Style Profile: Carine Roitfeld

Carine Roitfeld has been editor-in-chief of French Vogue since 2001. If that doesn't say it all, maybe the nomination amongst Time magazine's 100 most influential people in the world in 2008 or her being featured in Vanity Fair's Top 10 best dressed women that same year will. She is the very definition of Parisian chic, having been brought up in a "very bourgeois" atmosphere in the 16th arrondissement of Paris, as she says. She has very interesting origins - her father was a Russian film director and her mother "a classical Parisian woman".

Defining traits: straight falling hair, heavy eyebrows and smoky eyes; style-wise: she adores black, she always wears high heels and almost never a bag, she doesn't like bags. Browsing through the next pictures you will see she isn't snobbish about what she wears, she finds new ways of mixing her clothes and giving them a new flair. You will also see that she apparently has a favourite pair of Louboutin shoes that she wears on many occasions... Who wouldn't? Hahaha.

She is a former model and consultant for some big fashion houses like Tom Ford, Gucci or Yves Saint Laurent. She wrote a column for Elle magazine before being appointed to editor-in-chief for the French Vogue that she completely restyled. Either in a busy city between shoots and interviews or at a hip party, she is always stylish.

Either a fur addict or very subtle she is always on the best-dressed list of any important event. She isn't a bag fan and hates the idea of displaying wealth through logos. The next photo-mix shows what I thought was one of the subtlest and most refined touches of personality I ever saw: at this year's Menswear Paris Fashion Week she wore a small Chanel bag with her initials embroidered on it. (Photo of the embroidery: Garance Doré)

She is very upfront. She rarely wears a watch or a bag. She has a daughter and a son and has been in love with the same man, Christian Restoin, for more than 30 years. She looks great. And she's 55. Could the world be more perfect?