Jean-Pierre Radley or “JP” as he is known to everybody, son of the late fashion designer Pauline Trigere, came up to us at the Citymeals-On-Wheels event Monday night to personally thank us for our editorial on the shabby treatment given his mother by John Fairchild and his publications. Of course there is more to this story than is publicly known, but we are already being threatened by one lawyer at the New York Times (see 5/7/2002 entry) and that is more than enough for now! Below is our item first posted on February 15th:(We have a Real player format video report from the event: Click to view 56K Video.
“Fairchild Publications (WWD) are such hypocrites when it comes to Pauline Trigere! They speak well of the dead, but least anybody forgets, for years and years WWD completely ignored Trigere. Such pettiness by publisher John Fairchild for some perceived slight extended to his editors refusing to attend any of Pauline’s shows and they would not even mention her name in their publications. Finally, around 1990, Pauline wrote and published an open letter in the New York Times addressed “Dear John” to Fairchild stating that all should be forgiven. What may have irritated Fairchild even more was Pauline’s outspoken support for fellow designer Geoffrey Beene who WWD had another ongoing feud with for years. So petty was WWD, if they had to mention Beene at all, they would not even use his real name. Imagine two of our greatest American designers being blacklisted because they would not kiss John Fairchild’s a*s. It was only in the last couple of years would WWD “bury the hatchet” with both Trigere & Beene. It may have finally became clear even to WWD (or maybe their new owner’s Conde Nast) that such blatant arrogance on their part was damaging their own publication’s creditability thus negatively effecting their almighty bottom line.”
