082 Suzy Menkes: Fashion's Greatest Critic

Fashion Your Seatbelt

I don’t think I have ever been as nervous about interviewing someone in my entire career as I was when my former boss and colleague Suzy Menkes agreed to speak with me for this podcast. I worked side by side with Suzy for 16 years at the International Herald Tribune, which is now known as the International New York Times. Over that period she mentored me, encouraged me and guided me. Shaping my career as I moved from her assistant to fashion writer and finally the Online Style Editor of the IHT. During our time together we experienced so many amazing fashion moments, from the John Galliano, Alexander McQueen and Marc Jacob eras at Dior, Givenchy and Louis Vuitton, respectively, to watching first-hand the rise of LVMH, Gucci Group, Kering and the whole transformation of the fashion industry from artform to billion-dollar luxury business. Not to mention witnessing the debuts of iconic designers like Nicolas Ghesquière, Alber Elbaz, Phoebe Philo, Tom Ford, Stella McCartney, Alessandro Michele, Riccardo Tisci, Maria Grazia Chiuri, Pierpaolo Piccioli and the list goes on. Suzy’s career as a fashion critic spans close to 60 years, starting with her college days at Cambridge where she was the first female editor of the university newspaper. But even before that, as a teenager, she moved to Paris to study at the fashion school that is now known as ESMOD. So her love of fashion as a visual expression of self and society runs very deep indeed. She started her true calling as a fashion journalist at the age of 24. Working under the watchful eye of Charles Wintour, the father of Anna Wintour, who would be an early mentor for Suzy. But Suzy came into full bloom as one of the most respected fashion critics in the world during her 26-year tenure at the International Herald Tribune. Her words were read in the pages of the daily newspaper by hundreds of thousands of readers around the world and eventually by millions once the internet was born. An audience that only expanded with the advent of social media and her turn as Condé Nast’s International Vogue Editor, which saw her words being translated into different languages and her reviews posted on all of the international Vogue websites. She also was the mastermind behind the idea of the modern luxury conference, events that are now commonplace but were brought into being at the IHT, and later continued at Vogue, under her guidance. Suzy is renowned for her honest, fair and insightful writing, and her ability to put fashion into the context of a wider global narrative. Today she runs her own very successful podcast called Creative Conversations with Suzy Menkes, where she continues to interview the leading movers and shakers within the fashion industry. She is still asking the questions every fashion lover wants to know the answers to, but now I am lucky enough to be able to turn the tables on her a bit and ask her a few questions of my own.