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ow did Tatler get such a great sense of humor? I profoundly believe that Tatler needs to be funny, or else what is the point? I don’t care if our writers are tackling eye shadow or bereavement— there can always be a funny angle. It’s our job to entertain. This is a glossy magazine! Did that levity exist before your arrival? It is in the brand’s DNA! Tatler was started 300 years ago as a very frisky gossip rag in the coffeehouses of London. It never purported to be terribly serious. So who’s your reader? Tatler has the richest reader of any magazine in the
“It’s our job to entertain. This is a glossy magazine!” United Kingdom. Therefore, we write about and feature unimaginable privilege and luxury. In this day and age you need to cover these things with such a lightness of touch, enthusiasm, funniness, and gratitude. Or else, it’s just too Marie Antoinette-ish for words. I sometimes feel that way about glossy magazines. Dresses that cost thousands of pounds? You’ve got to show those in a way that acknowledges to the reader that it’s beyond the dreams of most people that have ever lived on this planet. But by golly, isn’t it beautiful and inspiring! Is Tatler’s sense of humor particularly British? I don’t think so. There’s an international group of people who share many things—vacation destinations, the brand of shoes they buy, the type of cars they drive, and a sense of humor. The magazine should be profoundly British, though. Americans don’t need me to tell them what’s happening in New York. How closely do you cover British fashion? British designers are tremendously important to us if they’re producing clothes our readers would like to wear. We don’t slavishly promote designers just because they happen to be based in England. We do
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