Wallpaper Maza: Antique Rose wallpaper

Antique Rose wallpaper BIOGORAPHY

Donna Karan still remembers feeling absolutely terrified when fashion arbiter John Fairchild, the tyrannical editor of Women’s Wear Daily, visited her showroom to see one of her early collections. “I thought I was going to faint, I was so scared,” she says. “John was larger than life—he intimidated me.” With good reason. The Citizen Kane of the fashion press delighted in making mischief, anointing winners and losers, and encouraging his writers to tweak the powerful with witty and often mean-spirited barbs. “He made the paper very exciting,” says Oscar de la Renta. Adds his wife, Annette, “And naughty!” Oscar laughs and continues, “If the story was about you, you hated it, and if the story was about somebody else, you enjoyed it.”

The Princeton-educated Fairchild, who transformed the sleepy publication that his grandfather had founded in 1910 into a lively must-read, trained his critical eye not just on the designers but also on the society women who wore their clothing. He popularized the phrase “fashion victim” and created the capricious and much-copied “In and Out” list. As Diane von Furstenberg puts it, “John took a trade publication that belonged to his family and turned it into a fashion publication that is incredibly influential—it really made people, and destroyed people.” Chairing a Council of Fashion Designers of America (C.F.D.A.) gala several years ago, she spotted Fairchild and announced his presence to the crowd, saying from the microphone, “Even though you are retired, we are still afraid of you.”

It’s been 15 years since John Fairchild left his office at Fairchild Publications, on his 70th birthday, March 6, 1997, vowing that he would never return to the workplace or go to another fashion show. And he’s been true to his word, insisting that he is following the example that his own father set upon retiring from the company, at age 65. “My new life is being with my wife without any interference, and the children come see us every once in a while. I’m very happy,” he says. “I think when you’re out of something, you should stay out. Don’t you?”

Antique Rose wallpaper