Nina Garcia may have parted ways with Elle as fashion director, but in lieu of an outright dismissal, Fashion Week Daily has learned that Garcia has been offered a new role at the magazine: editor-at-large or contributing editor.
Should Garcia, whose contract was up for renewal this month, accept this lesser role, she would be allowed to remain on Project Runway for at least one more season. The hit reality series has just started casting for season five, with Elle as a confirmed partner, and will start filming June 8 and premiere on Bravo. According to sources, however, Elle is not expected to continue its partnership with Project Runway once the show transitions over to the Lifetime Network beginning with season six.
NBC Universal, Bravo's owner, recently sued The Weinstein Company, producer of Project Runway over the move.
Elle editor in chief Robbie Myers was unavailable for comment. Anne Janas, senior vice president of corporate communications for Hachette, said over the weekend, "We will have more to say next week. Robbie is not available for comment until then." According to sources, Garcia has not yet committed to Hachette's offer, nor has a final deadline been set for her to make a decision.
Garcia's exit comes at a time when there were no clear indications of her departure. In the midst of several days of nighttime activities, Garcia attended a dinner in honor of Christian Lacroix at the Gramercy Park Hotel rooftop deck Thursday night. On Wednesday night she turned up at the Jeffrey Fashion Cares fashion benefit. However, she was a no-show Tuesday night at a dinner her magazine hosted with Moschino to celebrate Simon Doonan's new book, Eccentric Glamour: Creating an Insane More Fashionable You. Noticeably absent--despite the presence of fellow colleagues Myers, Joe Zee, Paul Ritter, Kate Lanphear, Keith Pollock, and Joan Pailey--Garcia at the time shrugged it off to being in Los Angeles, where on Monday she taped a cameo on "Ugly Betty."
Last March, Garcia went on maternity leave, giving birth to her first son named Lucas Alexander Conrod. Rumors that she would not return to the magazine proved untrue when she came back and was given a monthly fashion column and her visibility and level of authority remained unchanged. Garcia's celebrity spotlight has grown exponentially since she joined the cast of the Bravo reality show "Project Runway" as a judge and penned a book, The Little Black Book of Style, having recently returned from Hong Kong for a promotion at Lane Crawford. Earlier this week, The Weinstein Company, producer of Project Runway announced the decision to move the show from Bravo to Lifetime Television.
Garcia's exit from the magazine is expected to rest months of rumors and gossip over unrest at the fashion title that began when Zee arrived at the beginning of 2007 as creative director. It's no secret that there were ever-increasing tensions between Garcia and Zee--largely reflective of the old guard versus the new guard--where the former saw several colleagues from her heyday leave the company, including art Guillaume Bruneau and style director Isabel Dupré. Since then, Myers has also taken on a more active role on the fashion side and has made several significant changes to the structure of the magazine, including taking international creative director Gilles Bensimon's office and authorizing Carter Smith to replace Bensimon in shooting this and next month's covers.
Not to be outdone, Zee was recently given his own monthly column in Elle, which, by coincidence or not, appears in the front of book ahead of Garcia's column. Zee has also been busy preparing for Elle's new reality show on the CW network called Fashionista. Produced by Tyra Banks and Ken Mok of America's Next Top Model fame, the show follows contestants eager to become a fashion assistant at the magazine. The show will air this summer.
I totally agree. She was so arrogant on Project Runway too.
