Victoria Sykes was born in London, one of six children including a twin sister, Lucy, and grew up in Sevenoaks, Kent.
[8] She was featured that year, with, among others, designer Bella Freud and model Stella Tennant in Babes in London, in a photographic shoot by the American Steven Meisel (responsible in 1992 for the singer Madonna's controversial collection, Sex), which was produced by the rising fashion guru Isabella Blow (1958–2007).
In 1997, Sykes became a contributing editor on fashion for American Vogue, of which Anna Wintour, also British, had been editor-in-chief since 1988.
[9] A decade later, at 38, Sykes reflected that "when you hit 30 you lose your edge": invited by the Times to comment on the late-1990s trend for ultra-high heeled shoes, she observed that "these weird space-age shoes look cool and trendy and are a way of getting back to some degree", but that "this type of trend is not a classic version of beauty.
Sykes publicised it with an array of personal appearances at stores in New York (Chanel, Ralph Lauren, Frederic Fekkai, Ferragamo, Neiman Marcus and Oscar de la Renta).
However, despite their satire, others have regarded them as too rooted in Sykes' own Park Avenue "set" to be reflective more generally of women's lives in post-9/11 Manhattan.
claimed that Catherine Middleton had been inspired by Sykes' wedding dress to choose Burton to design hers for her marriage to Prince William.
Sykes' twin sister Lucy, who moved to New York in 1996, became fashion director of Marie Claire and later a designer of children's clothes.
In the April 2012 issue of Vogue, Sykes writes of her three-year struggle with anxiety disorder and agoraphobia after the birth of her children, a condition which rendered her unable to work or to maintain her social life or passion for horse riding.