Who

A socialite and former contributing editor at Vogue, Sykes wrote the 2004 chick-lit novel Bergdorf Blondes.

Backstory

The daughter of Valerie, a dress designer, and Mark, a gambler and inveterate rogue once imprisoned for fraud, Victoria Sykes (she's been known as Plum her entire life) was raised in Kent, England. After attending private school and "coming out" as a debutante, she studied history at Oxford and took a job at British Vogue. It wasn't long before she was summoned to New York by American Vogue editor Anna Wintour; Sykes moved to the city in 1998 and quickly became one of the boss's favorites (much to the chagrin of then-colleague Kate Betts, who described Sykes as a "pretentious airhead"). In 2002, Sykes landed a $600,000 advance from Miramax Books for her first novel, Bergdorf Blondes, a breathless depiction of a world where PAPs (Park Avenue Princesses) search for ATMs (rich boyfriends) and PHs (prospective husbands). She followed her bestselling debut with 2006's less successful The Debutante Divorcée.

Of note

Sykes, not surprisingly, has plenty of detractors. Some say her personality is contrived, and that she's capitalized on her British-ness by exaggerating her accent and English manners. Her novels' celebration of the privileged and the frivolous put off critics, too: "If you have any sense of justice at all, the publication of this book demands that you rouse yourself from the couch this very second and set out to loot and burn Manhattan. Meet us at Da Silvano and bring weapons," quipped Choire Sicha in his Times review of Bergdorf Blondes. Sykes' deluded sense of self-importance didn't endear her to the publishing crowd either. She placed her literary contributions on a par with Oscar Wilde's, and when a London Telegraph journalist asked her if she compared her work to The Great Gatsby, she said "Yah, and the other works by Truman Capote."

Drama

Before Bergdorf Blondes had hit the shelves, Sykes fired her agent Elizabeth Sheinkman (via voicemail), apparently dissatisfied with the $2 million's worth of book and film deals that Sheinkman had procured on her client's behalf. The move stirred controversy (and gave her critics another reason to hate her). She's now repped by Eric Simonoff of Janklow & Nesbit.

Family ties

Plum is one of six kids. Her non-identical twin sister is clothing designer Lucy Sykes Rellie, who's married to banker/gadabout Euan Rellie; her younger brother Tom used to be a reporter for the Post and authored a book about being an alcoholic; there's also her younger sister, Alice, who works for Lucy's company. Middle brother Josh and the youngest sibling, Fred, live in the U.K.

Personal

An engagement to artist Damian Loeb was broken in 2001; Sykes rebounded with men including Bryan Adams and Tate Donovan, and in 2005 married heir and entrepreneur Toby Rowland. She wore a dress designed by pal Alexander McQueen and photos of the wedding appeared, naturally, in Vogue. In October 2006, the couple had their first child, a girl named Ursula. The family lives in a West Village apartment and a house in West London.