Shaking Up Women's Wear

When John Fairchild headed Women's Wear Daily's Paris bureau, he was dubbed "Blouson Noir" ("Black Jack et," or "the tough one") by irritated fashion designers, who even crossed to the other side of the street when they saw him coming. As a trade-publication reporter, the supposedly genteel Fairchild had turned out to be an acerbic, outspoken critic of fashions. If Paris designers were relieved when he left in 1960 to become editor of Women's Wear, it was the New York fashion world's turn to be surprised. As New York Times Fashion Writer Marylin Bender put it: "He shook up his dominions, unnerved his neighbors, and made some of them dance to his tune."

Fairchild prodded reporters to ferret out fashion news ahead of competitors; he needled designers and manufacturers into giving him exclusives, and he insisted on getting the material for fashion sketches earlier than anyone else. Women's Wear has come to pride itself on scoops, from revealing Jackie Kennedy's Paris buying sprees during the 1960 election campaign to printing the first sketch of Luci Johnson's wedding dress --an act that caused the paper's reporters to be banned from the wedding.

Says Harper's Bazaar Editor Nancy White, "everyone in the business has to read Women's Wear every day."

Fairchild, now 40, has varied the once lackluster trade journal with sometimes effusive, sometimes cutting personality sketches of socially prominent people. The result has been a good deal of creative, if sometimes spurious, gossip. Fairchild has thus been a large factor in fusing the fashion world with the jet set. Women's Wear also runs pungent theater reviews by Martin Gottfried and hippie book reviews by Peter Prescott, whose father Orville reviews more squarely for the New York Times. Circulation has risen in the past six years by 30%, to 65,000. "Fairchild is responsible for reaching a totally new audience," says Fashion Designer Bill Blass.

Last year Fairchild inherited complete charge of the 76-year-old family company. Since then, combined circulation of its nine trade publications has increased 8%, to 408,000. Fairchild has applied his deft touch to such seemingly charmless journals as Footwear News and Electronic News. The publications are better to look at, easier to read, and less subservient to the industries they cover. The Fairchild Co. has lost $7,000,000 on its two most recently founded journals, Metalworking News and Drug News Weekly, but overall revenues reached $30 million last year.

Banished Offenders. Because of its growing influence, Women's Wear has had a noticeable effect on the fashion business. Manufacturers are quick to adopt such Fairchild slogans as "Real-girl" and "Sportive," "Young Arrogant" and "Cool Chic." "When they started bringing out 'sportive girdles,' I couldn't believe it," says Fairchild. But the Women's Wear role of self-appointed arbiter of fashion is often resented. "I dispute their right to judge fashion before it happens," says Designer Pauline Trigere, "and they do it all the time."

Designers who fall out with Women's Wear soon find themselves being sniped at by the paper or banned from its pages. Norman Norell, currently involved in a feud with Fairchild, had his fall collection overlooked by Women's Wear. Designer Mollie Parnis is completely ignored because she failed to give Women's Wear an exclusive on Lady Bird Johnson's wardrobe. "Fairchild borders on genius," she says, "if he were not so petty."

Oddly enough, for a man immersed in the fashion world, Fairchild tries to have as little to do with it as possible. Calling himself a square, he shuns the parties his paper enthusiastically covers and spends evenings at home with his wife Jill and their four children. In his spare time, he has written a recently published novel, The Moonflower Couple, which dwells a lot on clothes while disdaining the fashionable people who wear them. His main ambition is to reach more readers. He takes satisfaction in the fact that twelve large U.S. dailies syndicate material from Women's Wear. Once all his publications are in the black, he hopes to start a general news daily for women, who, he says, "exercise far more control over the world than is usually realized."

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