OUT OF FASHION
A stylish tale of survival and second acts of a Vogue editor
IN APRIL, British Vogue announced a new editor-inchief, a fashion stylist by the name of Edward Enninful. Not only is he the first male editor but also the first person of colour to helm the venerable 100-yearold magazine.
“British Vogue is the kindest of the Vogues,” says Joan Juliet Buck. “I hope it stays kind because he’s a wonderful sweet guy, and I hope it goes well for him. Being an editorin-chief at Condé Nast is a risky job.”
And she should know, having felt the cold sharp guillotine of the famed New York company that publishes Vogue, Vanity Fair, Glamour and GQ around the world. Buck was the first and only American woman to hold the position of editor-inchief at the revered Paris Vogue back in the 1990s. Under her tenure, she increased the magazine’s circulation and shaped the glossy into a more highbrow read. Holding the lofty position for seven years, she was, according to her, unceremoniously fired in 2000 by Condé Nast and told to check into a drug rehab facility in order to collect her severance despite not having a drug problem.
This spring sees the release of her memoir, The Price of Illusion, which chronicles her navigation from a gilded childhood to the shrewd world of style. An only child with a film producer father, Jules Buck, she grew up in cities like London, Paris and Los Angeles among a bevy of boldfaced names, including Peter O’Toole and Lauren Bacall, and counts Anjelica Huston as a childhood friend. There is a lengthy list of name-dropping – from the fashion, film and literary worlds – throughout the book. Two iconic Canadians – Donald Sutherland and Leonard Cohen – also make an appearance. One she fell for, and the other she turned down. “Both very intense and vulnerable men of enormous talent,” she acknowledges.
After the Paris Vogue debacle, she retreated to New Mexico. “I wanted to be somewhere quiet, where I could figure out who I really was.” What she discovered was a renewed interest in acting (she was a child actress).
But attempts at reinvention are not easy transitions, even for someone with a resumé and connections.
“I suppose a lot of boomers go through this when they finally get to do what they never allowed themselves to do,” she says. “They question if they are too old or what gives them the right to attempt this now.”
Even close actress friends questioned her motives after they saw her in a theatre workshop. “I felt like I was treading on their territory.”
In 2011, she would feel the cold steel of Condé Nast again. Living in New York, she accepted an assignment from American Vogue to profile Asma al-Assad, wife of the ruler of Syria. But as the Arab Spring erupted and Assad began bombing his own people, an ensuing Internet backlash erupted over Buck’s glamour-tinted portrayal of the Assads. Vogue removed the story from its website and reportedly ended the writer’s contract with the magazine.
Now aged 69 and living in upstate New York, Buck continues to write and still performs in what she describes as “odd productions with very little money.” Completing the memoir was a lesson in self-examination.
“It was time to set out the map of where I’ve been. I’ve had two spectacular failures, I needed to examine what made me so gullible.”
The writing process was also a salve to escape those dark days.
“It was much better to spend time recreating the people and places I loved – all of which are now gone.”