Plum Sykes - Personal Life

Personal Life

In 2005, Sykes married British entrepreneur Toby Rowland, son of businessman "Tiny" Rowland, at Sledmere House, her family's ancestral home (1751) in the East Riding of Yorkshire. Her dress, with an eight foot train and hand-sewn roses, was designed by Sykes' friend and protégé of Isabella Blow, Alexander McQueen. Sykes was sometimes described as a muse of McQueen; she modelled for some of his earliest catwalk shows, as well as for photoshoots of his designs. Prior to her wedding, she wrote an article for Vogue about shopping for suitable lingerie for her wedding night, an article that included reference to a "$900 bra" Six years later some fashion journalists (anticipating correctly the chosen designer) claimed that Catherine Middleton had been inspired by Sykes' wedding dress to choose Burton to design hers for her marriage to Prince William, Duke of Cambridge., although others suggested that the inspiration was that (also in 2005) of Sara Buys to William’s step-brother, Tom Parker Bowles.

Sykes and Rowland had their first child, Ursula, in October 2006 and their second child, Tess, in June 2010.

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 late 1990s the Sykes sisters were sometimes described as the "twin set", Plum later joking, with reference to the heiresses Paris and Nicky Hilton, that "Lucy and I were Paris and Nicky without the sextape" (an allusion to the sex tape featuring Paris Hilton and a former boyfriend that had been posted on the internet in 2003). Lucy Sykes married Euan Rellie, a New York-based investment banker, in 2002.