John Fairchild on Fashion, Falsity, and Philosophy

An Interview from 1966

I recently came across this interview between journalist Barbra L. Goldsmith and John Fairchild, the legendary editor and publisher of Women’s Wear Daily. Born into fashion publishing, his grandfather founded Fairchild Publications in 1892 and then WWD in 1910. In 1955, John became the European bureau chief of Fairchild Publications before taking on the role of WWD’s EIC and publisher in 1960—which he quickly morphed from a staid trade journal into a gossip-heavy and very influential fashion publication, capable of creating and destroying careers. If you are interested in the fashion industry, then you should read his 1989 book Chic Savages, if you haven’t already—a rather savage expose of the fashion industry and its power players (many of whom WWD helped make into stars), its actually the follow-up to The Fashionable Savages, published in 1965, in which Fairchild clearly delineates the fashion world from Paris to New York, couture to mass-market, and everywhere and every fashionable savage in between. If you come across The Fashionable Savages for less than $400, buy it (it’s currently on Amazon for $2,355.22).

John Fairchild (left) in Fairchild’s Paris office. Photo by Jack Nisberg, Newsweek, August 10, 1965.

Coming off its success, Fairchild was interviewed for Town & Country’s February 1966 issue on his very strong viewpoints on fashion; while many of his pronouncements appear very old-fashioned in the eyes of 2023 (“the whole idea of women in clothes that are borrowed from men is grotesque,” for example), they are an engaging read for anyone interested in fashion history and the broader cultural changes in American society between the 1960s and today.

That issue of Town & Country was a special on suits, hence the suit-specific questions at the end of the interview.

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JOHN FAIRCHILD, Editor-in-chief of Women's Wear Daily, is called by supporters the great genius and by detractors the Un-Fairchild of the fashion world. He transformed a matronly trade paper into a glossy composite of fashion news and jet-paced gossip. His breezy book, The Fashionable Savages, is in its fourth printing. The Zeitgeist of fashion, he is the experts' expert.  Lean and dimple-chinned, thirty-eight-year-old John Fairchild looks like a line drawing of an Edwardian gentleman—an image slightly marred by a bandaged forefinger. He stuck it in a vacuum cleaner while cleaning his basement. This incongruity is the key to a man who, after hours, retreats to the exurbs and from a great distance looks with a highly personal and provocative view at the fashionable life, as seen in this interview. 

F People ask me what fashion is and I tell them fashion is what is happening right now. It's immediate. Fashion is a transient thing, and if it isn't right out in the streets it's no good. What's more, clothes aren't what it's all about any longer. A woman can have the most beautiful clothes in the world and the most beautiful face, but if she isn't fun and amusing, if she doesn't move correctly, if she's not with what is going on today, she isn't interesting as a personality.

G Do you think that women who devote all their time to the pursuit of fashion are boring?

F They are boring and we don't look for them or think they are very attractive. You have to be shallow to spend more than a certain amount of time on how you look. The majority of women on the Best Dressed List bore me to death. If you look at them in the restaurants in New York, you'll see they are the biggest conformists of all. The women today who are interesting are aware of what is current and what people are doing. They aren't just clothes racks.

G Is fashion an art?