We 'Love' Katie Grand, Pun Intended
By: VogueParisLover
Katie Grand just might be the most influential stylist and editor working today. She is known as Katie Grand-a-minute - she gets paid 3,000-4,000 euros a day when working with clientele such as Prada, Louis Vuitton, and Loewe. She also is the founding editor-in-chief of POP magazine and editor-in-chief of the new style magazine, Love. So how did she become so successful?
Katie's interest in fashion started when she was 12,when she read Vogue and The Face while she was bed ridden and one of her father's many girlfriends was terribly chic. She then decided that she wanted to be cool, and almost overnight she achieved her goal. She admits that when she was 12 she was wearing puffy sleeved tops and tight red trousers, and then when she was 13 she was wearing navy stilettos, cinched skirts, and lace tights.
Katie was also nerdy when she was a child, she excelled in math, English, and history, but not art. She knew she wanted to do something related to art and fashion, so she sharpened her art skills by taking night classes at Birmingham's Bournville College of Arts and graduated as student of the year with a 96 percent average. She then got accepted to Central St. Martins where she didn't truly know what she wanted to study - she bounced from design to marketing and then on to journalism and knitwear, but she finally settled on print, which she says she still finds weird.
While studying at Central St. Martins she became involved with the recently launched magazine, Dazed & Confused. Shortly after starting at Dazed she then started styling at The Face, Dazed & Confused's rival. When the owners of The Face sold the magazine to the publisher Emap(Bauer), Katie was invited to be the fashion director of The Face and then the editor-in-chief of a later magazine.
The later magazine ended up to be the highly influential magazine, POP. POP, the bi-annual style magazine, was founded in 2000 and boasts a circulation of 125,000. POP has had celebrities such as Kate Moss, Sienna Miller, and Liz Hurley grace their covers. Katie admits that her staffers along with herself aren't paid well but she knows that young fashionistas flock to the magazine because they know it will look great on their resumes.
Katie has since jumped ship from Bauer publishing to Conde Nast, the publisher of Vogue, and started a new magazine, Love. Love is a bi-annual style magazine that will likely be a rival to Pop. The first issue featured a naked Beth Ditto on the cover and has been highly successful. Despite the tough economic times advertisers have flocked to Love and it seems to be sold out at many bookstores.
Now, to answer the question: What makes her so successful? She says she doesn't really know. Maybe it's her fresh point of view or maybe it's the fact that she goes with her gut. She says she doesn't over-think things and have the need to analyse ideas like some stylists. The answer is: I don't really know, but one thing's for certain: Katie Grand is one of the most successful and influential stylists of our time and many people, including me, are obsessed.
I'll go first.
