Fashion writer was a ‘brilliant mind’
Former Star journalist remembered for intellect and zeal for excellence
Fashion journalist David Livingstone had plenty of drama about him, but that’s not what close colleagues remember most.
“Lots of people in the past few days have talked about what a sweet guy he was underneath all of the drama,” former Star fashion editor Bernadette Morra said on Saturday.
“Once you broke through that bluster he would reveal a really sweet side,” Morra said. “He had so many close relationships with people with whom he worked. These were all people he did challenge.”
Livingstone, widely respected as a sharp-witted curmudgeon with an intimidating intellect, died Thursday of sudden heart failure at the age of 69.
“I’ve been thinking about him as most of us in that arena are,” fashion journalist and entrepreneur Jeanne Beker said. “What a loss. What a brilliant mind.”
“For many years, I felt just intimidated by him,” she said. “I was always in awe of him.”
Beker said she had an abiding respect for Livingstone’s need to dig for the truth and then express it as clearly as possible.
“He just called it like he saw it,” Beker said. “In a world of deep facades and a lot of superficiality and phoniness, David was the real deal.”
Beker said Livingstone could somehow speak volumes without uttering a word.
“The way he would raise his eyebrows!” Beker said. “With him, one look and you would know exactly what he was thinking.”
Livingstone wrote about fashion and beauty for the Star from 1996 to 2013. Aside from the Star, his writing graced Châtelaine, Saturday Night, Maclean’s, Toronto Life Fashion and the Globe and Mail.
He was a founder of Elm Street, editor-in-chief of the Look and then editor-in-chief of Men’s FASHION.
Lloyd Livingstone, 61, said he isn’t surprised that colleagues describe both his brother’s zeal for excellence and his deep pool of caring.
Livingstone — known in the family as “Frankie” for his middle name of Francis — embodied his father’s strong work ethic and his mother’s sweet, sentimental side, Lloyd Livingstone said. “There was a real yinyang in him,” he said.
Livingstone’s first 13 years were in Glace Bay, Cape Breton, where his father was a steelworker and his mother looked after their four boys.
Both of the boys’ grandfathers were coal miners.
When Livingstone was 13, the family moved to Toronto, where their father held a series of factory jobs.
“I think it comes from our father that there’s only one way to do a job — do it and do it well,” Lloyd Livingstone said. “There were no half measures.”
His mother represented his soft side. “She was full of concern for everyone,” Lloyd Livingstone said.
David Livingstone always enjoyed the esthetic side of life and made regular trips to the library while growing up, before studying languages and literature at the University of Toronto.
As a journalist, his interviews were often long and invariably well researched.
“He wanted to get to the essence of the person,” Morra said. “I think he really liked people.”
Even when writing about something as mundane as soap, Livingstone could somehow make it a surprising, fun intellectual exercise, as shown in this April 16, 2009, article for the Star.
It began: “As a fashion journalist who has tasted the glamour of the Paris shows and been to fragrance launches where all that was served was champagne and macaroons, I sink easily into hard-bitten ennui and long for something that makes me feel naive. I think I’ve found it in Tide Total Care, a new detergent from Procter & Gamble that is out to elevate fabric care to fashion care.”
A little further down the piece, he added: “So sophisticated and unlikely, these latest developments make recollections of washdays past seem so innocent. I remember bluing; that blue stuff that was added to the wash to make whites whiter and that, in a pinch, could be used as a substitute for ink in a fountain pen.”
“With him, one look and you would know exactly what he was thinking.” JEANNE BEKER FASHION JOURNALIST
In a May 30, 2009, Toronto Star article, Livingstone praised University of Toronto anthropologist Hilary Scharper for daring to write a collection of short stories called Dream Dresses.
“That by itself might be viewed askance in the groves of academe,” Livingstone wrote. “And when, like Scharper, you take as your theme the importance of clothes, there will be colleagues who think you’ve gone over to the fatuous side.”
Then he noted Victorian essayist Thomas Carlyle “once described cloth as what the ‘Soul wears as its outmost wrappage,’ ” and said Scharper “dignifies dress as the material manifestation of hopes and fears.”
For all of his interest in fashion, Livingstone often looked like a rumpled, absent-minded professor.
One of his favourite pieces of clothing was an authentic NHL referee’s jersey, with his name on the back, Lloyd Livingstone said.
Another favourite thing to wear was a vintage Maple Leafs jersey.
That said, Beker said she thinks that David Livingstone’s interest in fashion was a natural fit.
She said she learned from Livingstone that fashion is a vital part of popular culture, even an expression of the human condition.
“Any kind of excellence delighted him,” Beker said.
“If you’re going to do it, you have to do it earnestly and respectfully . . . He demanded some kind of truth from everybody.”
Livingstone is survived by his daughter, Alexandra Gair, and brothers Johnny, Lloyd and Stephen, several nieces and a nephew.