Lucy Yeomans, editor of Porter magazine:I've banned the word 'trend'

Lucy Yeomans has just got back from the Paris Couture.I know this because, where else would the editor in chief of Porter – the flagship magazine of Net-a-Porter, the biggest luxury on line fashion website in the world – be at this time of year?

Also I have been peeking at her Instagram account which features – among other envy inducing snaps - a photograph of the brilliant blue swimming pool at the Hotel Bristol.

This is the life of the glossy magazine editor: fabulous five star hotels; made to measure clothes; bunches of flowers courtesy of Dior (or blooms as they are known in the upper echelons of fashion).

So meeting her on a immaculate offices of Net-a-Porter in West London, I am expecting the editor of the frontispiece of this operation to be as immaculate as her environment.A bit scary.Very thin.Wearing black and a tight smile.

Forget all of the above.Yeomans, whose office is surprisingly small, is soft spoken, smokey eyed, wearing a slouchy navy polo neck a soft skirt (the new mid length, naturally) and boots, with swooshy Duchess of Cambridge styled hair.At 44 years old, she reminds me a bit of the bad CIA station chief Allison in Homeland, which is probably the hair but also something about her composure.

She doesnt, as you might assume, pull her wardrobe from a rail of edited clothes once every season.Oh No, she says, Im not sample size so that cant happen.Yes she has a personal trainer, but thats a new development.That snap of the Hotel Bristol pool, she didnt actually swim in it; she was too busy rushing between meetings (admittedly including lunch with her friend the model and philanthropist Natalia Vodianova).

Still, however much she might protest otherwise, Yeomans lives at the white hot point where glamour and big business meet.Her job is not to strike awe, but to tempt her readers into buying and then deliver the goods literally (Net-a-Porters promise is order it at 10am be wearing it by 5pm).

In these offices they know how many of which item they have sold by the end of every day - whether a banker has ordered a leather coat in New York or a lawyer a Gucci dress in London – and all this information is at Yeomans fingertips.

So determined is she to make Porter useful and all about what works for Her (the reader) rather than the fashion industry she has banned the word “trend”.Ha!Yes I have, she chuckles.Why ?Because How to Dress Now…thats what women want from us.I think magazines have to work harder now.For so long we have been this delicious inspiration but so often the reader experience is really poor she says.And it can feel cliquey.

What and who is fashionable seems certainly be shifting away from groovy young girls to fashion for grown-ups and grown up fashion.We are talking on the same day that Georgio Armani has launched their New Normal campaign fronted by Nineties top models including Yasmin le Bon who is 51.

Balmains spring/summer campaign this year reunites three of the original supermodels, Cindy Crawford (49), Naomi Campbell (45) and Claudia Schiffer (45).Its this move away from obsessing about youth to a recognition that with age comes styleandexperience - that Yeoman understands and is ready for.

The current issue of Porter (on sale Feb 5) features all female photographers including Sam Taylor Wood photographing her daughter, and Catherine Deneuve pictured by Nan Goldin.

On the cover is Amber Valletta, aged 42, another one of a tranche of models who were big in the Nineties.Forty and fifty-somethings, women with busy professional lives, families, the beginnings of wrinkles and bodies that require assistance to look good are suddenly in the forefront of fashion, including the designers.

Its true there is Phoebe Philo (the influential Celine designer who is in her forties and a mother of three) and there is Stella (McCartney) and Anya Hindmarch and Sarah Burton (of Alexander McQueen).Stellas bag collection is all about women on the go and I think all this has crept up and influenced fashion in a really interesting way.

If anyone epitomises a woman on the go its Yeomans.Now settled in a loft style apartment in West London with her partner Jason Brooks an artist, with the Marlborough Gallery, she took on the editorship at Porter just four and a half months after giving birth to her daughter, Red – who she gave birth to as she hit her forties.However, taking on such a high-profile position with a small baby was plain sailing compared to the pregnancy.

I had Hyperemisis gravidaram (the same condition the Duchess of Cambridge has), she says.I was really sick.I was half a stone lighter when I was six months pregnant than I am now…and I was really worried about having a baby.I went into it saying Ok Darling: just so you know in France they only breastfeed for three days.Just letting you know I"mnot going to be very good at this…then she came out -she smiles -and she was the easiest.

At 44 she hasnt ruled out having another child:I would love to if it happened, but she has no regrets about having come to motherhood late.For me it was about meeting the right person.I dont actually think it had anything to do with my work.

Age, as far as she is concerned, is not a topic to get hung up on.What about when it comes to looks, I wonder?Its one thing being fortysomething, another if you are having to socialise in the fashion world with the worlds best preserved forty-somethings?

Ok I have had a tiny sprinkling of Botox around my eyes, she says.I dont mind admitting that.I dont know if Id do more.But my ageing mentor is Diane von Furstenberg and she hasnt had plastic surgery.Its whatever works for you.

In any case she looks much the same as she did fifteen years ago.I interviewed Lucy Yeomans once before, in 2001 when she was 29, soon after she had been appointed editor of Harpers Bazaar (then still Harpers & Queen) and she is just as driven now as she was in her twenties.

It was while working at Tatler that she decided I wasnt as in control as I would like to have been and wrote to the publisher of Harpers telling him why she was the right person for the top job.

Half a day into her next job, at Vogue, they called and offered it to her, and she was there for the next 12 years, bringing Harpers out of the dusty dark ages into the celebrity driven light.

Right from the start she was in at the deep end of the London social scene.Ronnie Wood threw a party for her at his private members club the Harrington Club, she hung out with J Kay of Jamiroquai and Alex James and was photographed at parties with George Clooney.

It seemed she was in the right place every night, though she came across as more sophisticated and self contained than most of her peers.Lucy Yeomans never did do grunge.

It seems she has always been in control of her own image as well as her destiny.However, she does have one big regret.Her mother died 15 years ago of a brain tumour, And that she didnt meet my little one is a massive sadness to me.Her eyes briefly mist over.

You also get the sense its sometimes lonely at the top, especially since Natalie Massanet her friend and mentor, walked away from Net-a-Porter last September, with reportedly upwards of £100 million.

She doesnt deny her job is very hard work and stressful:I am an insomniac beyond belief she says.I wake up at three and just worry until its time to get up.

Which, just briefly, gives a glimpse of the paddling that may be going on under the surface, as the swan floats elegantly by.

Fashion is armour for all of us, she says smiling.Your armour to do battle in.

To see the full feature on The Female Gaze buy the latest issue of PORTER, on sale globally on Friday February 5.Also available as a digital edition or go toportersubscription.net-a- porter.com