Cressida Dick

Women’s REALM A look back at a quarter century of high-flying achievers – every one a leader in her field ogue has never defined itself as Cressida Dick a women’s magazine and our 2017, by Benjamin McMahon coverage of fashion, arts and It’s been a turbulent few months contemporary style has always for the unflappable new Met been followed by a large number of both men and women – never commissioner, says Susie Rushton more so than now. But it is also he country’s most powerful true that over the years we have police officer, Cressida Dick, is been proud supporters of, and wearing her own clothes when even town criers for, women Tshe arrives in south London who have achieved great things at Vogue’s shoot. If it weren’t in their chosen fields. for the unmarked black BMW now parked From its launch in 1916, ostentatiously outside the flung-open studio British Vogue has always doors – engine running, two security officers photographed the leading models lounging in the sunshine – you could easily and performers of the time. By the middle of the last century, its pages increasingly miss Dick, a petite 57-year-old woman included the creative figures of the age – artists, writers, filmmakers, theatre directors with short black-and-grey hair slightly swept – but during the past 25 years it has broadened its reach to acknowledge the vast to one side, dressed in a grey leopard-print range of areas where women are now leading the field and achieving remarkable cotton top and navy trousers, the brogues on things. Here we have selected a number of portraits of those who have been featured her feet – at a guess – barely a size three. in Vogue during the last quarter century. We show Theresa May photographed in It’s the authoritative manner that gives her 1996 when she was the prospective parliamentary candidate for Maidenhead; while away. Within seconds, she has disarmed each Amanda Levete, architect of the recently opened V&A extension, was picked out of us with a handshake, a direct smile and the in 2009. Two women at the forefront of the current battle against extremism are improbable suggestion: “Call me Cress, or Sara Khan – whose Inspire movement is playing an increasingly pivotal role – and Cressida.” Dick was once a top hostage the impressive first female head of the Metropolitan Police, Cressida Dick, interviewed negotiator, and you can see why. She chats and photographed only weeks after the recent terrorist attacks on Manchester and easily about her morning spent at Trooping London. The brilliant poet Carol Ann Duffy is the first female poet laureate, and the Colour, at which some soldiers had Ellen MacArthur was photographed fresh from her achievement of sailing around the fainted due to the heat. Then she asks each world solo in 2005. Nothing could better demonstrate the diversity of opportunity person in the room about their job, whether and career paths open now to the generation of today, and the possibility of they enjoy them – and really listens to the reaching the very top. Alexandra Shulman answers. Apparently aiming to please, she > 282 09-17WellWomenofInfluence.indd 282 14/07/2017 15:27 “I’ve always led through trying to understand people,” says Metropolitan Police commissioner Cressida Dick. Hair and make-up: Emma Williams 283 09-17WellWomenofInfluence.indd 283 14/07/2017 15:27 enquires which uniform we’d prefer her to thank you for what you’re doing. All the Oxford dons – her father, Marcus, a professor wear for the portrait – ceremonial or patrol? staff say the same.” of philosophy, her mother, Cecilia, a historian – admitting she’d rather be dressed in the Dick had all the qualifications for the – Dick’s ancestors include the trailblazing standard-issue shirt and trousers she wears post (as acting deputy commissioner, she’d Scottish doctor Sophia Jex-Blake and the on the streets of London, “talking to the already been the force’s most senior 19th-century abolitionist MP Thomas officers, to the public, seeing how things woman), with a distinguished career of Fowell Buxton. Her parents divorced when are”. The photographer snaps away, Dick 30 years in the police, leading major Cressida was eight and her father died three preferring to smile because she thinks she operations and departments including years later. Cressida’s mother (“who worked always looks so grim in photographs and counter-terrorism, gun crime and diversity. all her life as a female academic, which was on television – one of her younger The most notorious blot on her CV was reasonably unusual”) was left “getting on colleagues told her admiringly that, in a the 2005 killing of innocent Brazilian Jean with it herself ” – in other words, raising recent media appearance, she looked “as Charles de Menezes, in an operation led Cressida and her two siblings alone. Yet she nails”. She hoots with laughter. by her, and although she was personally describes her childhood as “privileged… It Dick is famous for her sangfroid and it’s exonerated of blame in the court case that was taken for granted in my family that evident even now, in a moment of extreme followed, it could’ve stopped short her anything my brother did, I should be able to turmoil and tension in the capital. Her first career. Instead, in the years that followed, do as well. And I feel very fortunate to have duty as commissioner, in early April, was she continued to rise within the Met, but been given a degree of confidence in that to attend the funeral of PC Keith Palmer, by the time she applied for the top job, way. I hope not arrogance.” She attended the stabbed to death by a terrorist at the she’d actually already left the police entirely Dragon School and the private Oxford Palace of Westminster. A few weeks later, and was working at the Foreign Office in a High School, and first thought she might terrorists attacked London Bridge, killing secret counter-terrorism role. “I didn’t sit want to join the police when she was 15. “In eight and injuring 48, with police officers there and miss it,” she says of her two years those days, they had a scheme whereby you taking down the killers in eight minutes. out of the Met, yet she’ll admit, “I did could spend a few days alongside the police Days before our meeting, the horrific slightly miss the humour, I missed the very and I did that with the Thames Valley force. fire at Grenfell Tower in north Kensington straightforward, honest approach to things.” I really liked it. My mother was worried that claimed scores of lives – the Met I’d find policing boring and actually tasked with handling the fallout. I found it fantastically interesting.” Two days after we meet, a terrorist “There is something about Nonetheless she went to Oxford attack on the Finsbury Park putting the uniform on. University, as one of the first female mosque adds to the sense of students at Balliol (her father’s old a continuing chain of major You’ve got a role to play, college), in 1979. The fund manager incidents, each one a mammoth Nicola Horlick was in the same year undertaking for the Met. to be calm, to lead” with her at Balliol and remembers Dick as “very sporty, into rowing, central character in each of these She can remember exactly the moment in into the running of the junior common dark episodes has been Cressida February she heard she’d got the job. “I’d been room, which was the major focal point of Dick, visible on our screens interviewed that morning. There was one the college”. Both played in the first-ever Aalongside Sadiq Khan, Jeremy person after me. And by lunchtime somebody college women’s cricket team – there were Corbyn and Theresa May, or at vigils, press called across the office, ‘Cressida, the home only 23 female students to pick the entire 11 conferences and community meetings. As secretary is on the line.’ So I guessed it would from – in which Cressida was wicket keeper. the new head of the Metropolitan Police, be a yes or no.” Advised by Amber Rudd that “Of all the girls at Oxford, she was the most she not only leads the largest force in the the news would leak quickly, Dick had to friendly and the least bitchy,” says Horlick. country (43,000 staff; annual budget of prepare to immediately talk to the press. “But “She was very inclusive, very smiley, a real £3.24bn), but has oversight roles for national it was very, very, very thrilling,” she says now, team player, very enthusiastic.” After a false counter-terrorism and the police protection still sounding happy at the thought. “And start in accountancy, Dick joined the Met as of the royal family and senior members of I do remember thinking – as I think one does a constable in 1983. “When I applied, it was the government. This is “quite a stretched at high moments and low moments – of my very clear to me that [in the police] you have time” for the police, she says, and “to cut to mother, who died many years ago. You know, responsibility really early. I loved the idea of the chase, no, I don’t think the budget is big she’d just be laughing her head off at it. In a that. I’d been working at an accountant’s enough to cope with what we’re now being nice way, but she’d think it was hilarious.

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