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Reality show to anoint new British fashion queen of NY
Joanna Coles. Photograph: Style Network Journalist Joanna Coles, editor of Marie Claire, is to star in an American reality TV series based on the magazine. Gaby Wood meets the woman following in the footsteps of Tina Brown and Anna Wintour as the latest Briton to storm New York's glittering world of fashion and media
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* The Observer, Sunday 22 February 2009
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In August last year, Joanna Coles, the editor-in-chief of US Marie Claire, appeared on Fox News. Coles had interviewed Barack Obama for her magazine, and in the course of it he had criticised Fox News for painting an unfair portrait of his wife Michelle.
Joanna Coles Joanna Coles. Photograph: Style Network
Fox anchorwoman Greta van Susteren asked Coles if Obama had said anything more specific about "who he has a beef with here". "No," Coles replied in the most businesslike tone possible, "It was really a much more general attack on the conservative media. He didn't single you out, Greta, but I'm sure you would have been in there."
Not for nothing is Coles referred to as "the Simon Cowell of fashion"; as of 1 March, the British journalist will be capitalising on that reputation and appearing in an eight-episode reality TV series based around Marie Claire, which she took over as editor almost three years ago. The show follows Coles, her staff and, in particular, three young interns, as they attempt to negotiate demands for beauty tips, ferry designer clothes across town, guide celebrities along the red carpet and arrive at work on time despite forbidding footwear.
This meant Coles was trailed by four camera crews and wore a microphone around the clock. (In the current issue's editor's letter she explains that Renée Zellweger taught her a trick: if you want to have a private conversation, you tap the microphone in your bra repeatedly to obscure the sound.) Why an editor would endure such an arrangement for months on end is something of a mystery until you learn that, unlike the fictional satire The Devil Wears Prada or even the forthcoming feature-length documentary about Vogue (called The September Issue), Running in Heels is Marie Claire's baby. Rather than putting the knife in, it cleverly extends the brand.
"It became clear that if you looked at the success that Elle had had with Project Runway [a US TV reality show about fashion]," Coles explains, "the TV show could be very useful for propelling the magazine, and trying to get people who don't know about it to read it. It's a very simple marketing opportunity." She doesn't worry about how she might come across - although she is given a 48-hour period in which to make changes to each episode - because, "I feel like I am who I am, and they were here and they get that. We're not acting in it - it's not scripted."
Although Coles won't confirm this, it looks as if Marie Claire, which last autumn hired former Elle fashion director and Project Runway judge Nina Garcia, will also take over the sponsorship of the reality TV show itself. The advertising partnerships the magazine derives from such ventures, as well as rising subscriptions (they have more than doubled since Coles took over) mean Marie Claire is, in Coles's phrase, "quite well fortified" against an economy that has everyone else breathing into brown paper bags.
Towards the end of New York fashion week, I meet Coles in her office on the 34th floor of Norman Foster's spectacular Hearst building, where even the lobby escalators can induce a fit of vertigo. She has just come back from a day of show-hopping, and is getting ready to deliver a talk at the Columbia School of Journalism that evening. "We kicked off with Vera Wang downtown, then we had Tommy Hilfiger, then we had Brian Reyes, then we had Isaac, then we had Calvin ..." Coles reels off the runways while she freshens her make-up at her desk. She pulls a Dior compact from a Prada bag and adds: "I had a slight clash on Monday, because I really should have gone to Marc Jacobs but - and this is going to sound very Tina Brownish - I had Peter Mandelson for dinner. And the thing is, I can look at Marc Jacobs online ..."
Peter Mandelson, I suggest, is perhaps not so good online. "Well, he's such fun to have supper with. He's just a hoot. But I thought to myself, oh God, I really should be doing Marc Jacobs."
She considers her clothes. Fur is no good for meeting students - they might object. Also, her belt clashes with her necklace. "Here's the solution," she says. "Black belt." She mutters something about the fashion closet and calls over an assistant, who scurries off, returning a few minutes later with a belt sized for a small hamster. "It's Oscar," the assistant says, meaning de la Renta. "It's tiny!" Coles retorts. She tries to get it around her waist and hands it back. "That is insulting," she says. "That really is insulting." The assistant goes off to find another.
Inevitably, people wonder whether Joanna Coles is the new Tina Brown, or the new Anna Wintour, or even the new Glenda Bailey - all British women who have moved to New York and taken the magazine industry by storm. But she is an intriguing combination of things, a very good fit for a magazine that has always flaunted fashion, yet also commissioned international reporting and had, as Coles puts it, "a campaigning edge".
She published her first pieces in the Yorkshire Post at the age of 10, worked at the Spectator after leaving university, then at the Guardian for ten years. She came to New York a decade ago as a foreign correspondent for the Guardian, transferred to the Times, and eventually, having had two children there with her husband, the writer Peter Godwin, she decided to settle, and joined the staff of New York magazine as a senior editor. Never one to lose sight of the ladder, she crossed over to More magazine - she felt she could make her mark there; the position was more senior - and in 2006, just as The Devil Wears Prada hit cinemas, she became editor of Marie Claire
Does she miss reporting? "Yeah, of course I do," she replies. On the other hand, she owns nine pairs of Roger Vivier shoes. "If I'm having a bad day, there's nothing more fun than going into the closet and just inhaling the colour of next season's Oscar de la Renta or feeling the tailoring of a Calvin Klein suit," she says.
Coles is, in a rather un-English way, supremely ambitious - one acquaintance described it as a very Eighties kind of ambition, as if she'd read too many Jay McInerney novels - and the story about how she got the job at Marie Claire is no exception to the general picture. She flew across town to the home of Cathie Black, the president of Hearst magazines, as Black was leaving for the airport. Coles jumped into the cab with her as it was pulling away, and by the time Black's plane took off she was persuaded that Coles should be editor in chief.
I confess: I have known Coles for many years. As her legend suggests, it's hard to imagine a person she couldn't eat for breakfast if she wanted to. Yet she is also exceptionally generous, and the great pleasure of her kindnesses is that they are dispensed in the same mildly dictatorial tone, so you never know what's going to come next. As a result, on the reality show her deadpan manner is not always readable and makes for very funny television.
"All right, now what else do I need?" Coles zips up her handbag. "Sykes-ie, are you ready?" I ride to Columbia with Coles, Suzanne Sykes, her new creative director (formerly of Grazia), and her assistant Sergio, who used to be in the music industry and was inexplicably inspired to switch to fashion after he saw The Devil Wears Prada. Coles has been invited to speak by Victor Navasky, the venerable and gnome-like former editor of The Nation. When we arrive, I can't help smiling at the sight of her in her Lanvin dress and Chanel necklace, sitting in Navasky's crusty office. Yet she has a peculiar way of fitting right in. She asks Navasky what the students want to hear from her. "They'll want to have a good time while listening to you," he says. "Well, that might require copious amounts of alcohol," she replies with effortless self-deprecation.
Coles gives a witty talk full of sound advice. Then someone asks: "What would you have done differently if you'd known then what you know now?"
Coles says: "I would have been more pushy and more ambitious earlier on." Then she pauses, looks around the room and adds drily: "Which will appal the people in the audience who know me."
