The new face of fashion - Roberta Myers of Elle magazine

As she steps into a very hot seat, Elle's Roberta Myers is determined make a magazine that's relevant and intelligent

It was Holly Millea's hard lesson in the often unforgiving world of fashion magazines.

She was writing a beauty column for Mirabella. Rather than blithely promoting the wondrous qualities of the new products and procedures, Millea took the rather novel approach of trying to determine whether they actually delivered on the hype. If a cream promised to reduce wrinkles and didn't, she wrote about that. If another claimed to make cellulite disappear but left your thighs still looking like cottage cheese, she called its hand.

What Millea didn't take into account was that many of those companies also advertised on the pages of Mirabella. It was a time when the magazine was struggling for every dollar it could scrounge up, and Millea was told that her beauty column was making the advertising side of the magazine very nervous. One day, she says, she received a call from her editor: They were killing her column. Not because it wasn't popular or useful, Millea was told, but because management feared she was going to cost the magazine advertising dollars.

A few months later, in 1997, Millea got a call from Roberta Myers, the new Mirabella editor in chief. "Holly," Myers told her, "I need you to write that column again." Millea tried to explain the internal politics, but Myers didn't want to hear it. She told Millea to let her worry about it. And with that, Millea's beauty column resumed in the pages of Mirabella.

"In an industry where there's a lot of catering to a lot of people, that was really beautiful," says Millea, now a contributing writer at Talk magazine. "That's the kind of person Robbie is. She's really beloved, and you can't say that about many people in this business. If she asked me to stand on my head for her for eight hours on a Saturday, I'd seriously think about doing it."

That kind of backbone and her willingness to break the conventions of the fashion magazine industry are two of the main reasons Myers was named to be the new editor in chief of Elle in May. "She understands how to create good magazine content," says Jack Kliger, president and CEO of Elle 's parent company, Ilachette Filipacchi Magazines. "She has a great sense of style and a great sense of grace. Robbie understands the American woman very well."

Most of all, Myers has the gift to inspire people to believe in her.

Bob Wallace, the editorial director at Talk, mentored Myers when she landed her first magazine job 18 years ago, at Rolling Stone. "If I was starting a magazine today, Robbie would certainly be my pick as editor," says Wallace.

Even Grace Mirabella, the grande dame of fashion magazines, praises Myers' skills as an editor. "When she was at Mirabella, I thought she was just nifty," Mirabella says. "She's contemporary, solid and has a terrific attitude. I like her inquisitiveness."

Millea's loyalty to Myers is extraordinary in a profession in which writers and editors often seem to warily circle one another, each waiting for the other to do something that ruins their afternoon. Also extraordinary is Kliger's confidence in Myers, considering the fact that Mirabella went belly up on her watch, folding in April after an 11-year run.

Mirabella was known as the smart woman's fashion magazine, and Myers brings that sensibility to Elle, the second-largest-selling fashion book in the country. She calls herself a magazine editor rather than a fashion editor. She talks about creating "a very strong Elle point of view" in the magazine's pages. She plans to increase the number of service pieces. She wants to develop identifiable voices and columns; she's already added former Village Voice editor in chief Karen Durbin to write film reviews. She wants to emphasize insightful and well-written feature stories.

The Myers era at Elle begins at a time when the fashion magazine industry is changing dramatically. There's more competition and greater pressure. S.I. Newhouse Jr.'s Advance Publications now owns two of the top four titles, Vogue and W, in addition to Women's Wear Daily, Glamour, Mademoiselle and Allure. And the entire industry is being pushed by fashion/lifestyle magazines such as Time Inc.'s In Style and O, the joint venture between Hearst Magazines and Oprah Winfrey's Harpo Entertainment Group.

It has long been a debate within the industry: Do readers want journalistic ambitions with their pretty pictures and beauty tips and fashion news?

Hachette is betting one of its flagship magazines that Robbie Myers knows the answer.

It is 4 o'clock on a crisp Manhattan afternoon, and Myers is right on time as she walks up Columbus Circle to a trendy new cafe she has suggested. She's never been here before, and once she eyes the esoteric menu and hears the loud, piped-in salsa music, she begins apologizing for the choice.

"Do you want to go somewhere else?" she asks. Then she calls over the waiter to see if he will turn down the music.

"We're doing an interview," she explains.

He nods and promptly hustles to the receiver and cuts the volume.

Sipping on a soft drink, Myers is dressed in a stylish black outfit. Her smile is warm and friendly, even as she offers that she is shy about giving interviews. She is currently running the magazine from home while on maternity leave; her first child, Francesca, was born just two weeks earlier. "I'm sorry, but I've got to do this," she says, pulling her wallet out of her purse and showing off a snapshot of the baby. "I know all new mothers say this, but isn't she so cute?"

Myers, 40, the daughter of "a couple of hippies," grew up in the Midwest. Her love affair with magazines began when she was attending Colorado State University. Like a lot of people who came of age in that generation, she was inspired by the new journalism pioneered at Rolling Stone and Esquire. "I got completely turned on by reading this great writing about what was going on now, what was happening with the lives that we were living," she says. "I especially loved Rolling Stone; it was the first magazine for us."

When she graduated in 1982, Myers moved to New York, determined to get into the magazine business. She had friends at Conde Nast who arranged for her to interview for an entry-level job; she failed the typing test. Another friend knew Rolling Stone editor Jann Wenner and told her they were looking for an editorial assistant. Myers pestered the magazine about the job, going as far as showing up at Wenner's office unannounced. She won an interview, and the Friday night before her appointment, she went to a bookstore, bought a $2.50 book on typing, and taught herself to type over the weekend. Myers passed the typing test that Monday, and she got the job.

She immediately caught the eye of Bob Wallace, who was the magazine's managing editor. "She just stood out," he says. "I knew even back then that she had the potential of becoming really good. She got how magazines work, what's a good story and what isn't. She already had the ability to see the bigger picture. She's the real deal; you don't spend time with Robbie without falling in love with her."

When Myers left Rolling Stone, she began a steady ascension in New York's magazine world. There were stays at interview, Seventeen, In Style. In 1993 she became the editor of Tell, a magazine published by Hachette for NBC. Myers caught the eye of Hachette vice president and editorial director Jean-Louis Ginibre and, two years later, she was named senior articles editor at Elle. "Her real strength is that she's a phenomenally good journalist," says Elaina Richardson, Elle's former editor in chief. "She's a good editor, one of the best line editors I've ever worked with. She has a good sense of how to build the rhythm of a story."

After two years at Elle, Myers was named editor in chief of Mirabella. It was that experience that would teach her all about the high-pressure world of fashion magazines and guide her to one of the most coveted jobs in the fashion magazine world.

When Myers took over Hachette's Mirabella in 1997, it was drowning in red ink. Launched in 1989 by former Vogue editor Grace Mirabella as an alternative to fashion magazines devoid of intellectual content, Mira bella was conceived by its namesake as a magazine that respected the intelligence of women, a magazine that was the antithesis of books filled with fluff. Mirabella was never a resounding financial success. Hachette purchased it in 1995 and tried to stop the hemorrhaging by turning it into a bimonthly. Hachette also toyed with the formula, attempting to shift the magazine to a younger readership. When that didn't work, the company went back to the original concept. By then it was too late; the spirit was lost, and readers and advertisers alike were confused about exactly what the magazine was supposed to be.

Myers was determined to restore the magazine's tradition, and under her, Mirabella published the first interviews with Whitewater figure Susan MeDougal and with the wife of special prosecutor Kenneth Starr. Jodie Foster gave Mirabella her first interview after the birth of her child. And the magazine landed an exclusive interview with '60s radical Katherine Ann Power. During Myers' tenure, Mirabella was nominated for a National Magazine Award for essays and criticism.

But Mirabella was on a death watch, reportedly losing $9 million in 1999. Even though it held to a steady circulation of more than 550,000, advertisers began to shun the magazine. In the first quarter of 2000, according to the Publishers Information Bureau, advertising revenue fell 44 percent. In addition, Hachette was losing an estimated $4 million a year with George; advertising in that magazine dropped 52 percent in the first half of 2000. George founder John F. Kennedy Jr. was grumbling that Hachette wasn't giving him the resources in advertising or marketing that he needed to make the magazine succeed; at the time of his death last year, he was openly threatening to take George to rival publisher Conde Nast.

According to some in the industry, Hachette ultimately had to decide between George and Mirabella, and the plug was pulled on Mirabella in April. It had reportedly lost between $50 million and $75 million since Hachette purchased it. With Oprab Winfrey launching her own magazine, the prevailing thought was that O would only further erode Mirabella's shrinking advertising base.

"Robbie is a strong woman, but she had some really dark moments when that was happening," says Holly Millea. "If she'd only had the financial support for that magazine. What happened had nothing to do with the editorial content. Every time they made her cut back staff, it was like watching her cut her own fingers off. It made her physically ill."

While Grace Mirabella was saddened by the end of the magazine that carried her name, she concedes, "It had lost everything it had when it started."

Myers still gets a forlorn look when the demise of Mirabella is broached. "It was a valiant effort by everyone on the staff," she says. "We knew it was coming. It was so sad. Everybody worked on it until the very last day, because you're a professional. And I was lucky enough that the Elle job opened up right when that happened."

"Elle means 'she,' and 'she' is every woman," says Giles Bensimon.

The creative force behind Elle is standing in a crowded Soho art gallery. Cindy Crawford smiles from up in the rafters. Not far away, Elizabeth Hurley's face is seductively coy. Britney Spears is all glammed up in a tan Givenchy gown that barely covers her ample cleavage. They are all here, hanging from pristine white walls on larger-than-life prints from the portfolio of Bensimon. There are sexy photographs of the single-name models: Gisele, Christy, Naomi. There are daring shots of the stars du jour: Tina Turner, Sharon Stone, Uma Thurman, Angelina Jolie. Bensimon has photographed them all, the most beautiful women in the world. And how better to celebrate the 15th anniversary of Elle's U.S. edition than with a photo exhibit of his work during Fashion Week?

Elle, which has 33 editions worldwide, is as recognizable a brand internationally as Playboy or Vogue, and much of its success can be attributed to the artistic aesthetic of Bensimon. He not only is the magazine's chief photographer, he's responsible for the Elle look. And he remains the magazine's direct link to Helene Lazareff, who founded Elle in 1945. "I began working for her as a photographer 25 years ago," he says in a voice that carries a thick French accent. "She created a certain spirit about the magazine, and we still keep that same kind of feel."

Stepping into the invitation-only party celebrating Bensimon's work is like finding oneself in a scene from Sex and the City. The spacious loft is packed with Manhattan's beautiful people: young and hip and mostly single, fashion conscious and self-conscious. The party is filled with models and their perpetual exquisitely bored looks. Their bodies are all out of proportion: the swollen bumblebee lips too large for their faces, their limbs outrageously thin for their frames. Some look like refugees from a Jim Carroll song, quietly chatting as they chain-smoke Marlboro Lights and sip white wine. A muscle-bound waiter in a skin-tight black T-shirt offers a plate of hors d'oeuvres to a six-foot-tall model whose thighs are no bigger than his forearms; she frowns and turns away.

Bensimon darts around the room, hugging old friends and greeting fashion designers with warm smiles. But he always returns to the side of Myers, who seems content to stay shyly off to the side and away from the spotlight. She is neither rail thin nor a Sex and the City wanna-be. Her beauty is so earthy, her smile so genuine, that she stands out in a room full of women who are perfect only when viewed through the small lens of a camera. It may be Bensimon's celebration, but it's also the coming-out party for Myers, who is celebrating her first issue of Elle and the birth of her daughter. "This is the first time I've put on lipstick in two weeks," she says with a laugh. She looks vibrant, even glowing, elegantly dressed in black pants and a black top.

Bensimon has worked at the U.S. edition of Elle since the day it launched in 1985. His influence is so great that the title of publications director was created for him, and his name is above the editor in chief's on the masthead. It seems a natural invitation for trouble--exactly who is in charge of Elle, Bensimon or the editor in chief? The New York Post has already confidently predicted a power struggle between Myers and Bensimon.

They both strongly dismiss that suggestion. Myers admits she doesn't have absolute creative freedom but says that, at the same time, she respects the history that Bensimon has with the magazine. "Gilles is very supportive of me, and we're having a great time," she says later. "Sure creative people don't always agree, but that's part of the process. Gilles' influence over Elle is wide, but we work together on what's in the magazine. We balance each other very nicely, I think."

Bensimon says he was a fan of Mirabella and that he has admired Myers' skills since her initial stint at Elle as senior articles editor. He likes her willingness to gamble, such as the decision to make Britney Spears the cover for Myers' debut issue at Elle. It might seem a stretch in some circles to put a teen pop star on the cover of an upscale fashion magazine, but together they made it work. "People know the way I am," he says. "I have opinions about the magazine, that is sure. But we share the same ideas, and I think we work very well together. I think Robbie is exactly the Elle woman. She's a very strong woman. I think she's a perfect choice for the magazine."

The person with the most unique perspective, Myers' predecessor at Elle, says she thinks the two can peacefully coexist under what is certainly a unique situation for a magazine editor in chief. "Gilles is very respectful of Robbie, and I don't see them butting heads," says Richardson. "There's a clear line: Gilles is the final arbitrator of visuals, and Robbie is the final arbitrator of text."

As the anniversary party swells with people, Myers and Bensimon show what appears to be genuine warmth as they pose for pictures with Jack Kliger. A key to the relationship, and to her overall style, is Myers' nature. She doesn't domineer, preferring to lead by inspiration rather than by intimidation. "I was really struck by how generous she is," says Grace Mirabella. "She's a listener, a thinker. She asks questions. She doesn't come with an attitude."

"Robbie realizes she's not the star," Kliger says. "The star is Elle."

When Myers moved from Mirabella to Elle, all she had to do was change the shingle on her office door and the message on her voice mail--she elected to keep her old office because it was in the same suite as the Elle offices and she loves its majestic view of the city. On one wall hang tear sheets of covers from the last two years of Mirabella; on the opposite wall, near her desk, are the most recent Elle covers. Myers had barely started at her new job when she left for maternity leave in August. When she returns to work full time, possibly as soon as this week, she faces the task of upholding Elle's position in the fashion magazine hierarchy even as the competition gears up for an intense challenge.

The stakes are high. With an average circulation of 918,795 through the first half of 2000 (compared with Vogue's 1.1 million), Elle is one of Hachette's most profitable magazines. Advertising pages have zoomed up 50 percent in the past decade under the supervision of publisher Carl Portale, while revenue has increased 90 percent in that same time period. It's not the same story for some of the other prominent Hachette publications, including the struggling George. On top of that, the recent acquisition of Fairchild by Newhouse's Advance Publications could signal a sea change in the fashion magazine industry. Newhouse publications Vogue and Ware now in a position to exploit corporate synergy in a much larger way.

Myers shrugs off the pressures. She understands them well, but she also knows that if she dwells on them, they will paralyze her. "The pressure is implicit in the job," she says. "It comes with the territory. It's a business that chops people's heads off. Obviously, we are in competition with the other fashion magazines. But our goal is to be a great magazine. Period."

Wallace says the only competition Myers will feel is the drive within herself to make Elle a great book. "That's the key to anybody doing great things," he says. "She sets the bar high for herself. Robbie will make her mark."

Myers says one of her key tasks is to put out a magazine that remains relevant in a market that has changed dramatically in the past decade. "Our readers are young enough to think about life as an adventure and old enough to have the means to live it," she says. "The women who read Elle already have a lot of style. The whole magazine market is changing. The single most successful launch in the last five years is built around one person, Oprah. Magazines like In Style and O are going to redefine the market. But we're high fashion, and they aren't. Our readers are interested in a particular sort of lifestyle, and they aren't necessarily going to be served by those other magazines."

In a culture that can turn on a dime, the task for both Myers and Bensimon is not only to keep up with fashion trends but to signal the direction they will take. To do that, Myers says, an editor has to surround herself with good people and give those people the freedom to do their jobs. "Fashion pulls the culture, and you have to be paying attention," she says. "It doesn't just happen on the runways. It's in music, in the culture, in theater and in film. It's all entwined. It's a language, and you get to know it. It's like seeing a movie and spotting a new actor and saying, 'Oh, my God, that person is going to break out big.' It's not even about making predictions but being the taste-maker."

For all her lofty aspirations to good journalism and meaningful service pieces, Myers still understands that the franchise is fashion. "The more you study fashion, the more nuance you find," she says. Then she shrugs and smiles. "The thing is, I love fashion. It sounds so dumb, but I am a girl."

Scott Freeman, a senior editor for Atlanta magazine, is the author of a forthcoming biography of Otis Redding, to be published by St. Martin's Press in 2001.

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