LadyGang - Lady Lessons: Career

Episode Date: July 30, 2020

Editor and Chief of InStyle magazine, Laura Brown, is here answering your questions about work, negotiations, getting ahead, boundaries during quarantine, resumes, interview tips, and more.   Special thanks to Vince Camuto for sponsoring this series. Use offer code LADY to receive 20% off your next purchase of $75 or more at vincecamuto.com.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Because we have your number. Well, what is this? Welcome to the Lady Gang. That's amazing. Say that again. The Lady Gang. Things are about to change around here. Each week we catch up with Hollywood's hottest girl posse, Kelty Knight, Becca Tobin, and Jack Vanek.

Hello, hello, hello everyone. Whoa, it's so weird. It's usually Becca doing that. Welcome to the Lady Gang and welcome to a very special episode of the show. This summer we've teamed up with Vince Camuto to present Lady Lessons, a five-part series here on Lady Gang. So after we wrote our book, we realized there were other topics in our lady life that we wanted to do a deeper dive into. The upcoming curriculum includes conversations about fertility, finances, race, career, and mental health.

The topics and questions you hear in this series will be community-sourced, and we can't wait to hear what you think. Without further ado, on behalf of Vince Camuto, we present this week's Lady Lesson. The Lady Gang. Our guest today is the editor-in-chief of InStyle magazine and former feature special projects and executive director of Harper's Bazaar. She graduated from Charles Stewart University, where she received her BA in arts and communications. Her media career began at a now defunct Australian magazine called Mode, where she was a production editor. So you have to start at the bottom and make it to the top.

At 21, she then moved to London for another two years, where she worked as a freelancer, including a correspondent for Harper's Bazaar Australia. Now, while freelancing in London, she paid her own way, this is the part of your story that I love, to Paris, where she snuck into fashion shows without credentials and took photos on a disposable camera. And upon her escape to Australia, she was employed, obviously, they're not idiots, by Harper's Bazaar Australia as a features editor. With $5,000 to her name, she moved to New York City. She joined Harper's Bazaar and stayed for 11 years.

we stan a loyal queen and then she moved on and became the editor-in-chief of in style and appears regularly on programs including good morning america today and her instagram which we all follow at laura brown 99 is not to be the best please welcome to the lady getting the inspiration the queen the head bitch in charge laura brown oh yes oh i was feeling a bit crap today but now that really helped. Can I just type that into like, when I'm like lying in bed, like on my face and you're, and you just go headbutt in charge and I go, yeah. And then maybe I'll get up. She will come. She will come wherever you are to do that. You know, yeah. Okay, great. I'll put my side. See you in 10 minutes.

So tell me this, you obviously are a self-starter. You obviously can see what you want and you go after it was that innate is that something you trained yourself to be um no i think it wasn't they uh that's so funny um when people look outside of you on you obviously that's what we do i think i one i grew up with on my own like i have a i have a half sister but i'm an only child and um with a single mom and i was particularly i was more born from like enthusiasm just wanting to be part of things and wanting to have experiences and wanting to be in industries that created and sort of drove the culture forward and also I think being Australian because you know back in the day when I was a kid there was breaking news no internet no none of this

stuff that we can we wrote with quills back then but none of this stuff that we take for granted so we didn't have access to the things that we have now so you became more hungry more um more curious more and you certainly certainly as a young Australian girl you mythologized so much um this industry now the industry of magazines or the industry of movies or the or art or whatever that that thing was happening that to me was happening up there you know what I mean up there and i was down down under but i was down down here and so it just sort of it became like oz and no pun intended because i was in oz but like and so i think that it's almost like a self-propelled engine rather than going like you know what i'm gonna do i never wrote anything down or anything

i just had to be part of things i had to see things with my own eyes because i felt like in australia i was getting the makers of washington um second hand and uh and just because we didn't have that you know that um access access so yeah I just I wouldn't say it was it was fun I think it's just in in my DNA honestly I don't think I ever really forced anything I mean obviously I got on planes and trains and automobiles and did all of that but I didn't go like aha step one at all right right right it gives me too much credit you have this job where that anyone in media and so many people who love world fashion uh writing and they look and they say when I grow up, I want to be Laura Brown. And so my question is, and then obviously the question we

get all the time, and this is one of the girls' questions, they said, how do you find a career you love and you actually want to spend time doing? And I'd love you to talk about, you can love something and absolutely hate it at the same time. You can. Yeah. Look, trust me, speaking to the mythology, you know, I mean, it's, it's, it's funny when I, when, if someone told me at 15 or 20 or 25 or 30, or even like that, I'd be the editor in chief of InStyle, my head would have popped off because it's this thing and you know but then as as any of us do and and um we work within an industry and industry has its behaviors and its patterns and it's and it's ploddingness and it's strife and everything else um it's just that ours has more of an external shine to it and

um and i think that you know and i appreciate i think the best thing about um the business i'm in is the access to people who are at the top of their game because of their ability not just i don't want to hang out with just famous people because it's not that it's like these are people that are top of their powers and and if they then trust me enough if i've come up with some mad idea and they say yes and then we go and make something we produce something together we make something that's the best part about this business shoes are lovely too i like a shoe but you know what I mean? I think it's all about making something and producing something. And I think something to show for yourself and being creative, that's what I find is the most edifying part of it

because it's a very, very, it's a challenge business. It's, you know, especially right now and, you know, and you have to be in it. I drive that magazine. It is very much me for better or for worse. It's my energy. It's a lot of my ideas as people I know. It's, you know, and I have to get something, if I didn't get something out of it too, um, I wouldn't be able to do it because it's very draining. It's very draining. You're, you're an editor. Um, you're a producer. You're also kind of like a host. I always say it's the, it's hosting. I look at it in style. It's so fun here. You know what I mean? And so it's, it's, it's not for the, not for the low energy, uh, folk and I do get a lot of sleep. I have to. Yeah. I think you've made some really amazing changes.

We were talking about it actually before you came on in the years that you've been at InStyle. And I remember, Becca, I don't know if it was this year or another one of the years that you had gone to the Golden Globes. Yeah. The Golden Globes party. And you were like, what makes it better than the Golden Globes is like everyone in the room is like top of their game, so inspiring, so amazing. And so how have you been able to kind of curate that group of people into the InStyle family? I think, I mean, for me, I have to, and again, having been in magazines, I've been in magazines since I was 19, so it's 26 years or something, you don't, I celebrate incredible people,

I don't suffer any fools either, and I'm certainly not interested in just girls that don't, aren't saying anything just because they have a lot of Instagram followers, or, you know, I mean, you'd be able to see very clearly by who's on our covers and who is not, and so I think when you get to that such when you get a bit older when you when you you learn uh that people have what people have to say and respect what they have to say and especially also I think in the environment right now I mean I got the job four months before Trump was elected so um that we couldn't ignore that and that has conditioned a lot of my of my mentality because it's like I will support and highlight good decent creative people who have something to say who are on the right side

of history and if a lot of the women that i work with use their their art but you know what they do um to to say something and they have they're more well-rounded than just showing up in a movie or or just um you know they're really more like broads you know i love a good broad like i love a lot of the women i've been really been working with are like a friend of lately are like 50s and 60s and i've seen some stuff and you know i really know themselves but i also like some of the young and you hang out with some of the young kids and but what brings them all together is they have a really really good sense of themselves uh they really have something to say um they don't they don't get their head turned very easily and and i can tell there's a there's

a groundedness in in the women that i choose to cover and also it's about the sum of the women in install it's not about one woman on one cover and whether she Instagrams at 200 million people i don't care it's about the type you know it's a sum of the parts so that's why i think hopefully more you guys could certainly detect some some changes because um we're really up front well I'm just not and if I I have a very rarely work I mean if I work with someone and it's not a great experience which is very rare now because I have met a lot of people and I am I'll just not do it again I don't care who they are um I just don't I don't have time and neither does my team and neither does the global environment frankly to indulge stuff when we really have much larger

fish to fry globally and especially in this country so you know it's it's sort of it's an easy it's it's the edit sort of came to me as well it's a natural decision you know who you're going to nothing is forced that we we decide to put in the magazine it all comes like we put dr fauci on a cover last week and that was you know a 79 79 year old infectious disease specialist you know um which was is now the most successful uh cover we've had ever online and was the right thing to do. Well, it seems like, I mean, you guys obviously are creating such an atmosphere that actually has a soul to it. And that's so refreshing, especially in the world that we live in where it is so many kind of beautiful women that are, that don't exactly have so much depth

to offer. So it's a really cool, um, I mean that influencer world, you know, as well. And I, I, I try, I don't really get into that either. And I also, I wish sometimes that because I'm in the industry, I mean, I wish I can smell bullshit. Um, um, and I always, sometimes I wish that a the people that glorify some things in the fashion industry could be in it for a minute just to go okay you realize that lady borrowed that dress and then she borrowed the other dress because they paid her money and then she facetuned her picture to the millionth degree and that's you know what i mean i wish a lot of some young girls i think that people are getting better at seeing stuff but i wish they could see sort of what what we can so um yeah i don't um there's so many other

other women too who are still they're still beautiful and glamorous and wear a nice dress and everything but I also think it comes from I think the fact that we have a community and I say like everybody's in so you could be an immigration lawyer you could be Lady Gaga you know what I mean but everybody's treated on on the same level and I also think it comes from a democratic place where I really respect these women but I don't envy any of them I don't doesn't come from like a because I know a lot of their deals and they have more money than us but they get their picture taken more and they have their privacy violated more than we ever would want so like i don't i've never come from this i i always say it's respect but not reverence and uh i feel like that kind

and i think that that makes them largely i think in my experience more more comfortable and more trusting of of us and the environment that we create so it's sort of been this sort of mutually like lovely thing it's like oh yeah breaking news we're all ladies oh wow all right off we go I have a new mantra. That's all you needed to say. That's all you needed to say. Let's rewind. You're listening to The Lady Gang.

I want to ask you a few Lady Gang fan questions about business. So one of them is, how do you answer the question in an interview, what are your flaws? What are my flaws? Like, so if someone comes to you, I mean, I'm sure they interviewed 15 times before they even get to the Zoom with you, if you're actually even hiring people or they have to work there for a hundred years before you move them up or whatever the thing is, but you're in an interview with someone and they,

the interviewer asks you, what are your flaws? What are you supposed to say? Like that on the psychopath? Like, I don't know what to say. I care too much. Yeah. I'm too organized. I'm just so amazing that people get irritated. I think that's sort of a strange question because I feel like you can't you come to an interview to represent your best self and and your and your DNA for it so I actually it's not a question I would ask because I was I was so funny I was writing a recommendation for a former employee of mine who's now my good friend for an MA writing program just this morning and I was talking about how she when she showed up for the interview it was and they're very nerve-wracking things but she was so self-possessed and I do think if you're

the right person for the job you can be nervous but there's something that transmits from you that you know this environment and you're meant to be there so I'm gonna if somebody's the right sort of person I'm not gonna ask that I'm gonna be like I can sort of tell I feel like it's a bit of a disingenuous question because yeah what are they gonna say I'm a psychopath oh there was that murder or whoops you know or or this sort of other bullshit thing of like well I'm super conscientious or god I can mail that excel spreadsheet like I think that if you have a natural conversation about the environment in which I work and which they want to work, I think that becomes apparent that you don't necessarily have to ask as much, you know, as scripted a question, because the

references for the environment and the affinity for the environment is already hopefully in the head of the person who's gotten far enough along that they're talking to me, you know? That question's a trick. It's a trick. It's a trap door. It's a death trap, I tell you. this is a really good one how to set boundaries at work during this working from home era without looking ungrateful ha that's funny you know what was making me laugh the amount of jokes been going around lately saying don't say that your work is a family because it's so true it's always like here in the like mckinsey family i hate that show that is and then they will fire you and they will be like your family no we're not we call your family you're fired um no i think

actually you know what's been interesting with us being working from home um we've been much more the team has been because we've lost all of the ritual of our business there's a you know we're not going to fashion shows we're not going to meetings we're going to random jewelry events we're not so it's sort of what i think we've all appreciated is the distillation of the work and i i've noticed myself and members of my team are actually doing better work even though they've got a toddler literally crawling on them or something while we're on that's kind of all right my friend is our executive editor's got a daughter called Alma and I'm like we Alma and I have a 12 30 every day Sarah gets on the meeting

and Alma gets on the meeting and she goes where am I going to be so I think that again if there's a respect and understanding that the work's going to get done um I don't care like we have a certain amount of meetings per day or whatever but I don't care if people need to take a minute and I said this oh my god it's probably the beginning in March when this was all just starting I was But if you are, this is a lot. If you are overwhelmed, if you need to take a minute, if you need to go and lie on your face, do it. Like I have enough, we as professionals calibrate ourselves well enough

that we know we're just finishing September issue today. Everybody's really going at it. You know, we can probably take a minute next week. We know well enough when we have to rise to it, when we have to talk to Dr. Fauci's office, when we can have a drink and have a happy hour together and have a tequila tasting on Zoom. like we there's enough of understanding and that's the team that I have and have pulled together

because we know that and anyone just goes look I've got it like my kid is screaming I need a minute great bye I know the work will get done um but yeah I do I that's it I do really appreciate people's faces in boxes on zoom not just an empty one because I find that with just a name I find that creepy yeah I like to see people even if but not them and if they have to go I can't do it or I'll go great see you later yeah but you know I miss their faces so I like to see faces just generally you know so you guys just finished the September issue just we're about to yeah and about like one story to go I think today and honestly it's so good you guys I'm not even being like I'm so proud of everyone I like to say um when something comes together really well I sort

of a joke with my team i go it looks like we planned it we sort of do but it looks like it came together looking like we didn't have issues like we've got this epic cover story it was sort of our first in-person shoot we've only got three in-person shoots like we're actual teams in the whole issue and one's in italy and two's in two in la um this great big sort of concept thing we did it just there's a couple of really strong political things dr fauci's in there um it's just really really solid and i i'm very um proud i've been very stubborn because we're the only magazine that's kept our frequency up through all of this other people have skipped condensed and we have done every goddamn issue we've been we've we're doing so it's like it's not been nothing and then

we dropped fauci in the middle of two issues so it's really we're tired but we're really really proud because we're journalists and we have to be awake and alive in this environment right now I don't understand this sort of skipping all right we'll just shoot some handbags and call it a day like we are in this we've never get it through COVID all the way through the BLM stuff and everything else and like I run a monthly title but I mean obviously I you know a dotted line to our digital and everything as well so I'm aware of what we do daily but this is my job and is my job to be able to try and steer this to be reactive as even with the frequency we do and i really think we've done it and it's out like august 5th or something wow i love you guys

um i do want to ask you about uh i love that i i love your confidence in this because you're like hey i worked hard and what came of that work is the bomb and that's really what we preach on lady gang is that right you know it's okay to feel like your stuff is great if it's great you know what i mean it took a minute it's like yeah and there's like the imposter syndrome and the work anxiety that we all go through can you speak to that have you ever dealt with that yeah i know i think it's for me again it's a sort of a cultural thing like um in australia we're generally self quite self-deprecating like oh i did all i think my dad you know no no it's very just like like that and then i i earned i learned this thing in the states quite honestly this sort of owning of

your shit you know and obviously a and the u.s vocabulary can sometimes be more hyperbolic or you know all that sort of stuff and i remember going like whoa this is maybe a bit full-on here like i'd meet americans when i first got here and be like my god i love your humor and i'd be like oh okay i would be like oh you're fine you know and i'd be like okay this is all you know i was trying to find my way um through that but i did learn that and i think it to say i did a good job because i had i had this sort of but the idea of like if you do a good bit of work it's brick you know what i mean and you do another good bit of work and it's another brick another good bit of work and then suddenly you have this kind of wall you've built of your own experience and of what

you've achieved and that gives you a solidity and that gives you what i like to say is the ownership of your work because you've done it and it gives you equity because you've done it and i feel like that you know you know i'm 46 i'm not you know 12 um but i i think that that has also given me confidence and if you can't say that i did this well uh after a number of years in an industry that you love um then that's that's a problem and maybe maybe you're forcing it but i do and now it's funny i've almost gone like one one ownership i'm really into i am it took me a while to go oh yeah thank you i did do that but now i'm like yes i did do that and i'm very proud of what myself and my team are doing right now but i but one thing that's been striking me lately

and i ask every woman i talk to um in an interview i ask two things i say what what are you ambitious for uh and it's because it's so funny it's such a loaded word which it shouldn't be and also what are you most proud of and I've had hugely successful actresses for example say sort of shudder at the term pride oh I don't want to say I'm proud of something there's too much ego in it and I'm like floored by that I'm like you have existed all this time you've done x y and z and you can't say and you shudder before because you think it's too much to say you're proud i i have no i have no time for that i don't have a lot of time for women reinforcing their own glass ceiling you know what i mean women talking about um like insulating it you know women saying oh

because of us it's it's like this or i shouldn't be proud because of this why you just thought you just thought folding yourself into an old narrative and then reminding everybody like i don't even like to talk about women's equality i like to presume it i know we don't have it in pay parity but I like to presume it. And, um, and so that is something that I think it's just gotten as I, as I've gotten older and I've done the work, but it, it's those little bricks and every single woman, however established you are, you have at least one brick, you know what I mean? And then you get more and more and more, and then you have your house. And then that gives you that, that ballast. And I think that that's given me the doing of the things has given me the

confidence. I didn't just shoot out going like, I'm great. I want to speak on the whole thing about the humility that women often like talk that talk down the things that they've accomplished and I it's so exciting that there's a group of women yourself and your team who are celebrating women being confident about themselves because I think there's something that women used to do where if we saw a woman who's really proud of herself like I think of Anne Hathaway at the Academy Awards and she says I did it I finally did it and then everybody was like tearing her down because it was so arrogant or whatever, presumptuous. So it's amazing that you're enabling these women to have those moments and celebrating them. And so people are scared to

be that person. But I think that, again, the women that we work with have that sort of core to them. And we have this badass women platform. And I say it's women that show up, speak up and get things done so it's just like they just do it so i do think that it is communicated in a more steady way i think that sometimes when sally field was like you like me you really like me yeah i think like i think if a woman has you know um solidity what is it what is it insecurity is quiet uh um what is it hang on security is quite kind there's a really great quite about insecurity is loud and confidence is quiet i think i've got to go my way around um but it's that's the key it doesn't have to be the woman going i did it right look at me you know

what i mean it is she knows she did it she knows she she did the work and she knows she won the award or she passed the legislation or she or whatever it is so i do feel like it's like a and when i work with it's almost like just like a low hum it's like a frequency level in the women that we work with but i don't work with anyone who sort of talks about that sort of glass ceiling stuff i do not i i loathe the term empowerment i think it presumes that women don't have any power i think it presumes like it's like oh paul let's empower laura like let's empower like we already have whether or not whatever degree we have of it we have it yeah and so i really can't when anybody says this is women's empowerment i'm like no no i can i can i can

talk about a woman's i don't know much of a woman's power sounds like a press release just be the woman do the work own it and do good stuff grow be proud get on with it like it's not that complicated i feel like that hyperbole kind of gets in the way but yeah i know no empowerment i mean sisters you're just walking the walk i love it walk in the walk laura brown thank you for being on lady gang you can follow her at laura brown 99 subscribe to in style get the september issue we love you so much for being here and we love your treasure pleasure treasure oh i like that i like that thanks give me some wine i'll come up with 10 more thank you so much chica thanks so much thank you thanks for listening and make sure to rate and

review this podcast wherever you go to your podcast we have new episodes of lady gang every tuesday and thursday follow us on social media at the lady gang uh follow us personally at kelty most importantly at becca and at jack vanek the lady gang network is produced by will sterling steve delamater kirsten woodward and elizabeth baquet thanks for rating and reviewing wherever you get your podcasts and tune in for new episodes every single week eating well shouldn't be complicated but somehow it turns into recipes prep cleanup and half your Sunday gone. Factor solves all that. These are fresh, ready-to-eat meals designed by dieticians, delivered to your door, and ready in just minutes. No prep, no cleanup, no excuses.

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