Larissa Mills has 484K Instagram followers, 290K on TikTok (and 3.9M likes), a burgeoning Substack, brand deals landing faster than the designer clothes and cult beauty products piling up on her doorstep, and a UPS driver who no longer bothers asking for a signature.

But don’t go calling her an influencer.

In something of a content-creator Cinderella story, the 54-year-old mom of two behind the Substack Mother Says became an overnight style influencer. Completely by accident.

It all started with one video. Back in 2022, her daughter, Ella, then 17, posted a TikTok riffing on a trend — show your mom, then your pantry. Except no one cared about the damn pantry. Everyone was desperate to know what her mom was wearing. It went viral.

Which tracks: midlife is having a moment, and Larissa — with her signature brand of effortless, ageless style — met it head-on. She’s not try-hard. She’s not trendy. And yes, she’s always dressed like this.

I met Larissa and Ella back in 2023, not long after they blew up on TikTok. We were at the same press trip for the swimwear brand Left on Friday (Jenna Lyons is a huge fan). It was one of those dreamy ones: we were flown to Cabo, stayed at Nobu, and were forced to endure three days of sushi, surfing, wellness, and plenty of swimwear action. I know — a hard life, but someone’s gotta do it. I spotted the mother-daughter duo instantly because, TBH, they looked like deer in the headlights. “I’m not even sure why we’re here,” Larissa told me. They were new to the game.

Fast forward four years, and Larissa — like it or not — is an in-demand content creator, fashion commentator, midlife style star, and style contributor to Marie Claire.

Her rise isn’t just proof that midlife has become sexy and stylish as hell; it’s proof that brands have grown tired of overproduced influencers. Larissa’s appeal is simple: she’s the real deal. The mother-daughter act also speaks to the power of intergenerational content — the perfect two-for-one, hitting two demographics right in the pocket. Actually, make that three-for-one: her son Henry, who’s appeared in her videos, is becoming something of an accidental influencer too.

Here, she shares a window into her accidentally charmed life — proof that style has no expiry date, that you don’t need to be tech-savvy to make content, and, most of all, what it means when she says she is anti-fashion and anti-algorithm.

NSJ: Was it at least Ella’s plan to be an influencer?

LM: God, no. She’d actually quit TikTok because she thought it was a time-suck. Then she got back on, posted a video — a trend about your mom’s pantry —, and it went viral. People started asking, “What’s your mom wearing?” That was literally it.

NSJ: It blows up — what next?

LM: People kept asking for more — “Can you do an outfit of the day? What’s Mom wearing?” I was like, “noooooo.” Ella got management. My Instagram was a “mom” account — interiors, trips, no pictures of me. Her manager told me I needed to actually start posting myself. I was like, “noooooooo.” It’s hard for our generation, partly because we’re older, but it’s just not how we roll — all the selfies, the half-dressed stuff. I still feel awkward fixing my hair in a public restroom if someone’s watching.

NSJ: So you finally caved?

LM: Ella’s manager kept giving me gentle nudges for five or six months, and eventually I started doing reels. I’d film these awkward videos in the bathroom, thinking, " This is so stupid, what am I doing?

NSJ: How did you master creating content?

LM: I’m tech illiterate. Ella offered to edit them, and I said absolutely not — I was too humiliated to have my own daughter edit me getting dressed — so I learned myself. About six months in, it was clear there was real money in it. I had no idea this world even existed.

NSJ: Were you always a closet fashionista?

LM: I don’t even know what that word means. But I was always into it. I was the friend you asked to sort your closet and take you shopping. I moved to New York after college and worked in advertising and PR — back when PR actually meant writing press releases. Being from Boston, I’d get on the subway and think everyone looked a little grey, a little beaten down. After four years, nobody looked strange to me anymore — and that was the wake-up call. So I moved back home around 26 — I wanted to live in a house, not a shoebox.

NSJ: You’re a self-confessed anti-influencer—explain?

LM: I wanted a voice in the space — a point of view, a bit of credibility. There’s real imposter syndrome, because everyone’s an influencer now. But I think I’m the antithesis of the “three ways to improve your style” content. I’m 54 — I genuinely don’t think about my age. It has nothing to do with how I dress. I’m not fighting ageism; I’m not fighting anything.

NSJ: You’ve thrown the fashion age rule book out the window?

LM: It’s about intention. I won’t wear something because my ass is showing — not because I’m 54, but because that’s just not what I want to put out now. At 20, maybe you’re fine with it; at 54, your mindset shifts. I’m into a button-down now; I don’t like showing my chest. I lean a bit more towards menswear — funny how midlife hits, and we all want to dress like men. It’s not a rule, it’s what feels good. My mother-in-law follows none of those rules and looks amazing — she still wears a bikini in her 70s. I hung up my bikini years ago, though — not on principle, I just find a one-piece more chic now.

NSJ: Quiet luxury bores you, and you’re “anti-fashion anti-algorithm”?

LM: People don’t realize how sucked in they are — the algorithm’s leading them. Quiet luxury means you’re all dressing the same and you don’t know it. And the ‘90s minimalism thing — we romanticize it, but it’s boring dressing. The opposite of quiet luxury isn’t loud. It’s layered — texture, dimension, old with new. It comes straight from my interior world: different colors, patterns, things with depth.

NSJ: Is that your fashion mantra?

LM: It’s an expression, like interior design. I live in a 1890s New England house, and the climate, the light, the architecture all inform how I want to live in it — warm fabrics I can curl up in. Dressing is the same: where am I, what’s appropriate, what’s functional. And things have to light me up. I like a little surprise. I don’t want to look like everyone else.

NSJ: Describe your signature style?

LM: Foundationally classic in terms of silhouettes, but a little bit sporty, which surprises people, and then a feminine element layered in. I’m an equal-opportunity dresser — dresses, skirts, pants, all of them. But my happy place is a tank, great vintage jeans, flip-flops, and a vintage Fendi baguette. A little sparkle, a little feminine, on a sporty tank-and-jean base. I love vintage Levi’s. I’m not done with flip-flops — jeans sometimes look better with a plain pair. And I don’t really dress for my body type; I wear what I like, even when it doesn’t suit me. Long skirts make me look five feet tall because I have no legs to speak of. I wear them anyway.

NSJ: Do you think that realness is what’s landing?

LM: I hope so, because mine isn’t stylized. In our age group, there are two camps. The aggressive “these are my wrinkles, I’ve done nothing” crowd, which has gone too far — we’re still women who want to look beautiful. I don’t need you to look bad for me to feel better; that’s not inspo, it just makes me sad. And then the heavily filtered, super-polished camp. I’m somewhere in the middle. Plenty of stylish women our age exist — they’re just not out there doing it.

NSJ: Did you ever imagine this would be your life?

LM: Never — I mean, getting to go to fashion shows. Though it’s exactly what I read about and immersed myself in when I wasn’t busy paying the bills in my past life. Maybe I accidentally manifested it. I don’t love being online — and I know how that sounds. The internet feels like one long fluorescent airport terminal: noise, repetition, ads, urgency, someone always selling in an overly enthusiastic voice. I scroll for two seconds, and I’m out. So I disappear into the woods with my dog. I read about ancient worlds, I watch period dramas with subtitles, I took up embroidery. Almost all my inspiration comes from offline — texture, books, film, a woman ordering coffee with her sweater tied in an unexpected way.

NSJ: Do you feel lucky — people would kill for this?

LM: Yes. And it’s not hard, because I love it — the creative side, the design, the collabs. When someone DMs me “I’m going to a wedding,” I’ll spend hours hunting for the right thing — that’s the part I love. People say it’s so stressful, and sure, there are aspects. But I don’t think they’ve worked a real job. A real job is stressful and boring and badly paid. This is a bit glamorous.

NSJ: What does a typical day look like?

LM: Pot of tea, read through all the emails. Meetings about collaborations. I’m currently designing pieces/collections with these brands: Starling Jewelry, Cadence, Ely Ely, and Mister B. A walk in the woods with my dog for some me-time. Editing. Dealing with the gifting — the endless boxes. If I’m away three days, there’s a pile in the foyer. And now writing my Substack, which adds another layer, because getting dressed only gives your brain so much to chew on.

NSJ: OMG — you must get sent so much amazing stuff?

LM: I give so much away — there’s a local consignment shop. Influencers get all this product, people want those exact pieces once they’re sold out, but the influencer can’t resell because the brand doesn’t want them to. There’s demand and supply, and the two never meet. Someone should build a store-and-charity model around it. As for shopping myself, I don’t do it much anymore, except for shoes and maybe bags. A great vintage bag, especially.

NSJ: How would you describe ‘Brand Larissa Mills’?

LM: It’s the outfits, obviously — outfit of the day. And it’s the mother-daughter relationship, because that’s how it started. People still come up to me and say, “You’re the one who does the outfits with your daughter.” That’s the association. And honestly, my third pillar is that I’m a reluctant, accidental influencer. That’s the through-line. I’m not very techie. Instagram’s my main audience. I barely touch TikTok — honestly, I’d scroll for two hours and feel like I’d wasted my life.

NSJ: How do you approach creating outfits on and offline?

LM: Often it starts with gifting — a piece I chose from a lookbook arrives, it’s the shiny new toy, and I build around it. Then I think: where am I going, what’s on this week? Someone once said, “But you’re in Boston, does anything happen?” I don’t care. I’ll wear the most “ridiculous” thing for a small beach town north of Boston — exactly what I’d wear in New York.

NSJ: You’re always flying off somewhere fabulous?

LM: I’m away roughly once a month. What I love most about the trips isn’t meeting other influencers, it’s meeting the teams — the branding, marketing, the people behind the products. Hearing it straight from them.

NSJ: Favorite trip?

LM: Hard to pick. Oak Essentials did a beautiful one in Utah, really well done. I was just in Palm Beach with Yise Beauty; that team is incredible. Creed did a phenomenal one in London. Most recently, I was on a press trip with Marea in Nantucket; so fun. And I’m hosting my own trip of sorts with Anine Bing in the late summer, an embroidery session, shopping, and an in-person get-together.

NSJ: Is it true you’re also a makeup artist?

LM: That was accidental also. People used to say to me, “I love how you do your makeup, can you do it for me?” A hairstylist once had me do makeup for the lead singer of The Cranberries. I was the girl doing everyone’s face at prom. I was an art minor, I love color, I’m tactile. I have to actually try skincare, and if it doesn’t work for me I won’t post it. I don’t see how you can credibly use ten different products at once. I am a fan of Yise Beauty and Laura Mercier.

NSJ: What do you think this all looks like in five years?

LM: I don’t know. I took up embroidery, which I love. I have five cats. I don’t have a plan — I’ve never really had one. It’s building the plane while flying it.

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I wrote recently about starting my career at Vogue Australia—accidentally, in the most Devil Wears Prada way possible. So you bet I was in the cinema on May 1 to see The Devil Wears Prada 2. And I loved it.

You had to be there.
In the glossy, glory, gory days of magazine publishing.
I promised you a sequel, so here goes…

In the twenty years between films, the landscape has shifted beyond recognition. Print gave way to digital, social media became a force, video threatened to replace words, and now it’s all branded content and commerce. Shrinking budgets, dead mastheads, getting fired more times than you can count—yes, even by text, like Andy (and I)—has sent us running for cover. Or rather onto Substack—where have you been all our lives?

Read Story

The Devil Wears Prada 2 captured it perfectly: Runway is no longer an untouchable empire but a contested asset fighting for relevance and revenue.

In my last piece, I alluded to meeting a bit of a devil at my peak—as executive editor at Harper’s Bazaar New York, working under the tough and often terrifying Glenda Bailey. We were painfully aware we played second fiddle to Vogue, so she demanded big-picture ideas—coups, she called them—and God help you if you turned up empty-handed.

We put Rihanna in a shark’s mouth, transformed the Empire State Building into a cinema for Bazaar‘s 150th, and I wrangled Karl Lagerfeld onto a private plane with Japanese artist Takashi Murakami’s octopus to riff on why you need eight legs to survive in the cutthroat world of fashion.

GB, as we called her, was the last of these OG real-deal editors, and I take my hat off to her. She summoned me into her office once, where she had handwritten “well done” on a piece I’d written. “You enjoy that,” she said. And I did, it was like being sent to the principal’s office and told you’d won an award.

In the movie sequel, Andy secures an exclusive with elusive billionaire Sasha Barnes—played by Lucy Liu—on her divorce and new romance.

Glenda would have called that a coup.

In something of my own coup, I asked some big-name, badass editors for their unfiltered gut reactions on The Devil Wears Prada 2.

Like Miranda, they didn’t mince words.

Farrah Storr

Things Worth Knowing | Substack

Farrah is a dear friend. I met her when she was brought out to Australia—she’s British—to helm the features department of the women’s magazine we were working on. She went on to become EIC of Cosmopolitan, then ELLE. She is an MBE, has a bestselling book (The Discomfort Zone), and is now spearheading Substack’s international writer partnerships while publishing her own newsletter, Things Worth Knowing.

Her gut reaction to DWP2

The film perfectly captures the sad, inevitable decline of magazine journalism. As someone who became an editor around 2012, just as it was all going south, David Frankel has done a brilliant job of capturing the bruised egos, the desperate last clutches at power, and the cynicism of the clickbait age.

What she misses about glossy mags

When magazines were good, they were the best place on earth to cut your teeth as a writer. I got to go undercover at cosmetic surgery practices, sit in the front row at Chanel, and interview hundreds of women about everything from heartbreak to reinventing yourself at 60. I miss the creativity, the people, the hours spent writing cover lines. I don’t feel sad it’s over. I feel grateful it happened.

What she definitely doesn’t miss

The constant anxiety about paper thickness, the fear of circulation decline, and the layoffs.

Zara Wong

Screenshot This | Substack

Zara and I share a hometown (Sydney), mutual friends, and a history at Vogue Australia—she was Fashion Features Director many moons after I’d left the building. Coveted for her incredible style, she brings that influence and her editor’s eye to Screenshot This, now ranked among the top fashion publications on Substack.

Her gut reaction to DWP2

It made me laugh and raise my eyebrows that they satirized so much of what has actually happened.

What she misses about glossy mags

The time. I think by the time I got there, it was speeding up already, but there were moments where we could spend a little more time and effort on a really creative—and commercial—project.

What she definitely doesn’t miss

Being paid peanuts.

Kate Betts

Editors@Large | Substack

I’ve admired Kate Betts my entire career. She was deputy editor at US Vogue—second in command to Anna Wintour—when I was being baptized into this world as assistant to the EIC at Vogue Australia. When I mentioned to my then editor, Marion, a friend of Kate’s, that maybe she’d give me a job at Harper’s Bazaar in NYC, where Kate had just become editor, Marion snorted: “Kate will eat you alive.”

Fast forward 15 years. I made it to New York, and to Bazaar—and eventually got my Kate Betts moment, interviewing her over tea in TriBeCa about her memoir, My Paris Dream. She didn’t eat me alive. Kate now co-writes the must-read Editors@Large with fellow Vogue veteran Michael Boodro—fashion, design, art, books, and culture through the eyes of two tastemakers who’ve seen it all.

Read Kate's DWP Take Here

Kerry Pieri

Why Not? | Substack

I met the stylish and talented Kerry—she’s actually a trained fine artist—when she was the digital fashion and features director at Bazaar, a role she held for a decade, and I was on the print side. In addition to showing her art and inspiring women’s wardrobes, she writes Why Not?—a fashion, shopping, interiors, and lifestyle newsletter that asks life’s most elegant questions.

Her gut reaction to DWP2

I promised my sister I’d wait to see the sequel, but I did rewatch the original. It actually does make me feel emotional. There are so many aspects of it that ring true to the time.

What she misses about glossy mags

Just the idea of having budgets to create these beautiful sets—to really dream up incredible stories that you could actually shoot and create using whatever model you chose, getting all the looks you wanted. Having that kind of access really only happens at magazines, and that is such a beautiful thing.

What she definitely doesn’t miss

I never had a terrorizer for a boss, which is a blessing—and I know not many in the fashion industry can say that. I was always very lucky and inspired by the women I worked for. The magazine world is so different from even the early 2000s.

Laura Brown

All The Cool Girls Get Fired | LB Media

Laura and I were born in the same year in the same country. I watched from the sidelines in our native Australia as she became a powerhouse in New York: senior editor at W, executive editor at Bazaar, and then the EIC of InStyle. When I moved to New York, I reached out, figuring she’d never reply. In typical LB fashion, she wrote back: “G’day Koala, welcome to NYC—yes, let’s get a drink.” Fifteen minutes later: “Actually, send me your résumé and come in tomorrow.” She gave me my start at Bazaar for which I am eternally grateful. When Laura was fired from InStyle—those damn shrinking budgets—instead of slinking off, she turned her Instagram comment “All the Cool Girls Get Fired” into a bestselling book—co-written with former WSJ Magazine editor Kristina O’Neill—a movement and a brand.

Laura shared her take on The Devil Wears Prada 2 with The New York Times here.

Valerie Monroe

How Not to F*ck Up Your Face | Substack

I don’t know Valerie personally, but we share a history at Hearst and in Beautyville. For 16 years, she was beauty director at O, The Oprah Magazine, where her monthly Ask Val column was followed by millions. Her brilliantly titled How Not to F*ck Up Your Face delivers the same: philosophical, practical, deeply humane guidance for anyone who’s ever looked in a mirror.

Her gut reaction to DWP2

I saw the movie recently in Tokyo, where the audience is always extremely quiet, so my snorts and other expressions of disbelief and (mild) disdain might have been a little disruptive. Streep flying coach? And asking for Champagne? C’mon, just dumb.

What she misses about glossy mags

The scenes of over-the-top luxury reminded me of my beauty director days at O, The Oprah Magazine—so luxurious that I now have a hard time believing they were real. What I miss most is working with the brilliant women who populated the magazine industry and who always made me feel like the work we were doing was actually a service to our beloved readers.

What she definitely doesn’t miss

The message about what’s happened to mass media journalism is accurate, the portrayals seemed cartoonish—or maybe I just can’t believe Anne Hathaway’s portrayal of a serious journalist, which seems to involve sitting back in every chair with her arm thrown over the side.

Sigourney Cantelo

Beauticate | Beautiful Inside Podcast

Sigourney and I go way back to the mid-noughties when we worked on the same women’s magazine with Farrah. She was glamour personified—it was no surprise she was the beauty editor. She went on to become Beauty and Health Director at Vogue Australia, a role she was born for. Then she did something brave: she left her dream job to build her own thing. Beauticate is a multi-platform beauty and lifestyle destination that reaches over 1.3 million people a month. When I asked Siggy for her DWP2 thoughts, she went one step further. She filmed a video.

That’s all.

The Devil Wears Prada 2 sent me spiraling down glossy magazine memory lane…

Wagga Wagga is a long way from the rarefied world of haute couture and the runways of Paris. But that’s where I was born and grew up — in rural Australia, riding dirt bikes, not reading glossy magazines. A tomboy, I don’t think I even owned a dress. And my mullet game was strong — this was the early 80s, long before it ever became a trend.

I did have aspirations beyond a small country town. For Hollywood, actually — I wanted to be an actress. I practically ran the drama department in high school. So when I graduated, I applied to university to study acting. As cutthroat as any Hollywood audition, thousands of kids were vying for a handful of coveted spots. Rejected. I applied the next year and made the final cut — only to be left on the cutting room floor once more.

Dream shattered, I took a job at a medical center. I literally filed physical files all day. Back-breaking, brain-rotting work. Every night, I’d dream about patient names.

Nightmare.

I needed a Plan B. I racked my brain, and it drifted back to how enamored I was with letters when I first learned to read and write. I devoured books, wrote poems for friends, and at lunch held court—regaling my eight-year-old fans with passionate storytelling sessions.

Journalism.

Writing, I figured, was the next best thing, so I enrolled in part-time journalism and made plans to move to Sydney (the big city). To keep the lights on, I signed with an agency to get some part-time admin work. I’d barely made it through the front door of my friend Nicky’s place, where I was temporarily camped, when the recruiter called. She had a job I was “perfect for.” No thanks — I wasn’t after a full-time gig. But she was like a dog with a bone. I caved.

Here’s the kicker: I didn’t even want the job, and she wouldn’t even tell me who it was for. I had three interviews before she confessed.

It was Vogue.

She hadn’t wanted me to be seduced by the name. After all, “a million girls would kill for this job.” To be brutally honest, given that high-end style was not exactly part of my DNA, I wasn’t all that fussed — but like Andy, I figured it was better than working at Auto Universe.

I called my mum for a temperature check. “Tash, this is it! Your name up in lights.”

Working at a glossy fashion magazine wasn’t quite what I’d had in mind when I’d declared that at age three. But I was ambitious.

And broke.

The night before the interview, Nicky — who, unlike me, lived and breathed fashion and happened to work in HR — gave me a crash course on the who’s who of high fashion. Nic always had her head buried in a magazine and made it her business to know every designer and every trend. I vaguely remember her saying something about someone called Galliano, and Lagerfeld something or other.

The role at Vogue was assistant to the editor, just like Andy at Runway. So I decided to dress a little secretary-chic. Simple black shift dress, a strand of pearls, Mary Janes, and pantyhose. Yep, the old-lady kind.

Only I wasn’t meeting Miranda. I was meeting Marion.

Marion Hume was a British fashion journalist who was transported to the colonies to elevate Vogue. It was the late nineties, and the Aussie fashion scene wasn’t exactly on fire — but a flame had been lit.

Before you ask — no, she wasn’t wearing Prada. Marion wore Yohji. Her signature uniform was a navy trouser-and-shirt set by Japanese avant-garde designer Yohji Yamamoto, accessorized with flat Bally loafers. She’s tall. She knows what works.

And she didn’t seem like a devil. Nor did she declare, “You have no style or sense of fashion.” She did, however, assume I was a religious nut — maybe because of my holier-than-thou aesthetic. Though she swears it was because I made it very clear I could never work Sundays.

Fashion is a religion. Vogue is the bible.

Except back then, my religion was Byblos nightclub, and I worshipped at its altar — hard. Every Saturday night.

A few days later, I got the call. Marion couldn’t decide between me and another candidate.

F*ck.

Ten torturous days later, I was appointed assistant to the editor at Vogue Australia. Maybe it was the pearls, but I’d landed the dream job I hadn’t even wanted. I went out that night, got shitfaced, and danced on tables to celebrate. Elegantly wasted, if you will.

Then my baptism by fire began.

Walking into the Vogue offices was like stepping into a world where black is always “the new black”. This was the late nineties, minimalism was raging, so the only things editors would be caught dead in were kitten heels, pashminas, Fendi baguettes (it’s a bag, not a sandwich), and ironed hair slicked back into a Marc Jacobs pony. No, that’s not a horse.

And if you’ve seen the movie, you know the moment…

The fashion cupboard.

Rails of heartstopping designer fashions—delicate Collette Dinnigan lace, sexy Zimmermann swimsuits, enough late-nineties leather to stock a rock concert — and walls of shoes that would make even Carrie Bradshaw weep.

There was something about being “a Vogue girl.” We wore our fabulousness like a badge. And you better believe we rubbed it in — there’s a hierarchy and a snobbery in the magazine world.

Vogue isn’t just the bible, it’s the holy grail.

As for my cerulean-blue sweater moment: not long after I’d started, a senior editor complimented me on my “fabulous” Kenzo floral top. Only it wasn’t Kenzo — it was Kookaï, a cheap high-street knock-off. I didn’t correct him. I took it as a sign I’d made it.

“Florals for spring. Groundbreaking.”

Unlike Miranda, Marion never looked my outfits up and down in disgust. Though I do remember her asking, with characteristic British bluntness, “Have you suddenly turned punk?” when I experimented with a black miniskirt and coloured tights that didn’t quite land.

In the fashion industry — and by proxy in fashion magazines — editors live and die by “the shows.” The international runway collections: that month-long circuit when the fash pack takes up their gilt front-row seats to view the latest seasonal looks by the world’s hottest designers, across New York, London, Milan, and Paris.

So, like Andy, my job was to pack Marion up for her twice-yearly tours of planet fashion. Despite being the first assistant (to be fair, it was only me, myself, and I), the budget didn’t stretch to let me tag along. Instead, I handled every last detail of her trip. I booked flights and hotels, organized a private car, RSVPed for shows, parties, and VIP dinners, and arranged one-on-ones with A-list celebrities and iconic designers. Most of whom I’d never heard of.

It was a painstaking logistical nightmare that took months to plan and was made even more difficult by the fact that email was barely a thing — Marion still sent handwritten faxes. “Fax Karl Lagerfeld,” she would say, and I’d secretly think: Why does that name sound familiar? Of course. I now know him to be one of the most influential designers in the history of fashion.

I may not have gotten a front-row runway ticket, but Marion did always land with a present.

A handbag. Prada, of course.

In the original film, Andy finds herself on the end of outrageous requests, like when Miranda demands that she get her on a flight during a hurricane. And then get her hands on an unpublished Harry Potter manuscript.

Marion wasn’t quite so demanding — though one time she did ask me to source a helicopter when a photo shoot went sideways. And of course, like a dutiful assistant, I picked up her dry cleaning, delivered her lunch at the same time every day, booked her driver, and brought her “The Book” (the mock-up of the current month’s issue in progress). And perhaps my most important role — to supply bottomless cups of tea — black, no sugar, no milk. She’s British. Starbucks? Never.

I now have a nasty tea addiction to show for it. Not to mention an enduring love of French champagne. The Pommery flowed at every swanky party we Voguettes got to attend, and there were plenty, often held in some million-dollar mansion on Sydney Harbour.

And I can thank my lucky stars I never messed up badly enough to be fired — although Marion was, but that’s another story — unlike Andy’s predecessor, who was downgraded to an editor at TV Guide after missing a call between Miranda and Lagerfeld before the designer boarded a 17-hour flight to Australia.

Lagerfeld flying Down Under, Aussie actor Simon Baker as Andy's love interest in the OG film, and Andy falling for Peter, the Aussie property developer, in the sequel. There's an unmistakable Aussie thread running through both films, so I’m going to take that as a sign.

Beyond serving up non-stop glamour, an editor’s job is to land the big exclusives. And in a major coup, Marion secured a then-unknown Kate Winslet to write a diary of her time filming Titanic. They’ve remained friends ever since. Actually, so have Marion and I. She was the emcee at my wedding and, as something of a substitute fairy godmother to my boys, sent a book every year for their birthdays and Christmas when they were little.

After her axing, Marion left magazines to pursue her real love: cinema. In a glorious collision of fashion, film, and Vogue, she went on to work with Winslet on the Golden Globe-nominated film Lee—the biography of Lee Miller, the model and Vogue photographer who documented the liberation of Paris and the Nazi concentration camps under the editorship of the legendary Alexander Liberman in the 1940s. Kate said during their press rounds that, like Lee Miller herself, Marion has an “innate ability to find the truth in every story.”

So I guess there is a Hollywood ending after all.

As for me — like Andy, I got my fashion game on and climbed out of the assistant chair and into the editors’, picking up bylines in Vogue, Elle, Grazia, InStyle, Forbes, et al. And I followed in Andy’s Chanel stilettoed footsteps and fulfilled my lifelong dream of living in New York (read my journey here), landing a job at the epicenter of magazines.

As fashion and features director at Harper’s Bazaar — Vogue’s arch nemesis — which is where I met another devil.

Tune in next week for the sequel.

That’s all.

Photo by Karly Jones on Unsplash

One of my all-time highlights while working at Harper’s Bazaar was interviewing the legendary British-French actress, singer, and enduring fashion icon, Jane Birkin. It was 2018, and she was 71 at the time. She also happened to be hurtling through the French countryside on a train. The background noise was chaotic, her phone dropped out several times, and she had to keep calling me back.

After the interview—shared below—Jane’s agent invited me to watch her perform at New York’s famed Carnegie Hall. I went solo and sat spellbound as she shared stories and sang in French to resurrect her shared history with her former partner and long-time collaborator, Serge Gainsbourg. Ironically, I had just split from my own Serge, so I was raw, very raw.

The couple met and fell in love on the set of the 1968 film Slogan. Not exactly love at first sight; Birkin described Gainsbourg as “terribly arrogant and unkind.” They were together for 12 years, had a daughter, and collaborated musically until Gainsbourg’s death in 1991.

Birkin’s concert—deeply etched into my memory and one of those NYC wow moments —brought to life her 2017 album, Birkin/Gainsbourg: Le Symphonique, featuring 21 songs by Gainsbourg. True to her anti-fashion aesthetic, she wore a man-style white shirt, black suit, and Converse. Set against the orchestral arrangements of her latest musical partner, Japanese composer Nobuyuki Nakajima, there was a haunting vulnerability in her performance. Even if it was in French, I got the memo. Especially true when she revisited tracks from her 1983 album Baby Alone in Babylone, recorded just after her split from Gainsbourg. “He just said, ‘I owe you this,’” Birkin said of the soundtrack to their breakup. You could almost feel the pain and tears she must have cried. And you bet, here I was now crying through it.

The Original It Girl

For all her status as a style icon and the original “It Girl”, Birkin’s life was as rich with tragedy as it was with glamour. Born in London, she arrived in Paris in the late ‘60s, fleeing a bad marriage, and underwent a transformation from shy English girl into the ultimate archetype of “French Girl” chic—a title she will hold forever.

Birkin shot to fame as an actress, starring in over 70 films, including Blow-Up (1966) and La Piscine (1969). But such was the allure of her trailblazing, gritty, “just-rolled-out-of-bed” cool—especially against the backdrop of the Mary Quant mod bob squad—that she became a regular on the glossy pages of Vogue. Enter her twelve-year love affair and musical collaboration with Serge Gainsbourg, and Birkin was catapulted into the cultural zeitgeist forever. Not least because their duet “Je T’Aime... Moi Non Plus” was so scandalous that the Pope banned it, which instantly guaranteed its spot in pop-culture history.

And yes, she of the signature eye-skimming fringe and wicker baskets, which defined an era, is indeed the woman behind the famed Hermès Birkin bag. Considered the world’s most coveted status symbol, a new one will set you back a cool $13,500. Though fun fact: last year, Birkin’s original black leather Birkin bag went under the hammer at Sotheby’s Paris for an eye-watering $10.1 million.

In case you don’t know the story, the bag was born from a chance flight encounter in 1984, when Birkin was seated next to Jean-Louis Dumas, the CEO of Hermès. As she tried to stow her trademark wicker basket in the overhead compartment, it spilled, scattering her and baby Lou’s belongings across the cabin. Birkin began venting to Dumas (having no idea who he was) about how hard it was to find a practical leather bag for a young mother. Dumas famously replied, “But I am Hermès!” and Jane began sketching her dream bag right there on an airplane vomit bag.

Of her many accolades, Birkin was, at heart, a loving, devoted mother to three daughters who all became icons in their own right: photographer Kate Barry and singer-actresses Charlotte Gainsbourg and Lou Doillon. Tragically, Barry died in 2013, aged 46, after falling from the window of her fourth-floor apartment in Paris. The loss was cataclysmic for Birkin, who passed in 2023, and is now buried alongside her daughter in the Montparnasse Cemetery.

A Pin Up of Ageless Style

Following are some excerpts from our interview—the subject of which was “Ageless Style”—where Birkin fondly recalled her wild youth in Paris, finding her fashion “uniform” in her fifties, and her unwavering love of a YSL Le Smoking tuxedo jacket.

In her case, a man’s one.

“I think women only start to really look like themselves after they turn 30. That’s when a girl first dares to be her own age, show her bare face, and not just dress for boyfriends or husbands. I’ve kept all the old photos of myself from the ’60s, but I can’t relate to them now at all. All that dressing up! And the eye makeup! We looked like Barbie dolls.

On the other hand, being well-known because of those photos provided me with an extraordinary life. I could get away with murder. I could stroll right into the hottest nightclub in a long T-shirt and ballet flats, carrying my wicker basket, like I owned the place.

My mother, who was an actress, used to say, “Can’t you make an effort?” That was her thing—she used to change her clothes three times a day. But it wasn’t my thing. In fact, when I first went to Paris as a teenager, I could always spot other English girls because we put everything together so badly. Frenchwomen start with the same ingredients, but they make better use of them. They were always so beautifully turned out with their velvet headbands and clip-on pearls, a scarf casually tossed over their shoulder.

But after the counterculture swept through Europe, it became chic to wear whatever you liked, and it was our chance to laugh at the French girls. You’d see photos of Julie Christie coming down her front steps wearing a raincoat over her pajamas with gum boots, spectacles perched at the end of her nose. It was so unpretentious—and so very English. It’s impossible to be stylish without confidence, you see.

I could stroll right into the hottest nightclub in a long T-shirt and ballet flats, carrying my wicker basket, like I owned the place.”

I found my uniform about 20 years ago, and it hasn’t changed since. To me, there’s nothing more beautiful than a simple cashmere jersey paired with boyfriend jeans or trousers. I was never particularly into high heels, and always go back to my old Converse with the sheepskin linings that I put in myself. If someone tried to put me in a cocktail dress, I’d look quite ropy. I wear an old man’s smoking [tuxedo jacket] in the evenings, which, if you can get your hands on one, is definitely worth buying. You can wear it for years, even if it has holes.

Other than the jacket, my look isn’t tailored at all because I don’t have the figure for it. I also hate shopping. My daughter Kate [Barry, from her marriage to the composer John Barry] used to take me on shopping sprees. After she died, I stayed at home and didn’t see anyone for a couple of years. Then my artistic director called and suggested that I start performing again. Music helped me escape; I didn’t have to think so much. And suddenly I knew what to do at night. Performing—and my best friend, Gabrielle—is what got me through the past four years. And my bulldog, Dolly! She’s a wonderful face to wake up to. She tries to raid the chocolate, and the next thing you know we’re watching the late-night news together.

I don’t wear a lot of makeup anymore. When you’re older you know what to hide and what to show. When you’re 16 you can wear as much makeup as you like, but when you’re my age it can make you look like a witch. It’s far more important that you smell delicious. I made my own fragrance—L’Air de Rien— with London perfumer Miller Harris. It smells like tobacco mixed with musk, neroli, and vanilla. Another tip I’d like to give women? Take calcium supplements. I was recently playing hide—and-seek with my grandchildren and I fell on the stairs. Women need to take care of their bones. That, and don’t ever run up the stairs in socks!

It’s impossible to be stylish without confidence, you see.

Growing older really is the strangest thing. I recently said to my daughter Lou Doillon, “It’s gone.” And she’s like, “What’s gone, Mum?” And I said, “My beauty.” It’s like you wake up one day and suddenly the outside doesn’t correspond to the inside anymore. I’ve adjusted my thinking a bit since then. The essential thing, I now think, is a good sense of humor. Thankfully, my girls have that too.

Aging is also liberating. If you see someone you think is beautiful, you can just come out and say it and no one thinks you’re making a pass. The other day I told my taxi driver that he had a beautiful nose. It was long and hooked, but to me it was beautiful.

He nearly crashed the car.”

Reese Witherspoon officially joined the 50 club on Sunday. Welcome, it only gets better from here.

Witherspoon’s milestone birthday has me thinking back to 2017, when I was knee-deep in production on the mega September issue of Harper’s Bazaar. September is always the big kahuna, as it unveils the runway trends we’ll all supposedly be wearing for the coming season, so the pressure is on for it to be star-studded.

Working at Bazaar back then was not for the faint of heart—whether it was the September issue or not. Our job was always to push the envelope (and send ourselves mad in the process) to land a major ‘coup’. That often meant pairing big-name stars and fashion’s elite to do any number of wild and wonderful things.

Case in point: we once put Rihanna in a shark’s mouth. And I was once tasked with pairing a naked Lady Gaga with Karl Lagerfeld, holding his Instagram-famous cat Choupette, at the top of the Eiffel Tower. OK, that last one’s not actually true, but you get my drift.

If you follow fashion (and even if you don’t), you’ll be painfully aware that some trends come and go faster than we can change our undies, and others continue to roll around again and again. And again.

This was 2017, y’all, and the Western look was going strong. Look around now, and you’ll see that tassels, Western shirts, boho-inspired prairie dresses, and, of course, cowboy boots never really go out of style.

They just get better with age.

Like Reese Witherspoon.

It’s impossible not to love Reese—she’s like the labradoodle of A-listers. And not just because she’s a big-deal Oscar-winning actress and producer with incredible range (not to mention a fellow Aries).

But because she’s a boot-scootin’, down-to-earth Southern belle at heart.

If you’re a Gen-Xer like me (and our gal Reese), you might even feel like you know her. After all, we’ve watched her literally grow up and followed her rise, fall, and “get back up again” through three decades.

From the baby-faced 21-year-old who married Ryan Phillippe, became a mom at 23, and starred as the forever-iconic Elle Woods in Legally Blonde at 25. To her Oscar-winning performance as June Carter Cash in Walk the Line and an Oscar nod for trekking in Cheryl Strayed’s steps in Wild.

And like a fine wine, we now get to drink her in as the Type A manipulator Madeline in Big Little Lies and as co-anchor and sidekick to Jennifer Aniston on The Morning Show.

With all signs pointing to the Western front as the trend of the moment, I proposed to Bazaar’s then-editor, the iconic Glenda Bailey, to have Reese Witherspoon speak to the trend. She is, after all, from Nashville, Tennessee, and founded the classic Americana, Southern-infused lifestyle brand, Draper James.

As these things go, unless they have a magazine cover secured (or a new movie to plug), it’s almost always a hard “no” from big-swinging Hollywood agents to get an A-lister to do anything. Well, sugar, imagine my delight when I was told Reese was up for it.

And yep, she was as effervescent, charming, and Southern as she seems.

Bless Her Heart.

Reese Witherspoon On The Western Trend

”I was always dressing in prairie skirts and cowboy boots when I was little. I loved to watch Little House on the Prairie and play cowgirl. I mean, you’re talking to the girl who wore cowboy boots to her own wedding reception.“

”My favorite childhood memories are rooted in country music, doing square dances in cowboy boots. I learned to clog and line-dance before I learned the fox-trot. I’m very influenced by country singers like Loretta Lynn and, of course, is my biggest idol.”

”Western is such a huge style in Nashville. Maybe it’s [the Western trend] about returning to a time and a place that people find comforting, and when everything seemed simpler.”

”I do love the look of a pretty dress or a floor-sweeping skirt with cowboy boots. I remember being in fifth grade and begging my grandmother to buy me a prairie skirt, and when she finally did, I wore it every day with cowboy boots.”

”I have so many pairs of cowboy boots; I buy them new from Betty Boots when I’m in Nashville. The intricate stitching and detail on Western shirts are so pretty and add a little something, as do tasseled bags and purses. And I love cowboy hats, obviously.”

Everyone Loves Reese—Especially The Jenn’s

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