Career backstory: I always wanted to be in magazines. I attended the University of Colorado at Boulder because I noticed that the return addresses on the magazine subscription cards were in Boulder, CO. I seriously thought, that’s where they made Vogue and Glamour and Mademoiselle, and I was going to get myself an internship. Sad, but true!
The first jobs I got in New York were at architecture/interior design trade magazines. My grandmother always complained that she wanted me to write for a “real” magazine so she could buy it at the supermarket. So I started writing articles—complete articles, not query letters or proposals—and sending them to magazines. New York published a piece I sent them on a new artist, then Condé Nast Traveler published a short travelogue I sent them, and then I sent Vogue an article on the makeup artist Bobbi Brown. That piece changed everything: every women’s magazine called and assigned me a beauty story after that.
Industry pet peeve: Articles on actresses who remark on their lack of using makeup; imagine if they wrote the same sentences about male actors, who also wear plenty of makeup on-screen. Also, why are you surprised a person—famous in part for their gorgeousness—doesn’t need a lot of makeup? Haven’t you read every other actress profile that relies on the same dull opener?
I also dislike words that are only used in magazines and never in actual conversation: tresses, locks, frocks, etc. If you wouldn’t say a sentence aloud to your smartest friend, don’t write it!
Work confession: I am profoundly disorganized—it’s the worst trait for a beauty editor who has to sort through mountains of product and information. I have a pretty good memory though, and that sort of compensates.
Must-have on the job: A great team: I have the most incredible people working with me; we inspire and help each other in every way conceivable.
Favorite work perk: The ultimate work perk for me is that people—a whole lot of people—read what I write.
Your first beauty story was about Bobbi Brown for Vogue. Did you figure out then that beauty was your beat, or did it happen afterwards? I wrote about architecture and interior design before that story on Bobbi for Vogue; what amazed me, writing about beauty, was how viscerally people reacted. Everyone has beauty theories, stories, and must-have items—even if they hate makeup. Everyone relates to beauty—they’ve got a shampoo, a hand salve, or a perfume, something that’s dear and intimate to them, and they’re surprised to realize they’re so passionate about.
Being that you didn’t start out wanting to be a beauty editor, do you suggest young editors leave their options open, or be topic specific? Writing, editing, and visually putting a magazine together are the skills you want to build; you can educate yourself about the beauty industry by walking into a store or going on a website […] or just being a human being and opening up the medicine cabinet in your bathroom. If you have a chance to work at a magazine or website, even if the subject at hand is used tires—take it. You’ll be learning to write, edit, and make gorgeous pages that people want to read. Figuring out the difference between parfum and eau de toilette—the learning curve is not that great of a challenge.
What was it like creating a magazine from scratch being one of the founding editors of Lucky under Kim France? I learned so much from Kim—she’s an incredible editor and mentor. Lucky was born, in part, as a response to her frustrations with the conventions of women’s fashion magazines: the cutesy, nonsensical puns and meaningless alliteration, the feeling of distance between the reader and the editors, the lack of access a reader used to feel. She made Lucky to be your friend in the dressing room—a now overused phrase, but at the time the idea was original and even revolutionary. Visually and in voice, she had us emulate the immediacy and intimacy of the web; her style heroes were real women.
When we first started Lucky, the press and the advertising community dismissed us as a catalogue; it was incredibly rewarding, less than a year later, to see the naysayers begging for a chance to get in front of our millions of incredibly responsive readers.
I’m thrilled now, under Eva Chen, to be taking Lucky, at last, where we’ve all always wanted it to go—actual shopping!
What is in your beauty bag? Any tried-and-true products you can’t part with? YSL’s Volupté Sheer Candy lip color in hot pink is the ultimate non-color color that brightens up your whole face instantly. Bobbi Brown’s tinted moisturizer feels like the richest skin cream, but doesn’t look like makeup. Laura Mercier’s concealer rules.
Lancôme Flash Bronzer for Legs is the best self-tanner on our earth. Intelligent Nutrients Anti-Aging Serum is actually oil and it makes my skin look so much better—it is truly a miracle.
Favorite published piece: My book: Free Gift With Purchase: My Improbable Career in Magazines and Makeup.
Advice you have for others trying to break into the industry: Write as much as you can—study writers you love, magazines you love, blogs you love, books you love—and hone your voice. Send out articles, not proposals for articles—the article is not that much harder to write than the proposal, and it saves the editor having to guess whether your voice would work in the magazine. Tailor your stories to the magazine you’re targeting as pointedly as you can. I used to pretend I was writing a parody of the magazine I wanted to be in, to follow the voice as closely as I could. Take any job or internship you can manage, but keep writing and sending out stories! Hang out in the art department. If your stories don’t look fantastic, no one will read them. Plus, the art department is always the most fun.
Location: New York, NY
URL: luckymag.com
Twitter: @JeanGodfreyJune
Instagram: @JeanGodfreyJune
Amanda Jean Black is a guest blogger at Ed2010, sharing stories from her site onthemasthead.com. When not hunting down publishing’s elite for an interview, you can find the native New Yorker obsessing about style and culture, shopping for designer streetwear, and jamming out to 90′s alt rock.
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