Kate Betts

Katherine Hadley Betts (born March 8, 1964) is an American fashion journalist.

Currently she is a contributing editor at Time and The Daily Beast, among other freelance writing positions, and reporting on fashion for CNN.

She lives in New York with her family.

She began her career at Fairchild Publications' European office in Paris.

She attended Princeton University, where she wrote for The Daily Princetonian and graduated with an A.B. in history in 1986 after completing an 127-page-long senior thesis titled "Beauty in the Streets: The Impact of Student-Worker Action on French Political Consciousness in the Events of May, 1968."

After graduating, she went to work in France as a freelance journalist for Metropolitan Home, European Travel & Life and the International Herald Tribune.

An article she wrote for one of these publications about boar hunting in Brittany caught the attention of publishing mogul John Fairchild.

He hired her as a features writer for Fairchild Publications' Paris bureau, overseeing fashion coverage for Women's Wear Daily, W and M magazines.

She has recalled this period of her career as essential to her development as a fashion journalist.

"I was a reporter. I was reporting on the lingerie business and perfume launches — what everybody at Women's Wear Daily has to start off with. That's where you learn about the industry; that's the baptism by fire. You learn about fabrics, you have to cover Premiere Vision, which is the big fabric fair in Paris, and you have to figure out who the perfume nose is at Christian Dior and the difference between the fragrances. You have to learn a lot about the people and processes of each industry within the fashion industry. And that's the best way to learn about fashion."

She wrote stories about the Sénanque Abbey's lavender fields, interviewed Jeane Kirkpatrick and penetrated closed fashion shows.

In that capacity she also helped to launch W Europe.

After two years, she became the bureau chief.

During the 1990s, she became a senior editor at American Vogue, where she was considered the likely successor to Anna Wintour as editor-in-chief.

She later became the editor of Harper's Bazaar instead, one of the youngest editors of a fashion magazine ever, for two years.

In the late 1990s, disagreements between the two over the magazine's direction became more entrenched.

Betts felt the magazine was losing its focus on fashion, while Wintour thought the popular culture angles Betts wanted were beneath Vogue ' s readers.

"I think Anna views her ideal reader as an Anne Bass type," said a Vogue staffer later.

"She thinks the Vogue reader doesn't give a shit about hip hop".

Wintour began pairing Betts with other, more junior Vogue editors, whose journalistic credentials Betts had found lacking in comparison to her own.

She especially disliked Plum Sykes, whom she reportedly described as "a pretentious airhead".

Eventually, her discontent with the magazine's direction became known outside it, and Condé Nast offered her the editorship of Details.

She turned it down and quietly began to look outside the company.

The following year, 1991, she left Fairchild and Paris for New York and Condé Nast, where she took over as fashion news director at Vogue.

After a difficult initial adjustment, she beefed up the magazine's news coverage.

In 1995, she created its Index section, an aggregate of beauty, health and style briefs that soon became one of the magazine's most popular sections.

"Kate felt you should be able to tear out pages and have information you really need," said Vogue ' s arts editor Michael Boodro.

This earned her the favor of the magazine's editor-in-chief, Anna Wintour.

She was the only person willing to publicly disagree with "Nuclear Wintour" around the offices, further impressing her boss.

In time, Betts came to be seen as the likely successor to Wintour whenever she decided to step down from one of fashion's most prestigious posts.

In 1999, Hearst offered her the chance to take over Harper's Bazaar, filling the vacancy left by Liz Tilberis, another former likely successor to Wintour, who had died earlier that year of ovarian cancer.

Company president Cathie Black was impressed with her demo issue.

After first denying to Wintour reports that she had accepted the position, she came in shortly after starting maternity leave and told her boss the truth, then left, after reportedly declining the company's last offer, the editorship of since-defunct Mademoiselle.

Betts complained to the New York Times that Wintour hadn't even sent her a baby gift, but Wintour later wrote an editor's letter bidding her farewell and wishing her success.

Three days after starting at Bazaar, she gave birth to her first child.

Her transition, as the youngest editor ever at America's oldest fashion magazine, was rough.

Page Six reported that she had demanded that her nanny and child be allowed to accompany her on the Concorde to Paris for the shows there.

In 2011, her book Everyday Icon: Michelle Obama and the Power of Style was published by Clarkson Potter.

Betts was born and raised in New York City.

Her father, Hobart Betts, was a prominent architect; her mother Glynne was a photographer and socialite.