Words that come to mind when thinking about Patrick McCarthy: brilliant, sharp, witty, naughty, dapper, private, mentor, and class act.
The legendary Chairman and Editorial Director of Fairchild Publications died on Sunday at the age of 67. McCarthy’s vision shaped WWD and W and, in the process, the entire fashion world. He had true presence – in the front rows of New York, Paris, and Milan, and in the newsroom he presided over. I worked in that newsroom and remember him arriving every morning in the perfect suit. My guess is Anderson & Sheppard. He always had a copy of the New York Times perfectly tucked under his arm. There was also his unique laughter we all heard across the newsroom. Some people who worked for him adapted the Patrick cackle, and some of us junior editors used to marvel at this form of influence.
McCarthy knew everyone and everything about fashion, and he was close to many designers, Karl Lagerfeld, Oscar de la Renta, and Calvin Klein among them. When he exited Fairchild in 2010, he left the industry for good.
In 1994, McCarthy received the Eugenia Sheppard Award for Fashion Journalism at the CFDA Fashion Awards. That year, Aileen Mehle, the late society columnist known as Suzy, penned a piece for our Awards Journal. In honor of McCarthy, we are republishing the full tribute here:
Women’s Wear Daily is the bible of the fashion world – and of course it is – and if W magazine is its gospel, then Patrick McCarthy is Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John all rolled into one.
“He is a superb and talented editor and a great writer,” says that Voice From On High, his discoverer and mentor, the one and only John Fairchild, who may be the most powerful force in fashion today and every day – but who knew? “Patrick’s not a star,” Fairchild goes on, “he’s a comet, a meteor.”
Before the comet began streaking across the sky however, he had to start a little closer to earth. Armed with a master’s degree in journalism and fresh from Stanford, he secured an interview with Women’s Wear Daily and landed a job in its Washington bureau. “I was a lowly reporter there for three years,” he says, though lowly is scarcely a word one associates with Patrick McCarthy.
Apparently sprung from servitude in the District of Columbia for good behavior or whatever, he was dispatched to England where he headed WWD’s London bureau for two years. It was there in 1979 that he wrote the fateful story that caught the eye of Fairchild and started our hero on paths of glory. An account of the character of characters, the forever beautiful Lady Diana Duff Cooper, it was done with such spit and polish, such verve and wit and cleverness that it made the cover of W, and caused J. Fairchild to inquire of one and all, who is this Patrick McCarthy and why isn’t he working for us in Paris?
So, naturally, John asked Patrick to fly over and meet him for lunch at the Plaza Athenee. And, naturally, Patrick flew over and stayed for five years as the bright and brilliant head of WWD’s bureau from 1980 to 1985.
It had to have been his talent that impressed the boss, that oracle of la mode, because it certainly wasn’t what Patrick ordered for lunch that day – or for every lunch thereafter – as Paris’ most elegant restaurants. According to John, Patrick fell into a grande cuisine rut. “All he ever had from that day forward was duck, duck, duck.” And, pour commencer and toujours, foie gras with haricots verts. When he could stand it no longer, Fairchild, ever the card and ever the gourmet, sent six live geese to Patrick’s office so he could have his foie gras on the spot – and on the hoof, so to speak. When the geese made a dreadful mess of the bureau (very quickly), they were hustled off to a Paris kindergarten where les enfants, obviously less fastidious, were thrilled to morceaux. John left town.
“What I always said and say to Patrick,” says Mr. Fairchild, “is get the story. Get the bacon – even if you have to make the ultimate sacrifice.”
Patrick not only gets the bacon, he brings it home. And, in 1985, he brought it home to New York where today, he is the irreverent stylish, sophisticated, very, very funny and very, very influential executive vice president and executive editor of Fairchild Publications, in charge of WWD and W, demonstrating daily and monthly that rare gift of knowing what works and what doesn’t.
He never thought he’d end up in fashion, but he loves it. “Every day,” he says, “I’m endlessly engrossed and fascinated by what we do.”
Yes. And on top of all that, as anyone who takes a good look can plainly see, he ought to be in pictures. As for the way he looks in swimming trunks – well.
