The Press: Out on a Limb with the Midi

• Share

(8 of 10)

there, and Fairchild flies down almost every weekend to loll in a hammock, barbecue steaks on the outdoor fireplace and splash gingerly in the gentle surf.

Fairchild saves his energy for his only genuine indulgence—running Women's Wear. He was full of ideas when he first returned to New York City from France: he wanted to print the paper in several cities to speed distribution; he wanted to switch from the company's muddy old flatbed presses to cleaner offset printing; he wanted to use more color illustration. The family blocked the way. "They kept treating me like a snotty little brat who was running around with wild ideas that were going to ruin the business," he says. But after his father's retirement, John took over the company presidency in 1967, and a year later negotiated a merger with Capital Cities Broadcasting Corp. that neatly removed him from the Fairchild family's veto. It was no letdown financially, either. He now owns about 45,000 shares of Capital Cities stock, last week worth a total of $1,250,000, and draws an annual salary of $90,000.

His obstacles thus cleared away, Fairchild is moving ahead, still bursting with ideas. The latest is for a new weekly magazine to be called W ("For the Woman Who Is First") that would cost 50¢, have a press run of 225,000 and be, in effect, an expanded WWD without all the trade stories. But the general economic climate has postponed the birth of W, and revenue slippage at Fairchild Publications (down from last year's record $33 million gross and $5.5 million profit) threatens the continued publication of Home Furnishings Daily and Metalworking News.

Meanwhile, Fairchild has plenty to occupy him in just churning out Women's Wear and battling for the midi. Field headquarters for the fray is Fairchild Publishing's grubby third-floor editorial room, a noisy, bare-floored relic straight out of Front Page, where editors shout and ink-stained copy boys scurry. A few feet away from Fairchild's scarred, wooden desk sits Publisher Brady, who starts the day at WWD by calling the top editors together for a brutal analysis of that morning's issue. "That sketch on Page One today is grotesque," he snapped at a recent session. "The girl looks bizarre." Like Fairchild, Brady often fathers items in "Eye" and "Eye Too." He recently aimed a backhand at Abercrombie & Fitch because they did not stock tennis shorts in his waist size (32 in.). He picks up gossip by mixing with the Beautiful People at night and attending the parties that Fairchild shuns. In fact, the entire staff of WWD is expected to keep a lookout for potential "Eye" specks, whether they regularly cover the BP scene or a trade beat like "intimate apparel" (known in the pre-Fairchild era as "girdles and bras").

WWD has a staff of 59, of whom 20 cover fashion—sometimes in a peculiarly Fairchild way. At last month's opening of the Givenchy Boutique at Bergdorf Goodman's in Manhattan, four front-row seats were reserved for WWD. They remained empty until five minutes before the showing ended. Then a peasant-skirted, elaborately coifed young girl skittered in, occupied one of the four seats, took a note or two, and left. A few sketches of the boutique ran in "Eye" the next day without any comment on the