Bridget Foley, the executive editor of WWD, has observed the comings and goings of designers long enough to have a sharp perspective on the changing nature of fashion journalism, which she shared in a Q&A.
How do you go about summarizing 100 years of WWD’s history in a magazine?
Well, it’s not a history book. What we wanted to do was represent some of the key issues and motifs of the industry that had been important within the past 100 years. It is a highly subjective distillation of 100 years, and that is what made it fun. There were certain things that were very obvious, and some people who would be at the top of the list to anyone who ever made a shirt. For example, our first writing about Coco Chanel was in 1918. That makes the house of Chanel very important in this industry for the better part of WWD’s 100 years. The entire issue was done, literally, by turning pages. Someone, or someones, flipped through every single issue.
How did you identify what was important, versus what wound up on the cutting-room floor?
It was very difficult. There were, at the end of the day, some emotional calls. For example, Stephen Sprouse had a very finite moment, but it was a big important and emotional moment, so we felt he should be included. And there were always people the paper was obsessed with. The biggest one was Jackie Kennedy. She was an obsession of WWD and John Fairchild when she was a senator’s wife, when she was a first lady, when she was Mrs. Onassis, when she was a widow, all the way through the end of her life. Ali MacGraw was a mini-obsession for quite some time. She was a major fashion icon in the 1970s, but I think her importance to the issue escalated because of the way the paper covered her.
Were there any surprises you learned by looking back at the history?
One of the things that interested me most was uncovering certain themes, sometimes small, but themes that have remained constant in fashion. In the 1920s, there was a funny story, or one meant to be funny, of someone wanting to have a funeral for color because all women wanted to wear was black. We think of that as a modern thing, like we think of the rise of covering young fashion. But we certainly covered flappers and wannabe flappers, and the overall marketing to that group. Then there are stories, here and there, about politically correct ways to refer to large sizes. One was about “chubettes.” Another said, “Don’t call them fat; call them not small or not thin,” or something like that.
As a critic, what kind of changes have you seen in the how fashion has been covered over the years?
Early on, we covered fashion in its minutiae. We covered the inset of a sleeve and gave highly detailed information. I think that the progress has been more to put clothes in a breezier context. Absolutely, John Fairchild revolutionized this paper by making designers celebrities, but what surprised me was that there were designers who were treated as celebrities even before that. Poiret was the first designer the paper covered.
Do you think with the Internet and social media that you are beginning to cover fashion differently today?
We’re covering everything faster, obviously. In Europe, just a few years ago, we used to look forward to Friday nights. We’d be off because we didn’t have a paper on Saturdays, but now we have a Web site. Our roles are changing because anyone who has a computer can weigh in. Anyone can have a blog, and we see designers and executives paying attention to that direct consumer feedback. In terms of reviewing collections, they go at a faster pace, but I try to personally take the same approach, to see each collection in its own context, to be honest but not cavalier.
Does writing faster change what you write?
When you are writing reviews, it has always been pretty fast. You don’t have a lot of time to let a collection sink in. In a perfect world, it would be great to see the show, then see the clothes in the showroom, but a show is the designer’s chosen way to put his or her statement out there. What I write is largely an emotional response, but that is what fashion is, an emotional response. But a different question: Are we in competition with bloggers? Absolutely. I’d like to think that knowledge of what you are writing about is still considered important. I’d like to think that some bed of knowledge about a designer and the history of the house remain important. I think we are starting to feel a little backlash toward the whole immediacy of things. The person who really saw this was Tom Ford. [Mr. Ford showed his spring collection to only 100 editors and allowed no photographs to be released.] Everyone who was at his show knew it was such a moment, because we get bored, and so we like the opposite thing. Part of it was that people who cover fashion used to feel special. And so you felt special again, and there’s something to be said for that.
Do you ever second-guess your reviews, if you came out with a different opinion than Suzy Menkes or Cathy Horyn?
Not so much if I differ from Suzy or Cathy, but sometimes, I go back. I always read the last couple of reviews before a show, or when I am researching something, and I would rather not say the example, but I read something recently that I thought was too mean. At the time, I thought it was great, but this went on too long. That is most likely to happen when you have such an emotional response, either positive or negative. But I am pretty confident in my own opinion.
From time to time, your critics have said that Women’s Wear has lost its bite. Do you think the paper has changed its tone?
Of course the tone of the paper has changed. It’s 100 years old. But I don’t think the paper has lost its bite. We still are critical when we feel we should be critical. We still try to deliver stories with wit, but not everything calls for that. People remember the extremes of anything. The industry has changed. We are a serious newspaper that covers a serious global industry. But things are different today. Things are more controlled. The publicists to celebrities have changed a lot of things. We once had a picture of Judy Garland in her dressing room shot by Tony Palmieri, a staff photographer. That would not happen today with anyone, not even a “Gossip Girl,” let alone Judy Garland.
In Hollywood, everyone is so afraid of being trashed. Everyone dresses not for the biggest event one can imagine, but for a mass television audience. That may be good for the houses to have their brands radiate across the globe, but I don’t think it’s really good for fashion. I am dying for someone to show up on a red carpet in one of Raf Simons’s T-shirts and skirts with a peplum. I mean, how gorgeous?
I’ll take a bet on that one not happening. What do you think will be the future of WWD? Can fashion be covered the same way online?
Obviously digital continues to be increasingly important. I remember when we started the Web site, we said the Web site will never scoop the paper. Well, that lasted 10 minutes. At the end of the day, the way I look at it, and I’m no techie whiz, it’s a delivery system. For a long, long time, the paper was the fastest delivery system. Then television was the fastest delivery system. We have to continue to embrace the possibilities.
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