THIS IS THE LIFE

The biggest difference between men and women when it comes to gifts is that women like surprises Army Green Lycra Spandex Unisex Zentai Suit (just so long as it's in a Tiffany's box etc etc) and men are not that bothered. It does not distress any male to write out a long list of the particular widgets he requires from the widget shop and hand it over to his best beloved. His best beloved, meanwhile, longs to unearth the rarest widget known to mankind in the antique widget market in Stow-on-the-Wold, wrap it up in hand-printed paper with pressed orchids in the weave, and arrange a treasure hunt with cryptic clues in a bluebell wood that ends with a champagne and strawberries picnic on the mossy turf beneath an ancient beech tree. One thing stops her from executing this plan the unhappy knowledge that her man would be just as happy with the bog-standard widgets in a brown paper bag.

Most of the men in my life have frustrated my philanthropic urge (though I am still dead chuffed with the book about Queen Victoria I gave to my bachelor uncle, a fervent monarchist, for his sixtieth birthday entitled Sixty Years a Queen). My father's requirements boiled down to the new Dick Francis or Le Carre, and since I was competing against my mother and four siblings any chance of emerging victorious on his birthday was remote. My husband presents the reverse problem in that his interests and needs are many and various, but are only easy to satisfy if you can get to the warehouse in Lowestoft that is Britain's premier supplier of scale model battleships, or can nip across to the States to try and track down some hitherto unknown bootleg Miles Davis recording. Even then you'd have to be a Miles or modelling devotee yourself to discern the minuscule gaps in his collections. He's always happy to provide details of the obscure object of desire, but where's the skill in following shopping lists? Actually, there is some skill involved because I still managed to exit Motor Books (the petrolhead's paradise near Covent Garden) with a book on Pininfarina rather than Alfa Romeo as requested. (Well, they were both big red books with porny pictures of curvaceous headlight fittings.)

Bearing all this in mind, you can imagine how uptight I was about the challenge posed by my husband's fiftieth birthday. I've had several years to ruminate on this momentous event and my aspirations to procure his startled gratitude grew ever wilder. And I was up against stiff competition from his friends who kept on phoning me and saying things like, "I've commissioned a customised cross-section of a dreadnought, incorporating a herb garden," and, "Do you think Angus would like a walking stick that's also a hip flask?" By the start of this month I realised that nothing less than David Attenborough leaping out of a birthday cake clasping a large owl to a trumpet serenade from Terence Blanchard, followed by an unveiling of HMS Hood, newly raised and restored from the ocean's depths, would suffice. So I did what any woman would do under the circumstances I bought him a book, a bottle of malt whisky, and two DVDs that I wanted to watch. Then we stayed home for the weekend. And he was perfectly happy.

Georgina Safe finds out why Jamie Huckbody, the first male editor at Harper's Bazaar, is the man for the job

A WOMAN has occupied the editor's chair at Harper's Bazaar throughout the magazine's 10 years in Australia, most recently Alison Army Green Lycra Spandex Zentai Suit Veness-McGourty and Karin Upton-Baker. It's the same story at arch rival Vogue, where Nancy Pilcher and present editor Kirstie Clements are among those who have slid their Jimmy Choos under the desk at the title that will celebrate its 50th anniversary in Australia next September.

But here I am in the Park Street offices of Harper's Bazaar in Sydney talking fashion with a bloke, albeit a very well dressed one. In his Viktor & Rolf jacket, Hermes tie, shoes and Bulgari zentai, Jamie Huckbody certainly looks the part of a glossy magazine editor, but his appointment as the first male editor of a women's glossy in Australia has not been uncontentious.

``I was quite surprised at the initial shock of the appointment of a man,'' says Huckbody, who took up his post in June. He addressed his critics in his first editor's letter in the June-July issue of Harper's Bazaar. ``Some have been quick to ask, `What does a man know about women's fashion?''' he told readers. ``Well, the names Karl, Giorgio and Viktor and Rolf ... resonate just as much as Donatella, Frida and Stella.''

Nonetheless, blogs, newspaper columns and industry gossips dissected Huckbody's arrival with the zeal usually reserved for a new season Prada collection. ``I couldn't see the problem,'' he says. ``My education, my training, my expertise and my passion for Bazaar are the only things that matter.

He is certainly well qualified for the job, having worked as Harper's Bazaar's European fashion features director for three years, and with extensive experience in fashion in Australia, the US and Britain. After learning his craft at the Evening Standard in London, he was fashion features editor at Elle magazine, fashion and features writer at Azure Lycra Spandex Unisex Zentai Suit The Independent newspaper and fashion features editor at international fashion magazine i-D. He has also contributed to the US and British editions of Vogue, and has interviewed everyone in the business, from Karl Lagerfeld to Donatella Versace.