(2 of 2)
Designers who fall out with Women's Wear soon find themselves being sniped at by the paper or banned from its pages. Norman Norell, currently involved in a feud with Fairchild, had his fall collection overlooked by Women's Wear. Designer Mollie Parnis is completely ignored because she failed to give Women's Wear an exclusive on Lady Bird Johnson's wardrobe. "Fairchild borders on genius," she says, "if he were not so petty."
Oddly enough, for a man immersed in the fashion world, Fairchild tries to have as little to do with it as possible. Calling himself a square, he shuns the parties his paper enthusiastically covers and spends evenings at home with his wife Jill and their four children. In his spare time, he has written a recently published novel, The Moonflower Couple, which dwells a lot on clothes while disdaining the fashionable people who wear them. His main ambition is to reach more readers. He takes satisfaction in the fact that twelve large U.S. dailies syndicate material from Women's Wear. Once all his publications are in the black, he hopes to start a general news daily for women, who, he says, "exercise far more control over the world than is usually realized."