A conversation with with Harper’s Bazaar editor Samira Nasr

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

It’s a cliché because it’s true: in the fashion world, you’ve got your show ponies and you’ve got your workhorses. We mean it as a compliment when we say that Samira Nasr truly earned her place at the helm of the 156-year-old institution, Harper’s Bazaar.

Don’t get us wrong. Samira is seriously glamorous—she’s the kind of woman who phrases like “effortless chic” were invented to describe. But she did not cruise to her current perch on connections and camera-readiness alone. Rather, she worked her way up, attending J-school at NYU, then making her way through the fashion closets of Vogue, Mirabella, Vanity Fair, InStyle, and Elle—where we met in the trenches, and got to see firsthand how she mixes old-school, roll-up-your-sleeves work ethic and her own fresh vision.

When Samira got the big job at Bazaar in 2020, she became the title’s first-ever Black editor-in-chief. The Bazaar she has rebuilt is as close as a mainstream fashion magazine gets to a glossy art mag, but it is far from chilly. As she has long put it, “I just want to bring more people with me to the party.” Which, when you think about it, is a brilliant mantra for a rapidly-shifting era in media and culture. How to keep a legacy fashion magazine going circa 2025? Drop the velvet rope.

The timing for this mantra could not have been better. After her first year in the role, Bazaar took home its first-ever National Magazine Award for General Excellence.

In our interview, Samira talked about remaking one of fashion’s most legendary magazines—plus, jeans, budgets, and even the odd parenting tip. We had fun, and we hope you do too.

“Fashion magazines were a safe place. They provided me an escape route into another world, a fantasy. And also the discovery of style and how clothes could transform you was really something that made me very curious.”

Maggie Bullock: I feel like of all the people that we worked with that you got to be an editor in chief feels really, I don’t know, it was touching. It was well deserved. It was personal to all of us to see you get up there.

Samira Nasr: Thank you. Thank you.

Rachel Baker: And now we love your magazine.

Maggie Bullock: And now we love your magazine! So you’re just back from fashion week. Maybe it’s been a minute, but tell us.

Samira Nasr: Barely a minute.

Maggie Bullock: You’re just catching your breath. You started out doing that in what we often refer to on this podcast as the “Town Car Era” of magazines. I know we’re all a little tired of that phrase, but it encapsulates something. So how has just the exercise of doing fashion week changed since back in the day when you were starting out?

Samira Nasr: I think the biggest difference is. It’s not so much the, “Oh, shit. Not everyone has their own car.” It’s like the door is open and it’s anyone’s guess how many people are going to spill out of the car. It’s insane.

Rachel Baker: It was the “Town Car Era” and now it’s the “Clown Car Era.”

Samira Nasr: I think the difference for me is our devices. Because I remember, when I was an assistant, even, and our editors would go, you would fax them and you would wait for a reply. Or you’d wait for a phone call. But there wasn’t this expectation that everyone was on all the time. They would go away, be away, be focused on that thing, and then come back and report what they saw.

Whereas now the expectation is you’ve got to do all that. There are 30 times more designers. Plus you’ve got to do all your appointments and meetings. And you’ve got to be on top of everything that’s happening here, and be reachable, and keep things going. And to me, that is the biggest difference.

Maggie Bullock: Why do you say there’s 30 times more designers? I’m just curious what that tells us about fashion.

Samira Nasr: I just think there’s so many more designers now than there ever were. There just are. The industry has grown exponentially.

Rachel Baker: And do you think editors like you also care about more of a variety of kinds of designers? Is that part of it? It used to be just like the super duper high, or I don’t know, it seems crazy that it would have mushroomed to this degree.

Samira Nasr: It’s just bigger. Fashion weeks are bigger. Even going into a show now, it’s like you have to take a deep breath because there are crowds outside. It’s like getting into a concert. There’s layers of security and gates that you have to get through. Sometimes you need a photo ID.

Rachel Baker: That all sounds very overwhelming. What’s fun about it? What’s the most fun? You’re gone for a month doing this stuff, what do you look forward to?

Samira Nasr: Well, a few things. I look forward to reconnecting with my colleagues from other brands. It's really nice to see everyone and just be in it with everyone. I also look forward to being away with my team and just the camaraderie and the discovery that we have together.

But also just being in my seat when a show starts and actually that moment where—it doesn’t always happen—but you see something that makes you feel something that you didn’t feel or think about something you didn’t think about before. It still gives me a rush and it still fills my cup with excitement. And that is the thing that keeps me going very much.

Maggie Bullock: That’s what it always seemed like to me. So Rachel and I were in the features department, keeping things going while you guys were over there. And I didn’t envy much of it. But I loved the sense that you could go away and get super juiced up and bring that back and have enough energy to power the next leg of the magazine. You know what I mean? “Wow, fresh ideas.” So we did want to know—because we are obviously deeply fashionable people, Samira—what did you see this fashion month that’s going to change how real people dress?

Samira Nasr: Two things. I have two things for you. One is there’s a return to opulence that I think is going to have a resurgence. I don’t know how long it will take to find its way into the mainstream and what that will look like. But there’s a return to more opulent dressing and more texture and more color that is very appealing to me—said the girl dressed in black.

And there’s also softness—a return to softness. A lot of chiffons and shapes that collapse. And that I think we’ll see pretty quickly. But I also think there's a bigger lesson for us in that, in terms of I just think we all need to learn how to soften a little bit right now. And that made me feel hopeful. And that was a reminder that sometimes fashion gets it, and gets it right.

“I didn’t want a velvet rope around Harper’s Bazaar. We celebrate luxury fashion, but everyone is invited.”

Maggie Bullock: So are you saying that Rachel’s love of gold has been re-embraced by fashion?

Rachel Baker: It’s my favorite color.

Samira Nasr: Do it. Yes. Go there, Rachel. You are on track.

Rachel Baker: Awesome. If I’m wearing it now, people are going to be like, “You’re a little extra.” I’m like, “You have no idea this is coming.”

Maggie Bullock: This is coming, people. It’s coming.

Samira Nasr: It’s here. Forget “it’s coming.” It’s here.

Rachel Baker: Okay. Samira, can you give us the broad strokes of your background—like how you grew up—before we dive into your career stuff? Just like, where did Samira come from?

Samira Nasr: Samira comes from a tiny suburb west of Montréal called Pointe Claire. I am the child of a Lebanese father and a Trinidadian mother, so immigrant parents. I grew up—without getting into too much detail—I grew up in a lot of chaos. Fashion magazines were an early source of school. I loved school and I loved fashion magazines.

Fashion magazines were a safe place where I could escape. They provided me an escape route into another world, and a fantasy. And also the discovery of style and how clothes could transform you was really something that made me very curious.

Style was something I’d always been curious about and what people’s style says about them. I’m a quiet person but I observe a lot, and I’m always looking at how people express themselves—what is the thing that they wear to protect themselves? And what those choices say about us. And that’s something I’ve always been curious about. But fashion magazines, in particular, were a real refuge for me.

Maggie Bullock: Which ones did you love growing up? Were you tearing them out and putting them on your wall?

Samira Nasr: So there’s French Glamour.

Maggie Bullock: Oh, you’re so sophisticated!

Samira Nasr: I know. Elle was a big one for me. And this was in the eighties. So those were the two for me that were really important. And then my friend Crystal—she was my best friend—she always got a subscription to Vogue. And then Vogue led me to Bazaar. And then I discovered The Face and i-D.

Those were things that I read a lot and that we could get our hands on in Canada. We had a lot of magazine stores in Montréal, which is really interesting. So many magazine stores. And even, like, cafés that had magazine stands, magazines from all around the world. So we had access to it. And I would just go.

Maggie Bullock: Yeah, I loved that. Good old magazine stores.

Rachel Baker: Take me back!

Maggie Bullock: We love that both you and your brother are, like, top New York creatives. He’s a chef?

Samira Nasr: My brother’s a very successful chef. He’s very talented.

Maggie Bullock: And am I right that your mom is a sculptor?

Samira Nasr: Our mother is a ceramic artist, yeah.

Maggie Bullock: So what’s the secret—what’s the fire in the belly? Is there any kind of through line there to how both of you would get here to the top of these two creative fields?

Samira Nasr: Both of our parents are very creative—in different ways. I read this study recently, I think it was in the Times, this piece about how kids who do chores, they’re 70 percent more likely to … whatever. We had a shit ton of chores—let me tell you. Bathrooms, vacuuming, dusting, washing windows, weeding, raking, laundry. Chores!

But I also think, and I mentioned this before, I think that the chaos of it all—when you can’t control things it creates a certain kind of person. And I think the same thing applies to my brother. We’re worker bees. We’re not in it for accolades. The recognition and all this is really lovely, but I’ve always been a worker bee. Like, I can pack a trunk up in two seconds. I’m not above any of it.

And I think my brother would agree. I think our success is largely attributed to the fact that we just work really hard and have put our heads down and worked at something for no other outcome than just the love of the thing. And we stuck with it.

Rachel Baker: Should we take a break from this podcast so I can assign all my kids a ton of chores?

Maggie Bullock: Samira, you realize that when Rachel says “all her kids,” it’s not hyperbolic. She has two old kids and she has two tiny kids. And so when she says “all,” and it sounds like she’s talking to a team, she’s talking to a team.

Rachel Baker: I have one vacuuming, one mopping…

Samira Nasr: See those leaves in your backyard?

Rachel Baker: Yeah.

Samira Nasr: There’s no such thing as a leaf blower. There’s a rake, and you’re going to rake them. I actually sat my son down the other night and I was like, “We have to talk about your chores.”

And he was like, “Yeah.” And we added a few to his list.

Maggie Bullock: Nice.

Rachel Baker: Wow. That’s cool.

Maggie Bullock: My son turned 10 today. And Rachel’s daughter turned 4.

“I’m a quiet person but I observe a lot, and I’m always looking at how people express themselves—what is the thing that they wear to protect themselves? And what do those choices say about us?”

Rachel Baker: When you were growing up—I feel like we’ve heard you talk about in the past working in retail as a teenager. Is that right?

Samira Nasr: Love it. If it all hits the fan, I’m going back to retail. I love it. In a heartbeat.

Rachel Baker: And then remind me where you went to college.

Samira Nasr: I went to Concordia University in Montréal.

Rachel Baker: Because I always think about how you got your master’s in journalism from NYU, and not everybody in your position considers themselves a journalist. But we think maybe you do. How do you think about all that?

Samira Nasr: I hold journalism in such high regard that I would not call myself a journalist. I have a deep respect and appreciation for journalism. And I care deeply about words. And so it was really important to me when this position was offered to me, one of the first things that I really wanted to do was bring words back to the page.

And I will say a lot of that has to do with working with you. Elle was very much a place where the assumption was that the reader is smart and that she cared about her place in the world. And that’s something that I carry with me and think about a lot.

Rachel Baker: You also read a lot.

Samira Nasr: I try to. Less and less, though. I read my Times and I read my Washington Post and I read The New Yorker. The last book I read was an advanced copy. I’ve read a few books that are coming out. But I try to read. I try.

Rachel Baker: Reading those few things you rattled off could be a full time job—The New Yorker, the Times, the Washington Post.

Samira Nasr: I never get through a whole New Yorker. I don’t know who does. But yeah, I read at least two or three things per issue, for sure.

Maggie Bullock: So did you go from NYU to magazines? Was that the trajectory?

Samira Nasr: Concordia, NYU, and then I was so broke. So broke. And I had a friend from Montréal who was living here, who was working in fashion—and I can’t remember if he was an assistant or an editor at that point—but he said, “You know, you can get a job assisting in fashion and you can make $150 a day.” And my mind was blown.

And he introduced me to a few people. And I got an internship at Mirabella. That’s the first thing I did. I graduated and I got an internship at Mirabella and worked under Jade Hobson there. And then when that kind of ran out, I started freelance assisting. But yeah, I interned at Mirabella under Jade Hobson and then she left to go work at New York and I went with her, as an intern, to New York magazine.

Rachel Baker: Wow, you were a hardcore intern—going from one publication to the other. I love it.

Samira Nasr: Yeah. I think there are three of us. It was me, Tracee Ellis Ross, and Beth, who now owns Kirna Zabete. Beth was her assistant, and Tracee and I were her interns.

Maggie Bullock: I think when you get interns that good, you take them with you to the next job. “You’re coming with me.” So how did you then get to Grace Coddington? What was the leap there?

Samira Nasr: So I was assisting Mary Alice Stevenson, who was working at Allure at the time, and she asked me to go pick something up from Vogue. And I went to pick something up from Vogue, and I got back, and I handed her the garment bag, and she looked at me and said, “What did you say to them?”

Actually, she’s a very nice woman. So she didn’t say it like that. She said, “What did you say to them?”

And I said, “I’m here to”—and I got really nervous—“I’m here to pick up the … for Mary Alice.”

And anyways, that led to being called back cause they had an assistant position open at Vogue. And she was a great reference. And I went back and I met with them and I got a job as a market assistant at Vogue. And I did that, I guess, for a year-and-a-half, maybe two years. And then Grace’s assistant at the time resigned and Grace offered me the job to be her assistant.

Rachel Baker: So Grace picked you out of all the assistants. That’s cool!

Samira Nasr: It’s literally one of the greatest things that’s ever happened to me, working for that woman. She’s a great boss. She taught me so much that I still carry with me and think about. But also just being in that environment where everyone cared about making this thing—and everyone cared deeply about making this thing the best that it could be.

Maggie Bullock: Yeah, that’s a great feeling.

Samira Nasr: It’s a great feeling. And it’s rare. And it was so unique. And there were all these legends at the time—you know, you don’t know you’re in the presence of legends—but to be around Candy Pratts Price, to be around Phyllis Posnick, and Grace Coddington. And to have them shooting with all the greats, and to have André Leon Talley sauntering through. Paul Cavaco.

It was a really incredible time and to see all these talented people—even just some of the writers that would walk through. I learned a great deal. I learned a great deal and I was exposed to a lot.

Maggie Bullock: So do you have a favorite Grace—like on set or some other story, anecdote—that you remember when people say, “Oh, you worked with Grace Coddington”?

Samira Nasr: There’s so many. It was also so wild. Like we would just go off, and I’d have all this cash in my Supreme fanny pack. Like, I’d just have $20,000 in my Supreme fanny pack.

Maggie Bullock: To do what with?

Samira Nasr: To just pay for things.

Rachel Baker: Like petty cash.

Samira Nasr: Petty cash. And there sometimes there’d be, like, jewels, because you’ve got to travel with the jewelry. We were everywhere. Grace is so curious about the world and loved to do those big, big narrative, epic shoots. So we were crisscrossing the globe. All over the place. And it was also a time in magazine making where if you could dream it, you could build it. And it was incredible to also be a part of that.

Maggie Bullock: Because Grace—she could come up with some literary reference or art world idea and she had both the mind and also the green light to go create that, right?

Samira Nasr: Correct. Correct. And also just—oh, there’d be the day for the model to tan, there’d be the two scout days. But to also see a photographer and an editor work together to craft those stories and to realize that they don’t—they don’t just happen. It’s not a coincidence. They are crafted and they are put together much like a great piece, right, great journalism. It takes time and research.

And to see how hard everyone worked at it. And get the best hair people, and the best makeup people, and have everyone come together and do this beautiful dance. And to create these images that I still see populated on mood boards—that’s pretty remarkable.

Maggie Bullock: And roughly what years were you working with Grace?

Samira Nasr: I think I was with Grace from 1996–99, ’97–99? Two terrible years. Because then I went on to work for Polly Mellen.

Maggie Bullock: Oh my gosh! All right, talk about that. I didn’t know that. I knew about Grace, I didn’t know about Polly.

Samira Nasr: I left Grace and I went to Allure to be a junior editor under Polly Mellen. I guess what happened was I understood what it took to be a great editor and I thought, I cannot do this.

I do not have these gifts. There’s no way I can do this. So I better think fast on my feet and I better find another career because there’s no way that I can do what those people are doing. I just had no confidence.

And so when this opportunity opened to be a junior market editor, I thought, Oh I could still be in fashion, I could still have my love of fashion and storytelling, but I could work with editors and help them find the things that they need to tell their stories.

Maggie Bullock: That is fascinating. I would never—that’s not how you are perceived from the outside. But I love the humbleness of that, and I can really relate to it. But it makes me want to ask how did you turn the corner to being a person who could do that? You’re the editor-in-chief of Harper’s Bazaar. Was there a turning point or just a gradual evolution—what was it?

Samira Nasr: Evolution. Definitely a gradual evolution. I’ve tried so many different roles and I think as I started as an intern and I worked as a market editor, I’ve worked as I edited a fashion section under Kate Betts at her Harper’s Bazaar. I’ve done so many things to try and find my place. And ultimately it brought me back to styling and wanting to take a leap of faith and try.

But I think knowing what it takes to do all these jobs has helped me a great deal in finding great people to work with—because I have an eye, I think, for great editors—but also I have tremendous respect for what they bring and what they can do. I know how hard it is. It’s so hard.

Maggie Bullock: But it goes back to that worker bee thing, right? Like you’re the kind of person who had to learn to do all the little jobs, and then the medium jobs, and then the big jobs in order to believe that you could, whereas there are plenty of people in fashion who are flying by the seat of their pants and have an innate self confidence—or something, chutzpah maybe—that allows them to skip a few of those steps.

Samira Nasr: Yes, ma’am. And I would add to that, the day that they called me at Hearst for this role, I was sure that I was in trouble for something. I didn’t even think that they were calling me for a position. I remember, I called one of my best friends, Michelle, and I said, “I just got this call and I’m not even going to call them back because I think they’re mad at me because when I left Elle ….”

Like I just had this whole scenario in my mind of I had done something wrong and they were calling me years later to be upset at something I had done. And it never occurred to me that maybe it was an opportunity. And he would say to me, “Yeah,” he was like, “You need to answer the call and you need to find out what this is about.”

And I said, “Okay.”

Rachel Baker: So this was 2020 or late 2019?

Samira Nasr: 2019. I think. No, 2020.

“If it all hits the fan, I’m going back to retail. I love it. In a heartbeat.”

Rachel Baker: So it was like peak pandemic. And so you called them back and then what? Now I’m really on the edge of my seat.

Samira Nasr: So it was a little before peak pandemic. And yeah, it was just a conversation with my then-boss, who is still a great friend. And she just told me about this, but I didn’t still didn’t believe it. I was like, “Oh, okay. Yeah, sure.”

And it was like, “Oh, could you do this project? Could you come meet this person?”

And I’d be like, “Okay, yeah, sure. Here I am. Here’s Samira. Here’s my project. Sure.”

And then it was like, “No, we’ll call you back.”

“Sure. You’ll call me back.” I was very happy working for Radhika at Vanity Fair. And in my mind, that was going to be my last job and I was going to go back to retail.

Maggie Bullock: Okay. What is the dream store that you would open?

Rachel Baker: What’s the biggest retail project that you can do when you retire in a zillion years?

Maggie Bullock: Yeah, what is this store? Because I’d like to shop there if I could afford it.

Samira Nasr: One of my best friends, Karen and I, are cooking up this idea of the place that we want to shop at, shop in. It’s a place for grown-ass women to just find something nice that can just meet our needs. And I don’t want 20 of everything. Just show me what the three—like, edit! It’s welcoming and practical.

Maggie Bullock: Okay we’re there. We’ll be in line. We’ll be with those people wrapped around the block.

Rachel Baker: Okay, so what was it like when you got the call, Samira—I’m obsessed with these calls—what was it like for the meeting or the call when they’re like, “It’s yours. The job is yours if you want it”?

Samira Nasr: Like total disbelief.

Rachel Baker: Who was it who said that to you?

Samira Nasr: Kate Lewis. I met with so many people and I thought, Oh, she’s calling me again. She’s lovely, but she’s calling me again to come meet somebody else. And then she was like, “No. You’re up.” But then it was peak pandemic. So then it was like, Oh, this is really not going to happen. Because we’re in it. And so I just had to wait.

And then I thought maybe it won’t happen because maybe just … we don’t know. I didn’t know how that was going to end. I’ve never been so terrified in my life. I think we all were. And so I thought, Maybe that’s going to go away. I don’t know. People change their minds all the time. Who knows?

So we loosely kept in touch and then in May or something, she called me and said, “We’re going to do this. And now we need to talk about how we’re going to announce it.” And all the things. And I could not believe it.

Maggie Bullock: Was there even any in person magazine happening at that point, or was it all being done remotely?

Samira Nasr: All remotely.

Maggie Bullock: So you met your team remotely.

Samira Nasr: I did not meet my team in person for the first year-and-a-half.

Rachel Baker: Wow! That’s hard to even imagine.

Maggie Bullock: Wow, that’s crazy! Okay, so under those circumstances, how do you rethink a magazine? It’s hard to rethink a magazine as it is. How did you do it under those circumstances?

Samira Nasr: So, you both know my amazing exec editor, Leah Chernikoff. She was the first person that I hired and she would come over and we decided we wanted to make a brand book. So we made a brand book: this is the value proposition, this is what we want to build, this is what we care about, and this—we focused only on print, we didn’t talk about anything else—this is the magazine that we want to make.

And we were all limited in terms of proximity, meeting by Zoom, and all of that. But we just did our best to build the thing. And it was almost like speed dating with the team here, like getting to know everyone on a zoom, 45-minute sessions meeting everyone, seeing how I could motivate people, seeing if there are people who are maybe miscast—because there’s so many amazing people here—how I could energize them or maybe put them in another role. Just thinking about that.

And then got to hire a few new people and we just started, you just have to start. It’s like packing, when you're packing up an apartment to move, and you get really overwhelmed with the whole thing. I always have my mother’s voice in my head because she always says, “Just see one thing and put it in a box. See one thing, put it in a box. Don’t worry about all of it. Just do the next indicated thing. The first thing, just wrap it and put it in a box.” And so we just chipped away at it.

Rachel Baker: I keep imagining you in your apartment assembling this team of superheroes during COVID—

Samira Nasr: —while homeschooling—

Maggie Bullock: —with a kid at home.

Samira Nasr: It was great. Yeah.

Rachel Baker: You mentioned the values—what were those values that you really zeroed in on? You were talking about your store earlier and you said the word ‘welcoming,’ which is one that I suspect is on the list.

Samira Nasr: I didn’t want a velvet rope around Harper’s Bazaar. I didn’t want it to feel like this—it’s a luxury proposition, right? We celebrate luxury fashion, but everyone is invited. And by everyone, I don’t only mean in terms of audience. I also mean in terms of collaborator and contributor. It was really important to me to have a roster of contributors and the voices who get to build this thing be as beautiful, and diverse, and robust, and interesting, and colorful as the people that I see when I walk down the street. It should feel that big.

I really wanted to make something that felt smart. When I thought about Harper’s Bazaar and what it was when it was first created, it was a place for women, specifically, to turn to, to seek out advice on the latest things to buy. But our women’s lives were so small back then. And so that was the thing that they—that was what they had freedom to talk about. But our lives have grown exponentially. And so shouldn’t the things that we talk about and address be as broad and as big.

And I’ve always felt, and this is something that Leah and I talked a lot about at the beginning, that expressing an interest or obsessing over something like the latest shoe or the latest amazing bag—that really only illustrates an intellectual curiosity. And if you’re curious about fashion and if you’re curious about beautiful things, then you’re probably curious about other things in the world. And you’re probably curious about your place in it. I wanted to speak to those women. And those people.

Maggie Bullock: So first of all, excellent, great. We were thinking a lot about how—nothing is a binary anymore and we know this—but there has always been the Vogue and the Harper’s Bazaar of the universe. And so we were reading—I don’t know if you’ve read it yet, it’s great—Nancy McDonnell Smith’s book, Empresses of Seventh Avenue. It gets into the history of this rivalry between Vogue and Bazaar, the kind of stories that are like catnip to us, which is, like, Carmel Snow versus Edna Woolman Chase—it’s just delicious. But I wondered today what is Vogue versus Harper’s Bazaar—what’s the essential difference between those publications? Do you still go at things like, “I want exclusive on this!” “I want exclusive on that.” Is that in the past now? Tell us about that.

Samira Nasr: I don’t really think about exclusives like that. Of course, we want to bring that to our audience first and we want to be the first one there. But in terms of collaborators and saying, “You can only shoot for us.” Or, “You can only….” You can’t own people.

I don’t think about this rivalry between Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. I think right now, especially in our industry, we are stronger together. We need each other. And I just think about—if we’re talking just about magazines—I think about the magazine that I want to read. When I look at what’s out there, I think about the values that I associate with Harper’s Bazaar. And I think about myself, and who I am, and what I bring to it, and the magazine that I want to read. And maybe I should be thinking about more.

And I also have a great, deep trust for the people that I work with. It’s not like me in a bubble kind of just sending out memos of, “Go do this.” This is very much—Harper’s Bazaar is the result of everyone’s efforts. I’m the editor-in-chief and it’s a great honor to have this title, but I get to bask in their light and they are very smart and capable and really fucking—excuse me—talented writers and just the whole team, all of them.

Like Kaitlyn Greenidge just wrote an essay a few days ago and Leah sent it to me. And I’m like, I can’t believe that someone—it still blows my mind—that someone can just sit down and be like do-do-do, and just craft this. And then hit, “Boop. Send.” And I just, I like ran down the hall, “Is she here? I have to—I want to Koala bear her.” So it’s not just mine. It’s ours.

“It was a time in magazine making where if you could dream it, you could build it. And it was incredible to also be a part of that.”

Maggie Bullock: Every writer would like to work for an editor-in-chief—

Rachel Baker: Work for you!

Maggie Bullock: —who feels that way about the words. Really. Honestly. So what you said, though, just made me think about how—you’re extolling the virtues of your team and we really appreciate that—but at the same time you also reminded me that a magazine is a reflection of its editor-in-chief. Like this individual woman, or a man. And it’s an extension of you in a way.

Samira Nasr: I hope so. Because I’m really proud of what we do every month and I hope it is, in some way, an extension of me. It certainly reflects a lot of my values.

Rachel Baker: Samira, what do you think of as your biggest wins? You’ve been in the job for four years now, what stories do you think of as really emblematic of the Samira era, and that would not have happened under another editor-in-chief?

Samira Nasr: Okay. Some of the things I’m most proud of—I’m proud of a lot. Aside from the people that I get to work with, I would say the studio museum portfolio that we did early on. I’m really proud of that. We also did a great story on black playwrights that Imani Perry wrote. I’m really deeply proud of that. But there are things like putting Patti Smith on a cover and having Chloe—I don’t know if you read that.

Rachel Baker: Every word of it.

Samira Nasr: Yeah. How great was that?

Rachel Baker: Amazing.

Samira Nasr: Also doing the story we did with Martha [Stewart] or putting Carol Burnett on a digital cover. These are all things that I’m really proud of. And I would say that the cover that we are going to release on Monday is another really big one for me.

Maggie Bullock: So Samira, you talked about the days when your fanny pack—as we’re going to call it—was full of $20,000 in petty cash. And, as more recent Hearst employees, we can verify that this is not that time. This is a different time.

Samira Nasr: Different time.

Maggie Bullock: So how do you make it work? Because a magazine like yours, it still has to look rich and impeccable. How do you make as much with less these days?

Samira Nasr: I don’t know, Maggie. It’s so hard. It’s so hard. It’s literally what I spend most of my time on. Yeah, it’s what I spend most of my time thinking about. And I have a brilliant exec managing editor, Karen Prime—shout out Karen Prime—who is really … we fight for everything. But I also believe that sometimes fewer resources brings out more creativity. And you just get scrappier. And we’re still here and we’re scrappier.

And we don’t have idling town cars, but who cares? That’s not the thing that makes great ideas, and that’s not the thing that makes great stories or beautiful work. That’s just all the fluff. That’s not the core of it. We still have enough to do great work. And as long as we do, we will.

Rachel Baker: In so many ways you are like the thoroughly modern editor-in-chief. And part of that is that you’re an extremely hands-on mother. Like we just heard about you assembling your super squad while homeschooling. How do you pull that off? Do you have boundaries? How do you do this?

Samira Nasr: I don’t know. How do you do it? How do you do it? Every day I wake up—and I have a really solid gratitude practice. And I think, every day, like, Thank you, but, how can I be a little bit better at this?

I try to set hard boundaries. Like right now, homework is a big one. And so I only go out two nights a week. It’s a hard boundary. That’s it. Otherwise I’ve got to be home for homework. Wow. Wow. Wow.

Maggie Bullock: And chores, as we’ve established.

Samira Nasr: Chores, yeah. Yeah, he was like, “Ugh.”

Maggie Bullock: It’s hard, Samira. That’s no joke to say in your job that you can only go out—you’re saying it can be done if you only go out two nights a week. That’s the rules and you’re doing it.

Samira Nasr: So far, so good. That’s where I am. Like tonight I have four things to go to, but I will be home by eight o’clock so I can at least do his reading assignment. And I’m out two nights a week, and that means that sometimes I don’t get to see my friends. But right now I have to prioritize—and making sure I’m home for homework is top of the list right now, ladies. And then I also have to make sure that my work is done here.

Rachel Baker: Wow. We were over the moon when you came to Maggie’s book party, but now that I know you only go out two nights a week, I can hardly believe it. Samira, thank you again. I

Maggie Bullock: I might cry. Samira, what’s your dream? What’s your white whale? What do you want to get done at Harper’s Bazaar that you haven’t been able to yet? Or you just haven’t gotten there yet? Do you have a vision of something like that?

Samira Nasr: Yeah, but there’s so many. It’s always the next thing. Like I’m always like, “This is great, but what about this?” And I also want to find a way to bridge what we do in print more to what we do on site. And I think we’ve been really good at that, but I want to be even better at it. And just dream bigger and take bigger swings. I think that we’re consistently rewarded when we double-down on the things that we’re good at, like fashion, and beautiful imagery, and great storytelling. I want to take bigger swings.

And the other thing is I’m not scared of failure at all. Like, I don’t care if something bombs and I keep telling this to my team, “I actually don’t care if it fails. I’d rather we try and then we’ll look at the mess, and then we can be like, ‘Oh, that really sucked. And that’s horrible.’”

But in a month, we put it out and then we get a new issue. And there are learnings from that. And then when we take another swing, we won’t, maybe, make those same mistakes. I just don’t think there’s any growth or evolution if you can’t make a mistake. Or you can’t try. And so, yeah: big, bigger.

Maggie Bullock: Okay. This idea that you could fail, you’re not afraid of failure. I was wondering how—this came up in our conversation with Will Welch—how much the newsstand even matters anymore. Like in my era and Rachel’s era, I spent an ungodly amount of time writing coverlines that then went out and got tested. He laughed at me when I brought this up. So I was like, “I knew it had changed.” But I didn’t. So, what role does selling a magazine on a newsstand play in your idea of success, or even your process?

Rachel Baker: And how do you measure success, if that’s not it?

Samira Nasr: I don’t look at my role here as just editing a magazine. I think we’re a brand and we do a magazine and it’s the maximum expression of what we do. And we spend a lot of time and put a lot of care into it. But there are all these other channels and ways that we communicate with our audience. And I have to think about the whole. And success is not just the print, it’s the whole.

And success in the magazine—obviously ad pages matter, right—I want people in our industry to believe in what we’re doing so that they want to partner with us and want to support us. I want our audience to love what we’re doing so that they pick it up. So yes, I would be devastated if I found out that No one bought it.

But to your point, Maggie, I don’t have to test cover lines anymore. We don’t have to do that anymore because there are all of these other platforms that we can communicate on. And so it has, in a way, for better or for worse, taken pressure off of print meaning that much in the entire equation.

“The day that Hearst called me for this role, I was sure that I was in trouble for something.”

Maggie Bullock: It seems to me that it must make it easier to make a smarter-looking cover that more reflects the actual magazine. Because for sure we were trying to capture as many people walking by a newsstand as possible, whether those were our natural readers or not. And the coverlines really downgraded the product.

Rachel Baker: I’m thinking of some really bad ones you wrote.

Maggie Bullock: Real bad. Real, real bad.

Samira Nasr: I love to look at old coverlines because, like, we still work on coverlines. And I never participated in those conversations, so I really enjoy them now. But the thing that, for better or worse, is that there are no more newsstands, right? We’ve lost that market, that ability, that sort of recognition.

When you were doing it for Elle, there were newsstands. And so people would see—there would be an imprint of that logo in people’s minds and it meant something. And so then they would lean in to read the coverlines. You were competing with other magazines, but at least there was like this imprint. And so now we’re having to really think about how we are leaving an imprint in people’s minds without having newsstands, because now they’re subscribing or they care so much about the thing that they’re going to seek us out.

Maggie Bullock: Yeah.

Samira Nasr: And so it makes you have to think about it a little differently.

Rachel Baker: Okay. Speaking of big swings and successes and failures, can we talk about jeans for a minute?

Samira Nasr: Yes.

Rachel Baker: So Samira, the world over, you are the person who always has just the right silhouette months in advance. What should we be buying?

Maggie Bullock: Yeah, where are we with this?

Samira Nasr: So I would say right now, I think you need to have a straight leg. Do you have a straight leg? Do you have a good straight leg? But the other good news is right now it’s all about the individual. So it’s not singular anymore. It’s not, “Oh, you need this thing. This is the thing to have now.” This moment is about—bring back your gold. Where’s your gold, Rachel?

Rachel Baker: I totally believe you, Samira. I’m also curious—what jeans are you wearing right now?

Samira Nasr: I’m wearing black jeans. I’m wearing a very wide-legged—I’m away from the thing, Pat’s gonna get mad at me. I’m wearing a very wide-legged black Phoebe Philo jean.

Maggie Bullock: Oh. Oh, there we go folks.

Rachel Baker: Now we know.

Maggie Bullock: Editor-in-chief speaking! That is some editor-in-chief denim right there!

Samira Nasr: But I still, you know I still rock all my old vintage ones that I probably wore when we worked together.

Rachel Baker: Good to know you’ve changed. And you haven’t.

Samira Nasr: Still wearing a t-shirt.

Maggie Bullock: That’s amazing.

Rachel Baker: This is so much fun!

Maggie Bullock: This is really fun.

Samira Nasr: Thanks for having me. Thank you!

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