Guest Blog Post: The Quotable Eugenia Sheppard

(Editor’s note: This is a guest post by talented UCF journalism student Baileigh Johnson. She has interned at several publications including Marie Claire Magazine and Orlando Magazine. She shares my interest in fashion journalism. Here is her blog.)

On November 12, 1984, six years before I was born, and 28 years before I would learn her name, The New York Times ran an obituary, Section B, Page 15, titled “Eugenia Sheppard, Fashion Columnist, Dies.” This was the first article I ever read about Eugenia Sheppard, as well as the first indication of a thought that is now a reality: I had found my icon.

A research opportunity secured this thought, as I began spending a few hours out of every week reading up on the fashion writer. She is best known in the fashion world for her establishment of The Best Dressed List, and her uncanny ability to predict what was hot, (and what was not,) but I think it’s the writer’s voice I appreciate the most.

Maybe it was her brutal honesty, which came through with only the prettiest of words, that first intrigued me. She was clever, fresh, and quite the amusing read: she could insult a designer (or a socialite) in a way he or she might not mind bragging about.

“Eugenia wrote my collection was royal rubbish! She compared me to royalty I say!”

“Eugenia wrote I was hardly a best-dressed woman on a shoestring! I have been feeling rather thin lately!“

(Eugenia with Pierre Balmain, Pierre Cardin, Yves Saint Laurent, JL Scherrer, and Guy Laroche at Maxim’s. January 26, 1976.)

It seems as if you couldn’t help but love the part-time fan, part-time critic, but of course this was not always the case. The likes of Balenciaga, YSL and Givenchy did, at one point, ban Eugenia from their showrooms… perhaps she was feared. One example might be an article Eugenia wrote for The Montreal Gazette on July 25, 1963 where she took down two of the fashion industries beloveds within sentences of each other.

On Lanvin: “Lanvin is such a hot-headed, impulsive house. It’s always tearing things up.”

On Pierre Balmain: “He’s the only designer left with enough guts to put an artificial pink rose on an evening dress.”

However, her ability to write candidly, but never too crudely, legitimized every punch she threw, giving her credibility not only in the eyes of her readers, but her employers as well. She worked at over 80 publications during her career, a record hard to surpass even in today’s media-pushing industry.

(Eugenia Sheppard. WWD Archives.)

Humor also seems to be a steady-current throughout her work as well, most rendered through witty analogies. If her brutal honestly isn’t what she is most known for, her humorous analogies follow in close second. Some examples:

“What a lovely, feminine white collar you have, grandmother.” ‘The better to run for president in, my dear.” (Milwaukee Sentinel, February 4, 1964.)

“There’s a gypsy in every teacup this season… Let’s face it. The gypsy look has already been done to death all over the world.” (New York Magazine, March 31, 1969.)

“That old stately statuesque work is as dead as a dodo.” (The Montreal Gazette, October 6, 1964.)

(Eugenia with Bergdof Goodman’s Ira Neimark. January 24, 1978.)

Perhaps it was this honesty, cleverness and devoutness to her voice that earned her several awards throughout her career, including one dedicated to her posthumously by the CFDA: The Eugenia Sheppard Media Award for excellence in journalism. This year the award was given to two internet-based honorees (Scott Schuman and Garance Doré,) establishing that the web is, in fact, a mainstream for fashion journalism.

Always ahead of the times, I think Eugenia would approve.