A conversation with designer Fabien Baron (Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue Paris, Interview, more).

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THIS EPISODE IS MADE POSSIBLE BY OUR FRIENDS AT COMMERCIAL TYPE, MOUNTAIN GAZETTE, AND FREEPORT PRESS.

There are many reasons for you to hate Fabien Baron (especially if you’re the jealous type). Here are 7 of them:

He’s French, which means, among other things, his accent is way sexier than yours.
He’s spent more than his fair share of time in the company of supermodels like Naomi Campbell, Christy Turlington, and Kate Moss.
He gets all of his Calvin Klein undies for free.
Ditto any swag from his other clients: Dior, Louis Vuitton, Burberry, or Armani.
When he tired of just designing magazines, magazines went and made him their editor-in-chief.
He was intimately involved in the making of Madonna’s notorious book, Sex. How intimately? We were afraid to ask.
Also? Vanity Fair called him “the most sought-after creative director in the world.”

With our pity party concluded, we admit “hate” was probably the wrong word, because after spending time talking to him, it’s easy to see why Baron has been able to live the kind of life many magazine creatives dream of—and why he’s been so incredibly successful.

His enthusiasm is contagious. It’s actually his super power. And it’s a lesson for all of us. When you get next-level excited, as Baron does when he can see the possibilities in a project, his passion infects everybody in the room.

And then, when you learn that Baron believes he’s doing what he was put on this earth to do, and claims that he would do it all for free. You’ve kind of got to believe him.

I never, ever worried about money. I never took a job because of the money. Because I think integrity is very important. I think, like believing that you have a path and that you’re going to follow that path and you’re going to stay on that path and that you’re going to stick to that. And that’s what I’m trying to do.

Welcome to Season 5 of Print Is Dead (Long Live Print!).

Patrick Mitchell: This is a rare occurrence. We are three people all fluent in the language of pasteup. And I hear you were a pasteup machine in your early days.

Fabien Baron: Yeah. I did glue some paper. Yes I did.

Patrick Mitchell: Are you just as good on the computer?

Fabien Baron: I think so. I think I’m quite fluent with the computer. Would I be able to do it if I was at the computer today? I think so because old tricks always come back. But damn, was it slower. It was definitely slower. A lot of the options came about when the computer showed up. My first job at Barney’s with the computer with the little square box. And I said, “I’m not doing that. What’s that? Like a black and white screen. I want my big fat Xeroxes, and my glue, and my paste boards.”

Debra Bishop: I know it well.

Patrick Mitchell: You got an early start—you got a boost from Alexander Liberman. He’s such a fraught character in the history of magazines—he’s a fragile man, he’s a powerful man. But he had the ability to create a career as he tried to do with you from the start.

Fabien Baron: Yes. Even though I didn’t follow the route he wanted me to take. He was definitely, in the eighties when I showed up in New York, the figure of magazines. If you wanted to make it in magazines, and you knew Liberman, and you had an access to him, and you could go and see him and talk to him, he could either break you or make you into something.

And I got lucky to get an appointment. I was in New York for about a week and I got an appointment with Liberman. I don’t know how that appointment came about, but I did get it. And, being French, I think he liked that because he spoke French. And I knew about him. I knew how important he was.

And I had a great meeting with him. I came to New York. I wanted to stay a couple of months. I wanted to see if there would be options, because I was tired of France. I was really young. I was like 20 or 21, something like that. It was in 1982. And I wanted to take a chance at this game of New York. And I got an appointment with him.

So It felt, “Okay, I’ve got to go do this.” And I didn’t speak English very well. He got that really super quick. “Let’s speak French. That’s going to be easier.” And he was very happy to speak French. I think he was a very charming person. He was soft spoken. And he had a manner in which he felt extremely European. When I met him, I felt, Okay, this is someone from Europe. And I think he had amazing taste and an extremely acute knowledge about making magazines.

Patrick Mitchell: He wanted you to hop in on Vanity Fair, right?

Fabien Baron: Yes. He said, “I don’t know if you heard about this magazine, you probably don’t know this magazine because it's a magazine from old times, but we’re going to relaunch Vanity Fair.”

I said, “Oh, okay.”

I had no idea what Vanity Fair was, except, I remember old things. I was like, “Vanity Fair. Okay. Yes. I’ve seen that. I think it was from the forties or something like that. And he wants to relaunch that magazine. Okay, great.”

He said, “The art director, he’s looking for an associate.”

And, when I showed my book, he said, “What do you want to do?”

I said, “I want to do magazines. I love magazines.” And I’d been doing quite well in France, by that time, so my portfolio was okay. And there were a lot of redesigns of magazines. So he understood that I was getting things quickly.

And he said, “Okay, go see the art director and come back and see me.”

So I went to see the art director. It was, like, a few floors down. And we had a really great meeting, everything was great. Everything was set. And after it I called Alex Liberman, and I told him, “Okay. We had a great meeting. I think it’s going to work out.”

He says, “Call me back in a week and we’ll work it all out.”

And so I called him back a week after and he said, “There’s an issue. We fired the art director.”

He was working on what they called at the time, a “zero.” Like a fake issue. And they fired him during that time. And I said, “Oh! There goes my chance to work at Vanity Fair and work at Condé Nast.”

He said, “Come back to see me, though.”

And so I went back to see him, went into his office, started talking in French, “Blah, blah, blah.” Charming, charming, charming.

He said, “Listen, it didn’t work out for Vanity Fair, but I have plans for you. But in the meantime, you’re going to go work at Self magazine.”

And I go, “Self magazine? That’s not my thing. Really? Are you sure?”

He said, “Go there for now.”

So I went there. I worked there with Rochelle Udell for a little bit less than a year. And then he put me at GQ. He put me at GQ with Mary Shanahan. And I think he was taking people and pushing them on the board, like a chess board. “Okay, this guy can go here, this can go here.” He was smart in the way he was working.

And I have to tell you, I learned so much when I was there during his time because he would come from magazine to magazine and I had already seen him at Self and I’d seen him at GQ. So I knew the way he was doing things. And it was really intriguing at the time the way people worked. You had an extreme sense of journalism. And to push a point of view that was narrative-driven. And I like that very much.

It was not about what looks good automatically. If he didn’t like something, if he didn’t like a fashion picture, he would crop the head. He would crop the head! That’s it. Crop the head? No problem!

Patrick Mitchell: It’s interesting that Vanity Fair didn’t work out because—we will get to this later—but you have a history of successfully not taking jobs. Before we get to that, Deb, I think you want to dive in here and talk about the past a little bit.

Debra Bishop: Yes. Let’s go back in time. You grew up in Paris—my favorite place in the world—and you followed in your father’s footsteps into a design career. Can you talk about that and your relationship with your dad and how it affected your career?

Fabien Baron: The relationship between a child and his dad can go different ways. In my own way, I think what happened is I was really looking up to him and wanted to impress him. And so whatever he was doing, I thought he was God. And I wanted to do what he was doing. I think if my dad would have been a film director, I would be a film director.

I would have definitely ended up in something artistic, but just so my father was working in magazines. So I had to work in magazines to show him, prove to him that I was good at doing something that he liked.

Debra Bishop: Did Paris inspire you in those days?

Fabien Baron: Absolutely.

Debra Bishop: This would have been in the seventies. What were you into? And how did that inspire how your design evolved?

Fabien Baron: I think, when I look at my trajectory, I know that when I was a child, I was really intrigued by the past. I was really intrigued by the environment in which I was living. I didn’t take anything for granted. And I was extremely curious and observant. Like I would see a monument. And I would just contemplate it and try to study it and try to understand, “Oh, when was that built? And what must have been the life during that time? And when that statue was erected, how was life around and how people connected to that statue?”

I asked myself so many questions about the work. What type of stone is it? I was always very curious about the environment. And living in an extremely cultural environment was like pure luck that I was in Paris because, like, ultimately I was surrounded by beauty.

Debra Bishop: Yes.

Fabien Baron: I was totally surrounded by beauty, surrounded by artworks, surrounded by culture. And so I just took it with my own eyes. I mean, that’s the most amazing education. My education is totally basic and normal. And I think everything I’ve really learned, I’ve learned by myself by looking. And by being curious.

Like in my young years, I was always going to see every monument. I was always in Notre Dame in the museum. And, in the streets looking at a door, the way the wood was sculpted. Everything, all these details that you have around you when you live in Paris. And I was extremely curious about all these things.

So I think I ingrained a lot of classical items in my head. And in my work, there’s these classical aspects that come through, like it needs to have elegance, because I come from Paris. And elegance and beauty is ingrained in my personal culture.

But then I moved to New York really early on. I moved to New York when I was 20 years old. The first time I came to New York, I was 18. And I stayed six months and I got so overwhelmed by it that, like, it was a shock for me because it was totally the opposite of what I had learned.

And it was so intriguing that I said, “Oh my God, this is, seriously, this is another ball game. This is a totally new thing. And I need to be part of it.” I felt that culture was actually for today, it was happening in America. And I felt like anything, music, pop culture art, dance, theater, movies, it was all coming from America. Like the country was leading all these things. And, actually, France and Europe were leading years ago, like, centuries ago.

**Baron along, with editor Betsy Carter, launched *New York Woman* in 1987.**

“I was tired of France. I was 20 or 21. It was in 1982. And I wanted to take a chance at this ‘game’ of New York.”

Debra Bishop: But you had the perfect education, because you started with France, the pinnacle of style, and then you embraced the American style. So the two of those things put together were a great education. You talk about that you went to school in Paris, but that didn’t last too long. Can you talk about that?

Fabien Baron: Yes. I went to art school, but at the same time I was already working a little bit with my father. I went to art school for a year and a half and then I quit because I just wanted to work. I felt that I was wasting my time. I was very eager to start working. So when I was 17, I basically quit school and I went on working.

Patrick Mitchell: I’m skipping ahead a little bit, but your first art director job was at New York Woman.

Fabien Baron: Oh my God. Look what you have there.

Patrick Mitchell: I remember this magazine coming out and I remember—

Fabien Baron: —I don’t have one, not even one issue of this.

Patrick Mitchell: I’ll let you have this for $50. I remember how much excitement there was. And you had Betsy Carter coming from Esquire, which was a great magazine, with a great tradition of design, coming to launch and create a new women’s magazine. And then you were hired as the art director. And this created a lot of excitement. But it didn’t work out well for you. Can you talk a little bit about how you got there and how it ended?

Fabien Baron: I got there because Betsy Carter called me up. I was at Condé Nast at GQ and she called me up to do a magazine and I just took it because I felt GQ was okay, but this was, like the next thing it was new.

Like in France I had learned to work on new magazines. Like my job was early on to redesign magazines, come one or two issues and leave. So this felt very much like something I would know, like start from a blank page, do a logo—everything was to be done.

I thought that was a good challenge. Liberman was not so happy that I left. But he said to me, “It doesn’t matter. You need to prove yourself, go out there, but you’ll come back.”

Patrick Mitchell: And so what was the brief at New York Woman?

Fabien Baron: The brief at New York Woman was to do a magazine that was very much about New York and about the New York woman. The title says it but I think I went a little bit more international, maybe.

Patrick Mitchell: It wasn’t really a fashion magazine. It was a lifestyle magazine for women.

Fabien Baron: It was a lifestyle magazine.

Patrick Mitchell: It was almost literary by comparison to Redbook and the magazines of that time.

Fabien Baron: Yeah. Yeah. It was what it was, but I had my own idea about it. And I was very keen on making that happen. And I think I did to a certain degree. Liberman told me, “If you go out of Condé Nast, you can’t use anyone from Condé Nast. So it’s finished for you to use the photographers that we’re using.”

I said, “Okay, I’ll work it out.”

So that’s how I brought all the European photographers. I brought Peter Lindbergh, I brought Max Vadukul, I brought Jean-François Lepage, Jean-Jacques Castres—all these photographers that were not working with Condé Nast.

Debra Bishop: Perfect! Solved the problem.

Fabien Baron: And that’s where I started to say, “Okay let’s play a game with Condé Nast.”

Patrick Mitchell: That didn’t end well, necessarily. You and Betsy Carter had different opinions on how that should go, which is fine because you were still figuring yourself out.

Fabien Baron: Yeah, and also, like, when I was at New York Woman, I started to get calls for advertising jobs. And I got a call from Barneys to work on their advertising. And this was the occasion for me to work with one of the photographers I always loved, and I still do love him, Steven Meisel. And I couldn’t work with him at New York Woman because of the “veto.”

So I said, “Okay, I want to do advertising so I can work with Meisel. So basically we started to work together on Barneys and doing ads with Naomi Campbell, Christy Turlington, Linda Evangelista—the big star models. And at the same time I was doing advertising, I was doing New York Woman, and I got a phone call, of course, from Mr. Liberman, who said, “Why don’t you come visit? I want to talk to you about an idea.”

So I go see him and we sit down and he tells me that he would very much like me to take over American Vogue with Grace Mirabella. I was at New York Woman, I said, “Oof, American Vogue? Grace Mirabella?”

At the time, it felt like the magazine was tired, a little bit. It felt like it was not in a good place and they wanted someone to bring a little bit of new blood or to fix it to some degree. But deep down, I really thought about it and I turned it down. I turned it down because I felt like it was the wrong job to take.

Patrick Mitchell: Based on what?

Fabien Baron: Based on the fact that I’d felt in my guts that Grace Mirabella was not going to stick around very long. And that her approach to the magazine at the time was not what I had in mind for the magazine. I even felt like Betsy Carter was closer to my vision than Grace Mirabella.

So I didn’t take the job. I didn’t take the job. He was a bit disappointed. I said, “I’m going to stay at New York Woman. I think I have something going.” He was seeing it too. And he was seeing, like, Peter Lindbergh and all. He was seeing all this. So he probably felt it better to bring me back. But I turned it down.

And then a week later—this is so strange. What happened with the Vogue thing, it was really strange. A week later, I got a phone call from French Vogue. And they asked me if I would be interested to come back and do the magazine.

And I was like, “Oh gosh French Vogue? The way it is at that moment?” I didn’t feel great about the way French Vogue was. It was not the great moment when Guy Bourdin, and Helmut Newton and all these photographers were there. I was in a totally different place in my head. And the idea of going back to Paris to me looked like, Okay, I go back to Paris after four years, five years. Does it look like I failed in America and I need to go back home?

So I said, “No.” So I said no as well. And I felt okay about it until my girlfriend at the time told me, “Are you crazy?” And a couple of friends told me, “Are you crazy? You said no to Vogue? Are you nuts?”

And I started to panic. “Oh my God, they’re right!” You know what I mean? Because you go with your guts a little bit. And I said, “Oh gosh, yeah, I made a big mistake here. This is not good.” Like I should have taken the American Vogue, I should have taken the French Vogue, I should have taken something and everything.

vogue_Italia_January_1989_Rosemary_McGrotha_1024x1024.png

“Franca Sozanni was THE editor, to me, in Europe. She had a vision that was very close to what I felt was mine. So when she called me, I didn’t even think it was, ‘Yes, of course! No doubt!’”

Patrick Mitchell: You were very young, very early in your career—very young to be so sure about making those kinds of decisions.

Debra Bishop: I think it was great. You were very courageous to say no.

Fabien Baron: It was the right thing to do because if I would have gone there, I probably would have gone like a candle, like, “Poof!” Because they would have killed me.

Debra Bishop: Squashed you.

Fabien Baron: Yeah. Squashed me. Totally. It was not the right thing to do. I wanted to work with someone that understood what I was about and that I would understand as well. And get a perfect mix.

Two weeks later, I got a phone call from Franca Sozzani at Italian Vogue. She says to me, “Oh, I’ve seen your work, what you are doing with Steven Meisel. I already work with him. Guess what? I really like what you do. I’m going to take over Italian Vogue. Would you like to do it?”

I didn’t even think. I went, “Of course I want to do it!”

Because I was looking up to Franca as well. Franca was the editor, to me, in Europe. Because she was doing Lei and Per Lui, and the way she was working with the photographers was very similar to the way I was. She was working with Peter Lindbergh. She was working with Max Vadukul. She was working with the photographers I was using. She was working with Meisel.

And she had a vision that was very close to what I felt was mine. And she felt like she was part of the same team. So when she called me, I didn’t even think it was, “Yes, of course! No doubt!”

Patrick Mitchell: What’s interesting about her and those days—so, obviously, these are the days of you, and Neville Brody, and Vaughn Oliver, and David Carson, and this whole sort of new wave of design. And I’m a graphic designer. I love design. I don’t necessarily have any passion for fashion. And I look at Vogue and these other magazines, and they’re absolutely just devoid of graphic design. And that was the thing about your Italian Vogue, typography started showing up. You could see it right on the cover and it was so unusual. And she worked with Brody at those magazines you mentioned, Lei and Per Lui. He was working for her in the eighties.

Fabien Baron: Oh yes, that’s right. I think you’re right.

Patrick Mitchell: So she seemed like a person who cared about graphic design.

Fabien Baron: The thing is, at the time, to be honest, like between certain photographers, editors, and graphic designers, and fashion people, they were a wave of people that were on the same wavelength. And they were thinking the same. And it was a collective in a way. And I felt I was part of these people. And I ended up working with them.

Patrick Mitchell: And so you made an assessment about Franca because you had seen this work.

Fabien Baron: Because I had seen Lei and Per Lui. I knew what she was about. I knew we were talking the same language. And if there was one editor I wanted to work with, It was Franca Sozzani. But she calls me when she’s starting the Italian Vogue. And I said, “You must be kidding. What luck or what vision in my head that I can say “no” to American Vogue? “No” to French Vogue? And then get Italian Vogue, which was the magazine to get.

Patrick Mitchell: Was this a launch? Were you at the beginning of Italian Vogue?

Fabien Baron: Yes! First issue! We came in together. And it was so fantastic. It was such an amazing feeling to be part of that moment. It was historic, in a way. Her coming in and starting this legacy of Steven Meisel work. I did two years with her and that was great, that was fabulous.

Patrick Mitchell: Can I just ask you why, in your opinion, do you think that fashion magazines seem to care so little about graphic design and typography?

Fabien Baron: They don’t think it’s important. They don’t think it’s part of the message. It’s not important.

Baron’s first stint at Interview was brief but ground breaking.

Debra Bishop: I think that they have a problem with style. I find that a lot of American editors don’t want anything that’s going to distract their stories. They understand photography, but not typography. Do you agree with that?

Fabien Baron: Yes and no. Yes and no. Because I think a lot of designers, a lot of graphic designers want to make a statement with the graphics. And it goes far beyond the words. And actually do alter the words in a way that is negative for the meaning.

I think like when I started to do single words and things like that on the page, first of all, it was with subject matter that is quite not so serious, right? It’s fashion. And fashion is easier in terms of the wording of fashion. Like you can say things really quickly with just simple words.

You can have a true meaning about something with a single word. Fashion uses a lot of symbolism in the clothes, in the way they do things. There’s a lot of hidden meanings in, or, like extra things that you catch out of colors, out of shapes, out of silhouette. It gives you another emotion, right?

And I took on that in terms of graphic design. I took on this idea that I can shape the words in certain ways that it adds a meaning to the words. It completes its meaning rather than its narrative, like its definition. So the way I started to design, I started to design with words that were complementing the image, that were mirroring the image.

Like the photo and the graphics were meaning something on their own. The photos meant something on their own. The word itself, what it meant, or the sentence meant something that had a really proper meaning. And then they were like a sub meaning. Like by blowing up certain words bigger, because in the sentence, you have to enjoy words to do it that way.

A lot of people, what I’ve taken on my design and I’ve seen it, but they don’t, they put something for no reason, or they put something bigger. Why do they put that word bigger? When I put a word that is bigger or in color or something, it’s because the word tells me to do that. And the meaning of the word tells me.

So actually, I’m sometimes reinforcing the point of the editor rather than diminishing the point for just pure beauty. And it’s something that some editors have difficulty understanding. Ingrid Sischy had, obviously, issues understanding that in the work when I was with her at Interview magazine.

But Franca did know. And some of the editors in Italy, when we did Italian Vogue, they really thought it was brilliant because it was a new way of communicating quicker about a subject matter that is a light subject matter anyway, from the beginning. And they felt it was more playful and more interesting and visually striking and making the magazine more a thing to look at because of the fashion you look at.

So I’m extremely intrigued by the photography. For me the graphics are one thing, but if there’s no photography, the graphics don't interest me so much.

Debra Bishop: You like the reaction.

Fabien Baron: I never did any typography for the sake of typography.

Patrick Mitchell: Well, let’s skip ahead to Interview.

**One of Baron’s many side projects, Madonna’s controversial book, *Sex*.**

Debra Bishop: Yeah. Let’s talk about Interview. It was so innovative and cutting edge. I think you really hit your stride there. Let’s talk about that.

Fabien Baron: After two years of being at Italian Vogue, we were doing everything manually—no computer, no emails, no nothing. The best thing you could have is a fax. So basically I was two weeks in New York and I would do all the shoots with Meisel and the other photographers that were in America, and there were a lot. I was in charge of making sure all the shoots were happening. And then I would get the prints and I would get all the stuff, take the box, go on the plane, and go to Italy and then open the box and show all the work to everyone.

And it was really charming because all the editors would go run, say, “Okay let’s look at the Bruce Weber! Let’s look at the Steven Meisel! Let’s look at this”—and I would open and show the pictures. And then, right away, we’d go into layout stages, and writing, and everything.

And everything was done with the Xerox machine. Everything was done with the Xerox machine, including those beginnings of me using single-letter openings and everything. I was actually Xeroxing the pictures. Then to make it really black, I would pencil it in black afterwards, and I would cut the letters with a knife to get the things as thin as I wanted them to be.

Because at the time, everything was done in photography, right? So you had to order your type to a house and it would come back as a piece of artwork that would be blurry on the edge and things like this. So I was cutting the letters with my knife so it would be perfect, with a ruler, and peeling pieces off to make the letter perfect and thin and the way I liked it.

Debra Bishop: It was a very artistic process.

Fabien Baron: It was very manual. And then you glue it and that becomes a document, then you retake a Xerox, that becomes your page. And then you glue things, and you start doing layouts. Gluing, xeroxing, gluing, Xeroxing, gluing.

Like two weeks of that, two weeks of shoots. After two years, it was exhausting. I couldn’t do it anymore. Flying, at the time, you know, like, of course they didn’t have any money, so I was flying in Tourist Class in the back of the plane. It was tough. It was tiring. And I had a life in New York. I still had my clients in New York. I still was doing Barneys and starting to get other advertising campaigns, like Valentino, and started working with Giorgio Armani.

Debra Bishop: So you never had any problems with doing the extracurricular. You could always be the art director of a magazine but still do your side projects.

Fabien Baron: I never did just one thing. I just don’t like it. I don’t like it because when I do one thing, I give it so much attention. I put so much into it that I don’t think about the other thing. And it sucks so much energy. I need to get out of it, put it on the side, not think about it and go do something else. “Oh that’s more fun.” So I’ve got a very short attention span.

Debra Bishop: So early on you were designing very much as an artist where it was almost a very crafty kind of deconstructed look. And now we’ve evolved into the computer. What were the main differences there? Were there things that you miss? What do you embrace about the computer?

Fabien Baron: I think, number one, the biggest thing is once I knew how to use it in a better way, possibilities, things you could do that you couldn’t do before. Second, great accidents. Right? Try to rethink from that time. And third? Speed, right? You could try more than one thing. You could really explore in a different way.

Debra Bishop: And color. Color was another thing.

Fabien Baron: Color was very important, yes. I started doing layouts with the pencil, drawing everything. The text was just like a line—that’s a column, it starts here, it finishes here, and it’s a gray box. So you have to just imagine everything. And the same for the titles, everything, I used to draw each letter, “Oh, the title’s going to take that space, it’s going to be on two columns, and it’s going to be like that.”

“I never did just one thing. I just don’t like it. I need to get out of it, put it on the side, not think about it and go do something else. I’ve got a very short attention span.”

Patrick Mitchell: Did you write your own headlines because you wanted certain sets of letters to work with?

Fabien Baron: Oh yes, I wrote a lot of headlines. Not because I wanted certain letters. But because of the way I felt when I was seeing the pictures. And in many ways—sometimes the thing I found the most difficult with editors is them saying, “Oh, just put anything there. Just put dummy type. Put, like, fake type.”

I said, “I can’t put fake type. I need to have the word. It needs to be the real word. How am I supposed to design if it’s a word that is seven letters? A word that is two?” It's a totally different approach.

Patrick Mitchell: Oh my God.

Debra Bishop: You’re pressing our buttons here.

Fabien Baron: It’s a good one because you know what, if the words are good, the words are good.

Patrick Mitchell: The words inspire the design!

Fabien Baron: Absolutely. It’s got to come from the words. The words and their meaning and how they stand together and what they do. And if you can design, helping the words feel better, and be bigger, and more important, and give more meaning to these words, it’s good. That’s what I call good design.

Patrick Mitchell: Bad headlines are the worst thing.

Debra Bishop: No headlines until the last second are the worst thing! Okay. Well, you’ve talked about how finding the right editor is everything. How do you go about doing that? I guess it’s a matter of just saying “no.”

Fabien Baron: Yeah, I guess so. Yeah, I refused jobs because I knew the chemistry wouldn’t work.

Patrick Mitchell: Just based on conversation?

Fabien Baron: Just based on conversation.

Patrick Mitchell: So you can size up an editor very quickly and know whether this is going to work out for you?

Fabien Baron: Yeah, pretty much. The business of fashion is not that big. You know who the editors are. You know what they do. You know who they work with. And you know what their style is. No, I never worked with that person because it’s not right for me and it’s not right for them. It’s on both sides.

Patrick Mitchell: It seems like you’ve never worried about money or security, like you’re a hundred percent driven by the creative opportunity.

Fabien Baron: I never, ever worried about money. I never took a job because of the money.

Patrick Mitchell: Is that something you credit your childhood, your parents, your work ethic with?

Fabien Baron: No, I credit myself for that. Because I think integrity is very important. I think, like believing that you have a path and that you’re going to follow that path and you’re going to stay on that path and that you’re going to stick to that. And that’s what I’m trying to do. I’m trying to stick with what I believe and I don’t want to change the way I believe.

Debra Bishop: Yeah, I think that you’ve been able to keep the caliber of your work very consistent by holding on to that integrity. But I want to ask you, how do you deal with editors and clients? Do you feel like you’re a good salesman or is it charisma?

Fabien Baron: Oh, yeah—

Debra Bishop: —the power of persuasion? This is what I wish that I had, but I’m not so good at it.

Fabien Baron: I don’t know. But I think I’m quite positive and I get really excited. And when I’m excited, I just go. I just say what I think and I’m very honest and very direct. If there’s bad things, I say it. If there’s good things, I say it. But it’s always bigger than it is.

So I guess that’s pleasant and that’s different, maybe, from other people. But I get very excited. When there’s a photographer that has a great picture, I’m the first one to go nuts about it, go crazy. And the same, like when the client is showing me the idea and what they want to do, I get excited. And when I don’t get excited, I don’t get the job. And I don’t want the job.

Debra Bishop: That’s a lesson, I think, for everyone to hear, is that you’re passionate about what you do.

Fabien Baron: I’m so passionate about what I do.

Debra Bishop: But you also have a little bit of French in you, which I think helps.

Fabien Baron: Maybe. Like with the accent?

Debra Bishop: Just a little bit.

Fabien Baron: But it doesn’t work in France, let me tell you. Most of my clients are French, so I speak English.

Patrick Mitchell: There’s a psychology though, to your enthusiasm, because it makes people feel better about themselves and more confident in making the decisions that you want them to make, right?

So let’s move on to 1992, you became the creative director at Harper’s Bazaar, which was, effectively, a launch. Anna Wintour had been at Vogue for a couple of years and Vogue had been really rising. Bazaar had been really sinking. And this may be one of the most perfect relationships to ever happen in the magazine business. You’re working with Liz Tilberis, who sadly had a very short run at Harper’s Bazaar. She sounds, based on our conversation so far, like your perfect editor because she really just let you go. She had a hundred percent faith in you. She was quoted as saying that it was you more than her who knew what that magazine should be. Can you talk a little bit about the relaunch of Harper’s Bazaar?

Fabien Baron: I didn’t know about that quote from Liz. That’s interesting.

Patrick Mitchell: She was giving a talk at the American Society of Magazine Editors. She said you were the new Alexei Brodovitch.

Fabien Baron: Wow, that’s a big compliment.

Patrick Mitchell: So talk a little bit about how you and Liz came together.

Fabien Baron: It actually came through Patrick Demarchelier, who had a conversation with her about doing Harper’s Bazaar. They were, like, plotting against Condé Nast for Patrick to leave Vogue to go to Bazaar. And Patrick said to Liz, “You need a good art director, because if you don’t have a good art director, there’s no point.”

And so Liz called me up and we had lunch. And what was interesting with Liz, is we had lunch for about two hours, and we didn’t talk one bit about the magazine. We spent about four minutes talking about the magazines and that was at dessert.

We were talking about kids. We’re talking about New York. We’re talking about tons of things about life. We talked about photographers. We talked about fashion. We talked about so many things, but not about Harper’s Bazaar. And she didn’t want to bring the subject, I didn’t want to bring the subject matter. It just showed up.

And I asked her the question, “So what’s your plan? What's your plan with Bazaar?”

She said, “I’d love to do the best magazine ever.”

And I said, “Me too.”

And she said, “Great. So we think alike.”

Patrick Mitchell: “Let’s do it!”

Fabien Baron: That was it. I promise you that was it. And the minute I met her, I knew we were going to work together. So we didn’t talk about it. It was really strange. It felt like I’d known her forever.

Patrick Mitchell: Where were you in your career, where were you when you were having this conversation?

Fabien Baron: I had left Interview, and I had my own studio, and I was just finishing the Madonna Sex book. Yes. Working on it.

Patrick Mitchell: Yeah. And everybody was talking about that.

Fabien Baron: Yes.

Patrick Mitchell: So Liz Tilberis did work for Vogue at one point. I think people thought she would—was she the editor of British Vogue?

Fabien Baron: Yes, she was the editor of British Vogue.

Patrick Mitchell: And I think she was thought about as maybe a future editor of American Vogue. But Hearst stole her away. And you created this phenomenon. It’s one of the biggest, sort of, relaunches in magazine history. It’s all over everywhere. It’s at the sort of peak of the supermodels, Christy and Naomi.

Fabien Baron: It’s at the peak of many things. It’s the peak of the model industry. It was the peak of fashion. And actually at the start of a new fashion era. It was grunge and the 90s. It was the moment where magazines were shifting from being a good business into an excellent business. Where the brands were putting so many pages of advertising into the magazines.

So it was, I think, at the top of the wave. It happened at the top of the wave. You’re there, you have your surfboard, you’re at the top of the biggest wave, and okay you’re going to ride the wave or not. That’s the way it was. And Bazaar felt like that. Like, when you’re on the top of a huge wave, and you’re going to go surfing this wave or not. And you’re going to fall or not.

Because the fall is going to be hard. But if you make the wave, my God, that’s a good feeling! And I think we did ride the wave. We did ride the wave. The best photographers were working for us.

Patrick Mitchell: Are you a sports fan?

Fabien Baron: Yes.

Patrick Mitchell: It seemed almost like a sporting match, this Vogue/Bazaar thing.

Fabien Baron: Oh yes, it was.

Patrick Mitchell: In house was it, sort of, urgent?

Fabien Baron: It was extremely competitive. And it was like, it was a fight. It was a fight. It was like a boxing match.

Patrick Mitchell: Did you paste pictures of Anna Wintour on the bathroom mirror?

Fabien Baron: No. We didn’t have to do that.

Debra Bishop: Target practice!

Fabien Baron: We didn’t have to do that. The magazine was doing the job. When the issue was coming out it was doing the work.

Patrick Mitchell: And so you would get the new Vogue and you’d get the new Bazaar and you’d sit down and say, “We crushed it!”

Fabien Baron: Page per page. And they were doing the same. I know they were doing the same because Liz Tilberis was really good friends with Grace Coddington. And so we were hearing from Grace, we’re hearing from people at Vogue. The gossip was genius. It was really interesting. It was fun.

Debra Bishop: Yeah. It was exciting.

Patrick Mitchell: Did you explicitly see things that Vogue was doing as a response to what you were doing?

Fabien Baron: Uh, yes, of course. Yes, definitely.

Patrick Mitchell: You each had exclusive rights to photographers of your own. What about models?

Fabien Baron: Models you know, everybody was told like, “You can’t work for… You can’t work for…” And we were more flexible. But they were not flexible. But the models took the risk. Like Linda, I remember, she said, “I don’t care.” They were told not to do the cover. And Linda said, “I don’t care, I’m going to do the cover.” And she was on the first cover. And aren’t you glad looking back, isn’t it great that she did that cover?

Debra Bishop: Yeah, absolutely.

Patrick Mitchell: Did you see her documentary?

Fabien Baron: No, I actually didn’t.

Patrick Mitchell: It’s really good. It really took you back to the nineties. So who was your counterpart at Vogue?

Fabien Baron: It was Anna, I think, for me.

Patrick Mitchell: Who was the creative director? Charles Churchward?

Fabien Baron: Maybe. See, to me the graphic design and all that was not important. What was important is the whole magazine.

Debra Bishop: It was more of a creative direction.

Fabien Baron: Yeah, I think it’s the whole creative entity. That was, to me, the important thing.

Debra Bishop: And I think Anna was so much, more of a creative director or editorial director. And that was your role essentially too.

Fabien Baron: Yeah. I don’t know who the art director was. I know at one point Raul was the art director, but I don’t know if I was still at Bazaar when he was there.

Patrick Mitchell: Raul Martinez?

Fabien Baron: Raul Martinez, yeah.

Patrick Mitchell: Not too long after you started, Liz got sick.

Fabien Baron: Yes.

Patrick Mitchell: You had a, what, a good four or five year run and then things got sad. Very sad.

Fabien Baron: Yes. I think all together we did eight years or seven when she died. And the minute she died, I left. I did the tribute issue for her—the “White Issue,” like in celebration. We called her “La Blanche” because she had white hair, which was very unique at the time.

And it’s funny because when she had cancer, her hair regrew, but it was gray. It was a beautiful gray. So we said, “Should we change your name for “La Grise”? But we said, “We’ll keep on calling you La Blanche. I wanted to do this White Issue in celebration of her. And I closed on that issue and I left.

Patrick Mitchell: Which makes sense because everything you said talks about how it was not a relationship with Hearst. It was a relationship with Liz Tilberis.

Fabien Baron: To me, she was the magazine and there was no point to stay. And I just didn’t like the whole thing. Like everybody was like, “Oh, so what’s gonna happen? Who’s coming in? Who’s not coming in?” Blah, blah, blah, blah. I didn’t want to be part of all this. I said, “I have plenty of things to do. I’m not worried. I’m just leaving.” I sent my letter and I felt I was working for Liz and I want to leave working for Liz.

Patrick Mitchell: Just a side question: did you know Terry McDonell?

Fabien Baron: I think I met him once or twice.

Patrick Mitchell: He was the editor of Esquire when you were there. They were very close friends and he wrote this really great tribute to her.

Fabien Baron: Yes. Yes. I think they were very close friends. Yes. You’re right.

Debra Bishop: I was going to ask you what your favorite inspirations were for magazines as a kid, but I think just in general, what inspires you?

Fabien Baron: I get inspired by everything, to be honest. I’m looking at a lot of art. I get really inspired by artworks and by what people do, that are unusual and different. And I’m really intrigued by things I haven’t seen before. I think it’s my curious side.

Like, I can’t help myself, “Ooh, what’s that? How’d they do that? How’d they make it?” So I’m very curious about the way things are made and how things are put together and how they’re gymnastic in their mind, how they get to a place, and how they achieve to build whatever they have in their mind as an object.

Debra Bishop: You’re very inspired by nature, too.

Fabien Baron: I’ve always been inspired by nature and I love nature. And I spend a lot of time in nature. And I dedicated many years of my life taking pictures of nature. All along, I mean, like this, my career and the work that I’ve done for years that everyone is aware of.

But there’s another side, there’s the other job, what I call the “other side of the coin” that is all the work that I’ve done for me—personal, photography, drawings that I’ve been collecting for years and never wanted to share. And I have come to a point in my life now that I’m starting to do that. I’m going to start to do that. I’m going to start to have shows. I want to start to show the work.

Debra Bishop: That’s wonderful.

Fabien Baron: But I put as much effort that I put in my career into this. So there’s a tremendous amount of work that a lot of people haven’t seen, apart maybe from a few at my office. And we’re putting a lot of prints together at the moment.

I’ve done a tremendous amount of landscapes for years, series, like specific series of work that, you know on the repeat, and the long term commitments. And the minute I have time, that’s what I do. I have to do something. I don’t like to sit and do nothing. I need to occupy myself and to create. I like to create.

Highlights from Baron’s second go-round with Interview.

Debra Bishop: Can you name maybe five magazines—we occasionally ask this question—current or historic, that you think just really hit the mark, could be writing, packaging, attitude, voice, photography?

Fabien Baron: I always admired The New Yorker. And I still do admire The New Yorker for how they were able to go through this wave of the magazine “debacle,” what I call the—what you guys call—the end of print. I think they were able to sustain the decline because I think for magazines, the literature, the literacy is what counts at the end. The narrative.

It’s the storytelling, the opinion taking that, at the end, comes through. They were smart in not believing in advertising, but believing in subscriptions. And high-level subscriptions, so the magazine is healthy. Their magazine is healthy, which is good.

And I like when they say, “Okay, we’re a magazine of words.” But when they decided to go visual, they took [Richard] Avedon. And to me that is a beautiful move. So that’s that. The New Yorker, I really appreciate.

Remember Égoïste? It’s a magazine I always thought was interesting, intelligent, very well done. Again, it didn’t believe in advertising. And they did their own campaigns. For whomever they were shooting, they were adding the logo. But it was editorially-based advertising. And they came up with some ideas that were much better than the regular campaigns. And it’s funny that they also have Avedon in it. That’s funny.

Then, Esquire at one point I thought like it was really on it. Probably the time when I was looking at Esquire, that I really thought was amazing, was in the late seventies, early eighties. I thought it was very powerful. And I remember when Jean-Paul Goude was there, and he was doing amazing covers.

I think magazines were great before. Now they have to compete with the internet. My magazine is dead. It’s dead to be honest. I don’t look at magazines. In a way it is very strange talking to someone that loves magazines, that built magazines, that I think has done a lot of good magazines, but you know what? I never pick up a magazine.

It is almost like saying, “Oh, look, this film director, very famous, done great films, got everything, but guess what? He’s not looking at the movies.” It’s sad, isn’t it? But it is a little bit like this. I look at magazines on Instagram. That’s where you see the magazine work.

Patrick Mitchell: So we want to wrap up with a couple things. You’ve left magazines now for a few years. You’ve done a ton of branding and advertising throughout your whole life. I always felt like magazines were a unique animal. You’re part of a community. You’re speaking directly to that specific group. You’re part of a universe. Do you miss that at all? Do you feel the same sort of engagement with other work you’ve done?

Fabien Baron: Yes. I don’t miss it. I don’t miss it. Like I said, I went into magazines because my dad was in magazines. Now I’m into films. And if my dad would have been the director, I probably would be a director. And I am a director now. I direct a lot of films. And I do other things. I’m very busy doing a lot of different things.

What I like is to be busy, to be a participant in this life in the way that you’re adding to the program. I think it’s important. I feel like I’m around because I need to put a little something somewhere and leave a mark. And I’m intending to do that.

And that is with the magazine, that is with the fashion, the film, that is with a picture, that is with my own artwork, whatever it is, I don’t care. Because, at the end, it’s the intention of wanting to create that is important. The idea of telling the story in whichever way I could. Maybe I should start writing or something. I don’t know.

But to me you have ideas. You have beliefs. And the magazine, the photography—whichever tool you use is just a tool. And you need to learn how to use the tool, and that’s possible to learn how to use tools. And what you have to express is what is important to me. And at the end, I’m trying to express myself.