THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA: Cornish pub will not change name despite letter from Vogue owner.

In a cease-and-desist letter, Condé Nast’s chief operating officer, Sabine Vandenbroucke, argued that the company was the proprietor of the Vogue mark, not only for the magazine first published in 1916 but for “other goods and services offered to the public by our company”.

At first the pub’s landlords, Rachel and Mark Graham, were surprised. But it did not take long for their shock to dissolve to humour. “If someone had obviously taken the time to look us up, it wouldn’t have taken five minutes to say: ‘Oh, there’s a place called Vogue,’” said Rachel, 49, who is not a reader of the magazine.

The letter, dated 1 March, said: “We are concerned that the name which you are using is going to cause problems because as far as the general public is concerned a connection between your business and ours is likely to be inferred.”

The Star Inn has been in the small village of Vogue, near St Day, for hundreds of years, Mark wrote in response – in which his answer to the request was a “categorical no”.

The magazine’s letter was “hilariously funny”, he wrote. He believes it was sent in confusion after the couple changed their trading status to a limited company.

He added: “I presume that at the time when you chose the name Vogue in the capitalised version you didn’t seek permission from the villagers of the real Vogue. I also presume that Madonna did not seek your permission to use the word Vogue (again the capitalised version) for her 1990s song of the same name.”

I wonder if Anna Wintour tossed the lawyers into the piranha tank upon hearing their failure, a la Blofeld dealing with bungling SPECTRE agents in the James Bond movies?