MAKING OF A STYLE ICON

Claudia Winkleman's stylist, Sinead McKeefry, reveals how the pair created the TV presenter's 'Highland goth' look for The Traitors

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The image of Claudia Winkleman sitting astride a black steed, her face covered in a black veil, wearing a white ruffled shirt under a black jacket, has fast become one of this year's most powerful fashion moments – and it's one of her most iconic looks since The Traitors first aired.

Just as the show's audience (9.2 million and counting) wait on tenterhooks for the next twist in TV's murderous game of wits, which returned with a star-studded cast earlier this month, they also eagerly anticipate the next ensemble in the host's dramatically fabulous wardrobe.

It's the work of one woman: the stylist Sinead McKeefry, who's been working with Claudia for 20 years. And given that her client is one of the busiest prime-time TV presenters in the UK, it's fair to say that Sinead has her work cut out tending to Claudia's brilliantly put-together looks.

WORKING AS A TEAM

“We've got very similar aesthetics, and we send each other ideas all the time,” she says. “Some of them are jokey – she’ll send me an outrageous pic of something. She’s very collaborative.”

Sinead describes the initial brief for The Traitors, which arrived on the BBC in November 2022, as “specific in a nonspecific way”, with a lot of big ideas thrown around.

“For the first show, the producers said they visualised Claudia with – and I’m not even joking — a top hat and a parrot on her shoulder," she laughs. “All we knew was that we had this epic Scottish castle and its amazing backdrop. We also knew we had Claud, with the cool hair and the eyeliner.