Vanessa Friedman
Vanessa Friedman was named the fashion director and chief fashion critic for The New York Times in March 2014. In this role she leads global fashion coverage for both The New York Times and International New York Times.
Before joining the paper, Ms. Friedman was the inaugural fashion editor of the Financial Times, beginning in 2003. Along with editing the Style pages and the Luxury360 vertical, she wrote a weekly column for the Saturday FT and created the FT’s annual Business of Luxury conference.
Previously, she was the fashion features director for InStyle UK, from 2000 to 2002. Before that she worked as a Fashion Correspondent for the FT, as an Arts Contributor at The Economist and was the European Editor at American Elle. In addition she contributed regularly to Vogue, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair and Entertainment Weekly.
She is the author of “Emilio Pucci” (Taschen) as well as an honorary professor at Glasgow-Caledonian University. She was the recipient of the 2012 Front Page Award for fashion writing, as well as the 2013 Fashion Monitor Journalist of the Year award.
Ms. Friedman received her undergraduate degree from Princeton University.
428: Vanessa Friedman: The New York Times Fashion Director and Chief Fashion Critic
Vanessa Friedman sees the fashion world from a vantage point few others can as the Fashion Director and Chief Fashion Critic at the New York Times. She arrived there after pioneering roles covering fashion at Financial Times in a first-ever role there, InStyle, Vogue, Vanity Fair, the New Yorker, and Elle.
She shares the industry’s forays into sustainability—or responsible fashion in her terms—as well as sharing her thoughts on it.
Right off the bat she talked about reducing consumption, which I differentiate from reusing and recycling, which most people jump to, but I consider tactical. Reducing is strategic. Harder to get at first, but leads to easier life and work.
I was awkward, as I don’t know the fashion world, but you can hear from her that environmental responsibility is catching on in fashion. Barely so far, but in some places at least authentically and growing. It looks like there’s hope in the industry, though they have a long way to go, a lot of resistance, and many players acting in the opposite direction.
I’m also glad to hear Vanessa’s personal attention, thoughtfulness, interest, which all sounded heartfelt, thorough, and genuine. At the New York Times she’s at a leverage point so I suspect she will influence. I like that celebrities are acting because, however small that change, they influence others. I believe they can help change culture.