CFDA toasts new crop of magazine editors

Reporting from New York —  Fashion designers and a crop of new magazine editors mingled at Diane von Furstenberg’s studio in New York’s Meatpacking District on Tuesday night. “We thought it would be interesting and nice before fashion week that all of you designers know all the incredible new talent that is running the magazines,” von Furstenberg told the crowd.

The cocktail party was a celebration for six new editors in chief who have taken the helm in the past year: Glamour’s Samantha Barry; Elle’s Nina Garcia; Vanity Fair’s Radhika Jones; Elle Decor’s Whitney Robinson; T Magazine’s Hanya Yanagihara and Teen Vogue’s Philip Picardi. Only Jones was absent.

There were cheers after von Furstenberg read each new editor’s name. “And the last, but not the least, is not here. And that is Radhika Jones, who we are all dying to meet, and who Anna said is an incredible girl and that we will love her,” she said, motioning toward Anna Wintour, who entered the room as von Furstenberg began her remarks.

“We started the year in this world where everything goes so fast, faster than one can explain or imagine. And we are all kind of surfing the tsunami in this world of fashion, and so the fashion and the distribution is not the same anymore. As a result, we are all kind of reinventing how we will communicate,” von Furstenberg said. “Everything is going to be machines, everything is going to be AI. So I think our only hope at this point is to figure out how we are going to seduce the machines. And do the best we can, and believe in good and promote good. I think everybody is becoming much more of an activist and much more deep and sincere — either you are that, or you are something else. Therefore there is a new world that will be born, and I hope I will get to witness it for a while.”