Allow us, for a moment, to toot our own horn. For the past five decades, as the fashion and publishing industries have been dramatically transformed, W has held firm on its essential mission: larger-than-life storytelling. That doesn’t mean, of course, that the magazine hasn’t evolved over time. Fifty Years Fifty Stories, a new tome published by Rizzoli, out this month, tracks key moments in the publication’s history.
W was founded in 1972 by John B. Fairchild as an offshoot of the fashion trade newspaper Women’s Wear Daily. Printed on oversize, posterlike pages, it chronicled how glamorous people lived and amused themselves—what they wore, where they went, who they saw, what they gossiped about. But unlike many of its competitors, W wasn’t always fawning. Fairchild became famous for biting columns like…
