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Report: Matthew Barzun or Anna Wintour for British Ambassadorship?

Kentuckian Matthew Barzun is being considered for the U.S. ambassadorship to the United Kingdom, but to get the job he may have to step up his fashion game, Bloomberg.com is reporting. 

His competition: Vogue editor Anna Wintour.

Barzun, a former executive for CNET and a longtime supporter of President Obama, served as U.S. ambassador to Sweden from 2009 to 2011. Barzun has also been suggested as a possible Democratic challenger in 2014 to U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell. Bloomberg said:

Both Wintour and Barzun were among Obama’s biggest bundlers of donations in the campaign, with each raising more than $500,000 to help re-elect the president. Marc Lasry, the managing partner and founder of Avenue Capital Management, also wants the Paris embassy, said the people.

Wintour was born in Britain but isnow a U.S. citizen.She has edited American Vogue since 1988and widely believed to be the basis for the callous editor in the book The Devil Wears Prada, which was later made into a film starring Meryl Streep.

Wintour also was featured in the 2009 documentary The September Issue.

And here's Barzun speaking this year at the TedxUofL conference:

If selected, Barzun wouldn't be the first Kentuckian to serve as ambassador to the Court of St. James, as the post is called. Robert Worth Bingham -- of The Courier-Journal Binghams -- served in the 1930s between Andrew Mellon and Joseph P. Kennedy. More recently, in the George W. Bush administration, William Farish -- owner of the Land's End thoroughbred farm in Versailles, Ky. -- held the post.

Copyright 2012 89.3 WFPL News Louisville

Joseph Lord is a Louisville native who was raised in Jeffersontown. He attended Western Kentucky University before covering public safety and later city government for The Anniston (Ala.) Star. He's also covered education for The Tribune and Evening News in southern Indiana and music and pop culture for Velocity, The Courier-Journal's weekly entertainment magazine.