The July 26, 2006 front page of Women's Wear Daily |
|
| Type | Daily newspaper |
|---|---|
| Format | tabloid |
| Owner | Fairchild Fashion Group |
| Publisher | Ralph Erardy, Sr. |
| Editor-in-chief | Edward Nardoza |
| Founded | 1910 |
| Circulation | 56,562 (2011)[1] |
| ISSN | 0043-7581 |
| Official website | wwd.com |
Women's Wear Daily (WWD) is a fashion-industry trade journal sometimes called "the bible of fashion."[2][3] WWD delivers information and intelligence on changing trends and breaking news in the fashion, beauty and retail industries with a readership composed largely of retailers, designers, manufacturers, marketers, financiers, media executives, advertising agencies, socialites and trend makers.[4] It is the flagship journal of Fairchild Publications, Inc.[5] As of March 6, 2000, WWD's circulation was 30,000 copies.[6]
Contents |
The journal was founded by Edmund Fairchild on July 13, 1910, as an outgrowth of the menswear journal Daily News Record.[7] Though WWD's reporters were assigned to the last row of the 1955 couture shows—a sign of the newspaper's low stature—the paper rose to prominence in the 1950s and 1960s.[3] John Fairchild, who became the European bureau chief of Fairchild Publications in 1955 and the publisher of WWD in 1960, improved WWD's standing by focusing on the human side of fashion.[3] He turned his newspaper's attention to the social scene of fashion designers and their clients, and helped manufacture a "cult of celebrity" around designers.[3] Fairchild also played hardball to help his circulation. After two couturiers forbade press coverage until one month after buyers had seen their clothes, Fairchild published photos and sketches anyway.[8] He even sent reporters to fashion houses disguised as messengers, or had them observe designers' new styles from windows of buildings opposite fashion houses.[8] "I have learned in fashion to be a little savage," he wrote in his memoir.[8] John Fairchild was publisher of the magazine from 1960 to 1996.[3]
Under Fairchild, the company's feuds were also legendary.[3][5] When a designer's statements or work offended Fairchild, he would retaliate, sometimes banning any reference to them in his newspaper for years at a stretch.[5] The newspaper famously sparred with Hubert de Givenchy,[5][9] Cristobal Balenciaga,[9] John Weitz,[5][9] Azzedine Alaia,[9] Perry Ellis,[9] Yves Saint Laurent,[3] Giorgio Armani,[3][5][9] Bill Blass,[5][9] Geoffrey Beene (four times- the first over Lynda Bird Johnson's White House wedding dress design,[10] which Geoffrey promised to keep secret until the wedding day, and later over the size of an ad in another of Fairchild's publications, Beene's allowing a rival publication to photograph his home, and a WWD reporter Geoffrey did not like),[3][9] James Galanos,[9] Mollie Parnis,[9] Oscar de la Renta,[9] and Norman Norell (who was demoted from "Fashion Great" to "Old Master" in the journal's pages),[3] among others. In response, some designers forbade their representatives from speaking to WWD reporters or disinvited WWD reporters from their fashion shows.[9] In general, though, those excluded "kept their mouths shut and [took] it on the chin."[11] When designer Pauline Trigere, who had been excluded from the paper for three years, took out a full-page advertisement protesting the ban in the fashion section of a 1988 New York Times Magazine, it was believed to be the first widely distributed counterattack on Fairchild's policy.[5]
In 1999, Fairchild Publications was sold by the Walt Disney Company to Advance Publications, the parent company of Condé Nast Publications.[12] Now Fairchild Publications is a unit of Condé Nast,[13] though WWD is technically operated separately from Condé Nast's consumer publications such as Vogue and Glamour.[14]
In November 2010 WWD celebrated its 100th anniversary at the Cipriani in New York, with some of the fashion industries leading experts including designers Alber Elbaz, Ralph Lauren, Marc Jacobs and Michael Kors.[15]
WWD's publisher is Ralph Erardy, Sr., and its editor-in-chief is Edward Nardoza.[13]
Illustrators: Kenneth Paul Block mid-1950s to 1992, Catherine Clayton Purnell 1969-1989 and American artist/fashion illustrator Joel Resnicoff.