 1990.Below: in the Vanity Fairoffice that same year``````With GayfrydSteinberg in1988, and, left,with GabéDoppelt andMiles Chapmanin 1989SIA PRESS/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK; GETTY IMAGES; FRANK MICELOTTA/GETTY IMAGES; RON GALELLA/WIREIMAGE; REX/SHUTTERSTOCK; ROXANNE LOWIT