Daily Front Row

2008 May 14

EXCLUSIVE! Nina Garcia: In at Marie Claire

Comments | | Print

Nina Garcia
View Gallery

(NEW YORK) While both Hachette Filipacchi and Hearst remain mum on the fate of Nina Garcia, Fashion Week Daily has confirmed exclusively with a source involved in the negotiations that the former Elle fashion director has accepted an offer from Marie Claire and will join the title as fashion director on September 2. This confirms the initial reports by Fashion Week Daily on May 8 that Garcia was joining Marie Claire editor-in-chief Joanna Cole’s senior staff.

Garcia will replace Tracy Taylor, who has left the magazine. Garcia will attend the upcoming round of fashion weeks with the Marie Claire team. An official announcement on Garcia’s hire could come as soon as the end of the week.

“Joanna is very strategic and now has her senior staff in place,” the inside source said. “It’s the last in a series of high profile hires Joanna is making.” In August 2006, Coles tapped Lucy Kaylin, the former features editor at GQ, to replace Patrice Adcroft as executive editor; May 2007 brought Suzanne Sykes from Britain’s weekly Grazia as creative director, replacing Paul Martinez; in September, Abigail Pesta was tapped as deputy editor overseeing financial coverage as well as major features (she had been articles editor at Glamour); and most recently in March, Leah Goldman, a former senior editor at Forbes, joined as features editor.

An executive familiar with the business side of Marie Claire said that the magazine’s French partners are “extremely pleased with the transformation Joanna has done in the U.S.” In fact, a quick comparison of numbers between Garcia’s former and future titles show that Marie Claire outsold Elle in both September 2007 and March 2008. According to figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulations' Rapid Report, Marie Claire's Sept. 2007 issue with Ashley Olsen on the cover sold 476,849 copies on newsstand versus Elle’s 413,000 with covergirl Lindsay Lohan, while, according to industry estimates, Marie Claire’s March 2008 issue with covergirl Jessica Alba sold approximately 340,000 copies versus Elle’s 305,000 with Amy Adams on the cover.

As for the rumors that Marie Claire will replace Elle as a partner on Project Runway, they remain hearsay. “There has been no update,” a spokesman for The Weinstein Company confirmed. At this point, Elle is confirmed for season five of Project Runway with season six undecided. “Negotiations are just starting, if even that,” said a source. Garcia’s hire at Marie Claire is “completely separate from Marie Claire’s possible interest in Project Runway,” the source added.