John Fairchild Has a Savage Eye for Chic

Don’t be confused by the title of a new nonfiction book called “Chic Savages.” It’s not a study of a New Guinea tribe of headhunters who’ve traded in their loincloths for Ralph Lauren tweeds.

In fact, “Chic Savages” (Simon & Schuster; $19.95)--subtitled “the new rich, the old rich and the world they inhabit”--is Women’s Wear Daily and W publisher John Fairchild’s latest look at fashion designers and the social-climbing clientele they outfit.

It is a group he chronicles in meticulous, sometimes nasty, detail and has slick-named Nouvelle Society in the pages of his publications.

“People who say I’m feared . . . it’s a bunch of baloney,” Fairchild contends. He is seated on the edge of his desk, in his office, which looks more like a suburban living room than a power broker’s lair. The wall-to-wall carpet is beige, the window seat cushions are sporty red and camel, the photos on the wall are arty black and white.

“I hate having the reputation that people are frightened to talk to me. The way we are respected or feared is that we put a paper out every day and somebody gets on the cover and somebody doesn’t.”

Most of those somebodys are leading fashion designers. And since Fairchild took the helm of the family-owned publishing business in 1960, he has bent more than a few of their noses out of joint.

“I’ve personally never been to a Geoffrey Beene collection,” he begins, about his ongoing battle with the New York designer. But, Fairchild insists, “it’s not a vendetta. He chooses not to invite us.”

“I think it started when we sent someone besides our fashion editor, Etta Froio, who was sick or something, to preview the collection. He was upset by that. I think Beene has gotten miles of publicity out of this.”

Beene remembers the incident another way. He has explained that the trouble began when he let Architectural Digest magazine photograph his house before it appeared in Fairchild’s ‘W,’ the glossy, magazine-like spinoff of WWD.

A feud with Yves Saint Laurent once fumed over a bad review in WWD of the designer’s Rive Gauche collection. WWD was not invited to YSL shows for two seasons after that.

An altercation with Giorgio Armani--also since resolved--was more interesting, Fairchild says.

“When Armani was going to be on the cover of Time magazine, he promised to preview his clothes that season to them and no one else. We and the New York Times decided not to go along with that. Why should we take that sitting down?”

Designers who depend on his newspaper coverage to help promote their product might not always approve of Fairchild’s tactics.

“We treat fashion just like a film or a play that’s being reviewed,” he explains. “It’s theater--opening night every time someone shows a collection.”

But readers, including those in and out of the garment business, greatly appreciate the juicy gossip that appears in the Eye column of Fairchild’s daily fashion newspaper.

He culled some of the best from the column for his new book, due out in early November. There are deep-dish items about Mary McFadden, the Liz Taylor of the rag trade, with her six trips to the altar; Coco Chanel, a morphine addict who had to be strapped into bed at night; Bill Blass, who unconsciously affects an English accent when he’s feeling insecure.

Some people wonder who Fairchild thinks he is, telling famous people’s secrets to the world. He offers a benign self-assessment.

“I’m just an ordinary observer who’s trying to learn like everybody else.”

These days, Fairchild agrees, there is plenty of competition from publications that also offer biting coverage of fashion and society, but he appears unruffled by the countless would-be imitations of his “Eye” column.

But his individualistic sense of humor seems to defy imitation. With characteristic, irreverent wit, he now designates regulars in the column such as designer Carolyne Roehm as “the usual suspects.” Less commonly used proper names: Daniel Day-Lewis, the British actor, is among “the new suspects.”

Fairchild touches only briefly on some West Coast suspects in his book, among them Ronald and Nancy Reagan and Betsy Bloomingdale. It’s a double-edged compliment. He says they’re simply not savage enough.

“I don’t want to talk a lot about the West Coast except to say that the people are, in some ways, much more civilized than they are in the East,” he explains.

“To live, enjoy life and be decent to one another is what it’s about there. Therefore, they don’t seem to struggle as much as we do in New York. They’re not as greedy or mean because of it . . . so they’re also not as much fun to write about.”