Chicago Tribune Beauty Editor Eleanor Nagle
Eleanor Nangle was a director of fashion and beauty for The Tribune and an employee of the newspaper for 45 years.
Nangle worked for The Tribune from 1926 until she retired in 1971. During that time she became an authority on fashion with an almost unerring ability to predict future trends.
In the early 1960s, when men uniformly wore their hair short and their suits dark, Nangle shocked some of her male coworkers by telling them that there would soon be something called ”unisex” in which boys would wear their hair as long as girls and it would be difficult to distingish between men`s and women`s clothing. Within a decade it had come to pass.
She was credited with being the first writer to discover the tie-dye fashion. Always ready to support a fashion style she believed in, she was once thrown out of New York`s elegant Cote Basque restaurant for wearing a pants suit.
Nangle, who was born in Chicago, went to work for The Tribune at age 20 as secretary to the then beauty editor, Antoinette Donnelly. A short time later she began her writing and reporting career by covering beauty and charm contests sponsored by the newspaper.
In 1934 Nangle started ”Thru the Looking Glass,” a beauty column that ran during the 1960s. The column attracted more than 1,000 calls/letters in a single week. Nangle also had a 15-minute, three-times-a-week radio program of the same name on WGN in which she discussed beauty and fashion.
Nangle was named The Tribune`s director of fashion and beauty in April, 1957, and held that post until she retired 14 years later.
