Everyone loves new Tatler editor Kate Reardon

"My Christmas has come early."

So said Kate Reardon yesterday, who wasn't too grand to call journalists back on the day she was appointed the 17th editor of Tatler since the magazine's relaunch in 1901. Reardon, 42, is the willowy blonde former Tatler fashion director who has stepped forward to claim the top job.

"I am very, very happy. There is such a talented team there, whom I plan to keep," said Reardon.

Lifestyle journalist Kate Spicer, who went to school with Reardon, spoke for many when she tweeted: "She was made for that job." There were palpable sighs of relief all round as another friend added: "She is famous for getting along with everyone. Polished. And I think she really is Tatler. When one seeks to define the magazine — it's Kate. The original It girl. But the kind who evolves with the times and doesn't get left behind."

She will take up her position in the first week of January, following the departure of Catherine Ostler, who was in the chair for less than two years. Ostler, 40, and married to Condé Nast's general manager Albert Read, had a creative temperament that earned her the nickname "Tiny Tears". She leaves Condé Nast in the same week that saw the dramatic departure of Carine Roitfeld, editor of French Vogue.

In Reardon, Condé Nast has chosen a sure pair of hands with an enviable contact book, a girl who has spent the last 20 years positioning herself as the popular darling of the smart set. She has the perfect pedigree. The daughter of London architect Patrick Reardon (international hotel specialists ReardonSmith Architects led the design team in the recent restoration of the Savoy), she was actually born in New York though had a thoroughly British education. Young England nursery school (before Princess Diana taught there) was followed by Garden House, Bute House, Cheltenham Ladies College and Stowe. Yet after all that she rejected a place at Durham University because "I realised I didn't want to spend three years sharing a house with three other girls."

So she did what any properly ambitious girl would do and petitioned the top man at Condé Nast in New York for a job. It worked. Soon after she became the youngest ever fashion assistant on America Vogue.

At 21, she left New York and returned to London to became the fashion director of Tatler — again, the youngest ever — and stayed for nine years. "I didn't know anyone but everyone seemed to know me. I was suddenly responsible for assisting and producing 18 pages a month — ignorance was bliss. I just did it," she once said.

Her hard work, charm and very English style of enthusiam attracted the attention of Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter, who gave her the job of contributing editor in 1999. She later showed her entreprenurial spirit when, in 2007, she launched her own website called TopTips.com, giving "real tips for real women", which became a best-selling book (translated into, among other languages, Russian and Indonesian). The launch party was held at Claridge's and the guest list, in generous spirit, included everyone she knew, from Wiltshire to Mayfair. Net-A-Porter's Natalie Massenet, Jemima Khan, Lord and Lady Rothermere, Frances Osborne, wife of the Chancellor, Trinny Woodall, India Hicks and Christian Louboutin, alongside her plumber and her vicar.

However, she is almost as well known in London for her peripatetic love life as she is for her magazine skills. Early suitors included Rupert Fairfax, Old Etonian aide to Prince Charles, and, in recent years, actor Sam West and former Spectator editor Matthew d'Ancona. But the big love of her life is thought to have been former executive M&S chairman Sir Stuart Rose, now 61, with whom she had an on-off relationship with for several years. They met when he employed her to visit M&S branches and report back on what could be improved in store. When he split from her last year, he said: "At the time, M&S was my wife, and my mistress too, and Kate got what was left, which was very unfair." If she had hoped to become Lady Rose, it was never to be.

She retreated to her weekend country cottage in Wiltshire and consoled herself by realising a life-long ambition: to own a horse. It is definitely a love affair and she recently wrote in The Times about her tall (16.2 hands), dark (well, grey) gelding called Easter with self-deprecating humour, even threatening to install a webcam in his stable. This will be useful when she settles into the editor's office on the third floor of Vogue House in a few weeks and starts spending more time at her mews house in South Kensington again. Although she used to laugh about working from home in her pyjamas and losing track of what day of the week it was, she was never far away from Condé Nast's headquarters in Hanover Square for too long, whether to discuss a feature commission or to edit Vanity Fair's designer jewellery supplements.

She understands the glossy but highly professional world of Condé Nast and the complex relationships with its restless, mostly rich, readership — not to mention the powerful luxury goods market. As her close friend, the writer Vassi Chamberlain (who left Tatler under the Ostler regime), said: "Just everyone loves Kate."