More From Angela Ahrendts on Whether She Misses Fashion (and London)

Vogue’s Suze Menkes, posting on Instagram last week:

I had to ask Angela Ahrendts this question: did she miss fashion after giving up Burberry five years ago to take on Apple retail? There was a significant pause before she answered:

“I loved fashion for 40 years. It is wonderful when you know everything there is to know about the industry, because you grew up in it. “I’ve been gone from London almost five years. I have two kids there — they were at university when we moved and they decided to stay. My son is a budding musician with an honours degree in song writing and my daughter has an honours degree in marketing — she works for a start up magazine and he does gigs round London and writes great music! I miss them, obviously. It’s such a great city and we try to make it back as much as we can. But California is not so bad!

In hindsight, that’s a far more interesting answer than what made it into Menkes’s profile of Ahrendts. This makes it sound like Ahrendts didn’t miss the fashion industry so much as her London-based family. I still find Ahrendts’s departure a surprise, but at this point, including a warm farewell from Tim Cook on Twitter, I think it simply looks like Ahrendts decided it was time to leave.

(Via Neil Cybart’s Above Avalon newsletter.)

★ Wednesday, 6 February 2019