Houston Fashion Editor Judy Lunn

As I work on my newspaper fashion journalism book, I will be posting regularly about fashion editors. The first editor is July Lunn.

Lunn was the fashion editor of the Houston Post. Fashion was part of her family’s history. Her grandfather was a furrier. Her aunt was a lingerie designer who created a trousseau for Elizabeth Taylor when she married Eddie Fisher and a maternity gown for Lucille Ball.

Lunn won her first writing award at age nine for a story on fire prevention. And while she had a knack for writing, it was fashion that caught her interest. She graduated a year early from Hunter High School in New York City. She attended the Rhode Island School of Design to study fashion design. (She liked to draw and design but hated to sew.) In college she met her husband, Robert, who was a student at Brown University.

They relocated to Houston in 1968 and she took time off to be a stay-at-home mother for her two daughters, Linda and Susan. It was her daughter, Linda, who led to the post of fashion writer. In hopes of earning some change, she knocked on a neighbor’s door with an offer to recite the Pledge of Allegiance for a quarter. That neighbor was the fashion editor of the Houston Post, Lynn Van Deusen. She asked to meet the mother of the precocious child and her fashion journalism began in 1971. Lunn developed the Fashion Today section for the Post and won many national fashion prizes with that section, including a Penney-Missouri Award.

She was not fazed by the celebrity of fashion although she had met the big names. She traveled to the major fashion markets twice a year, every year. She met Estee Lauder and Karl Lagerfeld. She was in the home of Coco Chanel. She visited with Bob Mackie when he visited Houston and Galveston. She had strong opinions about fashion. She believed that Tommy Hilfiger was a non-designer, instead just a smart marketer. She believed that when Versace died, the magic died with him. She loved Armani.

In 1992, she received the first George A. Hough III Award for Overall Superiority in Reporting on the Apparel Industry, a lifetime achievement award. She remained at the Houston Post until 1995, when the Houston Chronicle bought the Post and shut it down. Lunn’s sudden death came from a reaction to a common insect bite in 2003.

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