How to Become a Fashion Journalist. Paper Magazine Editor-at-Large, Mickey Boardman, Gives Advice to Aspiring Journalist Alexia Georgieva.

As part of its ongoing mission to cultivate emerging talent, LIGNES DE FUITE presents Words of Advice — an ongoing conversation between its protégés and leading figures from the industry. Each exchange is an exercise in clarity and transmission: how to navigate, sustain, and ultimately define success within today’s changing fashion landscape.

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Alexia - I know that you have been at Paper for 30 years, so I would like to begin by going over this journey. How did it all start, and how did you end up staying there for such a long time?

Mickey - I was born in the late sixties and grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, which equated to the desert in terms of anything gay or fashionable. I would go to the supermarket and see Vogue on the checkout stand, and I was thinking, God, I want to buy it, but what can I say to get it? Eventually, I moved to New York to study fashion at Parsons and entered Paper as an intern around that same time. I was unhappy at school, and the minute I walked into Paper’s offices I thought, these are my people and thirty years later I am still there. Over the years, I saw people working in places with different perks such as car services or flying business class to Europe for fashion week. I was always flying coach, sitting in the middle seat, and you know it's great to fly business class, but it's more important to me to feel happy and satisfied with where I am. I always felt fulfilled creatively and understood at Paper, so I thought it was not worth it to leave when I feel seen and respected where I am. The woman who hired me at Paper was Maggie McCormick. She had bright red hair, was very high-energy, and would smoke non-stop–at the time, you could smoke everywhere. She was a genius, but a funny thing about her was that she would always say: “Don’t talk to anybody. You’re not allowed to talk to anybody except me, and if you are not busy, you have to look busy.” Always looking busy seemed like such a crazy thing to me, but whenever it was not happening, I would sweep the floor, and I was happy to do it. At that time, Paper was in its early days, and we did not have a properly finished floor or air conditioning. The offices were in Soho, New York City, a great neighborhood, but we had to rent half of the space to an art gallery to afford the place.

At some point during my internship, the managing editor assigned me to interview Vanessa Paradis who at the time was a teenager, this was in 1992. I refused to do it because I was studying fashion and not journalism. I kept saying, "I am not a writer, so I can't do it." I think that at that time, I fought success and opportunities because I thought I was not worthy of them.

What was your first article for Paper and how did you get the courage to start writing?

Shortly after I was asked to interview Vanessa Paradis, the editor at Paper wanted me to interview Rupert Everett who was a very sexy gay actor, but again I kept saying no so the editor told me: “Imagine you have already done the interview and write the first paragraph of the story. Do this for me and then if we agree that it’s terrible you don’t have to do the interview.” So I did it, the whole paragraph was about me being obsessed with Rupert Everett. She loved it and insisted that I do it. I was going to Parsons at that time and missed half a day of schooI to meet Rupert on the roof of the Peninsula Hotel in New York. Then I wrote the story, got paid 35$ for that, and it was amazing. That's how I started being a writer, but it took me a long time to even consider myself a writer. I thought of myself as a fun person who also kind of writes well.

It’s funny to hear stories like this because when I learned that I would interview you, I felt just like you did when you had to meet Vanessa Paradis. So I was wondering what would be your advice for young writers who freak out when they have to interview people they admire?

At Paper we always thought it’s better to get someone who is a super fan to write about something as opposed to someone who just knows punctuation because you want a writer who really understands the interviewee’s work. But now I wonder if it is good to interview someone when you’re a fan or not. I think we go through a lot of emotions about these things that we actually don’t have to go through. I’ve gone through that part when you are listening to the recording afterwards and you think to yourself “God, why don’t I just shut up?” In the end I realized that the important thing is to have a good story. It doesn't matter how I sound on the tape or what my personal feelings about the person I am interviewing are. As you get older, you realize that you can talk to anyone about anything. Nothing traumatizes me, nothing makes me that worried anymore.

Paper seems like a place where you were able to exercise your creativity fully. I know you worked on the crazy Break the Internet shoot with Kim Kardashian shot by Jean-Paul Goude, but can you tell me more about it and some other shoots that you enjoyed working on?

The amazing thing about the shoot with Kim was that she is a dream subject because she wants to do anything. She wants to be wild; she wants to do something that's fabulous. With a lot of celebrities, the shoots are not so pleasant because they want to protect the image that they have. They want to be seen exactly the way they already see themselves, so that's not interesting or fun to me, I have to say. One of my favorite shoots was Gangs of New York, which Andre Leon Talley was in, 20 years ago. It's funny because it seems like it was yesterday, but we shot people with amazing style. There were fashion mommies, so it was women with crazy style who also had babies. I think we shot Hamish Bowles and Ruben and Isabel Toledo. We also shot all the waitresses from this restaurant called Indochine, which was my favorite restaurant in New York. They would all wear a sort of black scarf tied around as a halter and a long floor-length black skirt, and they were so chic and glamorous. Again, I love celebrating amazing people who are not necessarily famous celebrities with a movie or a record.

Earlier today when we met, you mentioned that since the pandemic Paper is not doing print anymore, so I was wondering how do you see print media evolving in the future?

I think there will always be a place for print, but it will be either done by independent zines or by the more expensive high-end publications. I love the Internet, I think digital is fantastic, but especially for fashion, I find that you can’t convey the feeling you get from looking at a beautiful fashion photo on a beautiful piece of paper. You can’t get that on Instagram. I love Instagram, but it’s like candy— you eat it and then forget about it. Also the problem is that we approach print how we have always thought of it, which is the idea that you have to sell advertisements to make money. People only think about it in that old-fashioned way. Something that makes me crazy about fashion and media is that people think because it’s mostly women and gays, it must be so progressive and modern, but it’s the most backwards antiquated kind of thing. The way everything is approached, fashion is backwards in so many ways, and I am a fashion person, but the business itself is very backwards. It doesn’t embrace technology or modern ways of thinking. I believe we need new people who will approach print differently and figure out how to make it work.

The digital world has led to the democratization of fashion, even for me everything I have learned over the years was mainly achieved through the internet and social media. I do feel like the writing market might be a little saturated now, so I wonder how I can be relevant as a fashion journalist and what is the difference between a fashion journalist and someone who simply loves fashion and has a big following?

When influencers and bloggers arrived, I embraced change because you'll get run over by a tank if you fight it. When I started, people like me did not get invited to the best fashion shows. You started as an assistant, then eventually, you worked your way to standing, then your whole career, you clawed your way up to the front, and finally, you made it to the front row of the Marc Jacobs show, then your life was fabulous, and then you got fired, and you died. With the democratization of fashion, bloggers and influencers dropped from the sky and landed in the front row of shows, and that was traumatic for people who had spent ten years working their way up to Row 4. When you were a journalist, there were certain things you did or didn't do, some were good, and some were not good. For example, if we thought a show was terrible at Paper, we didn't really say this show sucked. Our way of dealing with that was to not even write about it and write about this young designer you've never heard of who's great and should get attention. I mean, we all are fashion people on some level, but they're more sort of customers or more assertive fans in a way, I want to say, but in the same way, they communicate with their followers about fashion, and that is what journalists do, so in a way they are journalists as well. In the end I think we're all on the same team.