Taking off masks
Welteroth tells all after shaking up Teen Vogue and TV’s Project Runway
Preschool, small-town California, Elaine Welteroth’s earliest memory: Her teacher had just plopped down a pile of magazines, glossy-paged building materials to be used to construct a collage. Cut out photos of people who resemble your family, the students were instructed, and paste them onto a sheet of paper.
The trouble, Welteroth found, was that the pages were filled with white moms, white babies — “white paper families,” she recalls. “I was the only brown kid in a sea of white faces, flipping through magazines and realizing for the first time that I was black and therefore I was other. And that memory illuminates the power of media and its impact on our sense of identity.”
In 2016, at age 29, Welteroth was named editor-in-chief of Teen Vogue, making her the youngest person to hold that position at a Condé Nast publication. She’s credited with transforming the magazine into a socially conscious news source that showcased a diverse range of skin tones, hair textures, body types and viewpoints.
Since departing the magazine last year, she joined Project Runway as a judge and wrote a just-released memoir, More Than Enough (Viking, 2019).
Q What’s your book’s origin story, and why did now feel like the right time for a memoir?
A As a journalist, I spent the last 10 years of my career telling women’s stories because I genuinely believe that there are gems in the stories women never tell, and that’s really what fuelled my work at Teen Vogue. And I sort of looked up and realized, by 30 I had this incredible opportunity to make the magazine I always needed when I was younger, and now it was time for me to take my own advice and tell my own story. Especially now, because I’m part of a generation that’s writing our life story in real time on social media, but we only ever share and see the shiniest slice of our success story. And while that can be aspirational, I think it can also be detrimental. Because ultimately, we’re selling lies about success. And I just felt like, as a role model for what a leader can look like as a young black woman, I had more to share than what could fit in a tweet or Instagram caption.
Q Throughout More Than Enough, you reference the term that Shonda Rhimes coined: FOD, or “First. Only. Different.” What kind of pressure comes with that identifier?
A It comes with this feeling that you’re there to represent for a community of people, and that carries a certain amount of pressure. But I think of it as an opportunity, frankly. I see it as a responsibility to not just be first, but to make sure you’re the first of many. For a lot of us FODs, what helped us climb the ranks was assimilation — trying to blend in, wearing these masks so you can assert your authority and gain credibility. All of those things are natural survival tactics, but it takes removing those masks and really speaking from an authentic place to do your most transformative work.
Q You’ll be in conversation with inspiring women throughout your book tour, including activist Brittany Packnett in D.C. How did you cultivate your lineup of guests?
A Before I even put pen to paper on my book, I decided it was going to be a tool that would put me in conversation with my community of women. I wanted to use my book tour as an opportunity to bring to life all the off-the-record conversations I’ve had with my mentors over the years, and my peers, and start a larger collective conversation. Brittany Packnett is an extraordinary educator and activist, a really important voice of our time and for my generation. Her podcast (Pod Save the People, on which Packnett joins host DeRay Mckesson) is one of my favourites, so I basically talk to her in the shower every day. And now I’m going to have the opportunity to sit with her in front of a room full of women — I cannot wait to hit the road with my girls.
Q Why was Project Runway the right next step for you?
A It’s such a beloved show, and to have the opportunity to be a part of reinvigorating it and bringing it into the present by connecting it to what’s happening in culture and what’s happening politically was endlessly exciting to me. Project Runway is really a celebration of creativity. My goal was to weave in conversations around diversity and inclusion and how fashion is a platform for social change. The episode that I’m most proud of (the social cause-focused “What Do You Care About?” that aired in May) really challenged the designers to use fashion as a platform to show us what they stand for.