“FASHION IS about a smile, a flash of beauty, a moment of artistic genius.” I wrote those words in the December 2001 issue, in my second editor’s letter for Harper’s Bazaar. My first issue was going to the printer on the day of the September 11 attacks, and the question of what role fashion—and fashion magazines—would play in the world and in our lives hung in the air. I’d been the editor in chief of Marie Claire—first in Britain and then in America—for 13 years, and was doing double duty, editing both that magazine and Bazaar while the executives at Hearst searched for my replacement there. As I sat down to write that editor’s letter, it was difficult to know what to say. So I decided to talk about why I…
