STYLE & SENSE

	We were thinking that none of the women’s magazines had anything to say to us. We were thinking that if we saw one more So-Like-Paris Hilton-Janet Jackson-Ab-Fab-Totally-Bared Midriff—in the office, no less—we’d scream. (We were also thinking that if one more person suggested that at our age it’s no wonder we have that reaction, we’d scream even more loudly—and perhaps rend our full-coverage garments.) We were thinking that even if our doctors are younger than we are, they still act like our fathers. We were thinking that it’s too bad that almost no one publishes short stories any more. We were thinking that sexy, smart, funny and over forty were not mutually exclusive. We were thinking that we didn’t really need another magazine telling us how to live our best lives—we’re grown-ups. But we were wishing someone would cut through the clutter and edit them a little. Online and off. So here it is. Style & Sense. Our thoroughly researched, tightly focussed, and (of course) fiercely opinionated take on fashion, home, work, life. Health information you can trust. A lot of ideas. A little fiction. And this is just the beginning. We’ll have major updates five times a year around the fashion calendar (fall, winter, holiday, spring, summer). But we’ll also be adding new material all the time. So stick with us. We won’t tell you what you’re supposed to think, but we look forward to hearing what you think.
	Editorial Director Nancy Axelrad Comer grew up in Pittsburgh, a painter and artist. Her mother made her get a teaching degree (the old something to fall back on bit), but Nancy skipped out on the lot and headed to New York where she’d always wanted to work on a magazine. Her secretarial debut in Seventeen’s art department was inauspicious, but she then moved on to become career and medical editor and writer at Mademoiselle, where she also took pictures for her stories because it was cheaper for the art department than hiring a photographer. This made her mother very happy Nancy was the founding managing editor and health director of Mirabella; executive editor of gloss.com; editor-in-chief of YM; and a senior editor at Self. Her articles on money, beauty, fashion, lifestyles, careers, children, medicine and health have been published in Vogue, the New York Daily News and special sections of The New York Times. She likes start-ups.
	Creative Director Heidi Godoff’s first job after graduating from the Fashion Institute of Technology and Hunter College (majors: fashion buying and English lit) was as a production assistant in TV and film. She then became fashion production manager of New York Woman magazine, quickly rising to fashion editor (it was a small department). After a short time-out when her oldest son was born, Heidi began working for Barneys New York as buyer for the young European designer collections, attending shows in Paris, London and Milan. As part of the Barneys team, Heidi was influential in bringing many European designers to the states for the first time, including Dolce & Gabbana, Dries Van Noten and Moschino. Returning to magazines, her true love, she became a senior fashion editor at Mirabella magazine, where she covered American designers, working with Isaac Mizrahi (who named his “Heidi” bag after her), Michael Kors, Ralph Lauren and then unknown Richard Tyler. Another break to give birth to twins, and Heidi founded Twist Productions, a boutique agency producing special events and promotional campaigns for Ralph Lauren Fragrances, Helena Rubinstein and LVMH. Now that her twins have gone on to terrorizing their kindergarten teachers, Heidi is again giving birth, she says, to another late-life baby, Style & Sense.
	Advisory Board
	Karen Anderegg grew up in the Midwest and got her BA from Stanford, then headed East to the Big Apple where she lived and worked for the next 30 years—at Vogue magazine (associate editor), Mademoiselle (managing editor) and Elle (editor-in-chief in its launch years), and then at Estée Lauder Corporation as president of Clinique. In 1993, eager for more balance in her life—and her husband was missing his home state of Oregon—the two migrated back West from Manhattan. She was ready for a change and couldn’t be happier with the one she got. Still doing board and consulting work in Portland (on the board of ODS insurance companies, EthicsPoint, and the Oregon Historical Society), Karen now enjoys Oregon’s beauty outdoors (biking, hiking) and in (yoga, book club and yes, shopping)—and exploring its abundant farmers markets, fabulous restaurants and excellent local wineries. (Since Karen spends some time in Palm Springs, she may dig up some goodies for us there, too.) As for Oregon’s eclectic, outdoor style, “I’ve pretty much traded Jil Sander for REI. And you understand the Birkenstock thing as soon as you step on your first slug.”
	Phyllis Greenberger is involved in sex-based research (no, it’s not what you think). Her mission, and that of the organization of which she’s president and CEO, the Society for Women’s Health Research, is to improve women’s health through research, education and advocacy. Founded in 1990, the Society brought to national attention the need to include women in major medical research studies. With her vast experience in women’s health and public policy issues, Phyllis is a well-respected advocate and earns widespread media coverage—from The Wall Street Journal and USA Today to The New York Times and The Washington Post. She is a regular panelist on PBS’ To the Contrary, has appeared on The Charlie Rose Show and frequently testifies before Congress. On numerous boards and committees, including WomenHeart, a national coalition for women with heart disease, and the Association of Black Cardiologists’ Center for Women’s Health, Phyllis has three sons. “They would be the first to tell you they haven’t been spared the benefits of my knowledge or advice.” she says.
	Beth Buccini and Sarah Easley go way back. Best friends since college at the University of Virginia, they studied together in Paris as undergrads. Ten whirlwind years later, they’ve roared through the New York fashion world to open the successful SoHo boutique, Kirna Zabête (extracted from their nicknames). They carry an eclectic mix of unusual and beautifully designed pieces with a European sensibility, but their stuff is definitely not for the faint of heart. Both women made a beeline to Manhattan immediately after graduation in 1993, Beth to work at Mirabella magazine as an assistant fashion editor, Sarah (hoping for a career that would send her back to her beloved France) to answer phones at Christian Dior’s corporate offices. Their keen eye for style and design blew them quickly onward. Beth moved to New York magazine as fashion editor for four years, producing runway reports and fashion stories, and acting as market director, stylist, bookings editor and fashion credits coordinator. Sarah, post-Dior, helped launch the Ines de la Fressange ready-to-wear line in the United States (which sent her to France twice a year), as manager/buyer for the collections in five Saks Fifth Avenue locations, then to a similar position with Christian Lacroix, Inc., buying five collections a year and managing boutiques in New York, Beverly Hills and Miami. After months of conspiring, in 1998 they launched Kirna Zabête, “the ultimate lifestyle store where we would love to shop.” Since then, Kirna Zabête and its owners have appeared in countless magazines and on local and national television shows. Just recently, they launched Kirna and Zabête fragrances, available worldwide, and in early 2005, Kirna and Zabête candles will brighten the scene. Beth and Sarah’s modern and playful sensibility appeals to the woman who knows who she is, no matter where she lives. And when the big international fashionista crowd comes to New York, they head straight for SoHo to check out what’s going on.
	Contributors
	Style & Sense’s art director Johan Vipper hails from Stockholm, where he founded one of Sweden’s hottest design agencies, with an international client roster that included Kosta Boda, Levi Strauss of Scandinavia and Virgin Records Scandinavia. He arrived in New York in 1990 and became art director at the Frankfurt Balkind agency for clients that included Time Warner, HBO, Paramount Pictures, HMV, and Quincy Jones. In 1994, Johan joined MTV as an art director and then in 1997 was hired by VIA in their New York office to head the creative team for The Limited, Victoria’s Secret, Fraser Papers and The New York Times. He went on to co-found Eight Communications, an agency specializing in design and marketing, in 2001. A talented photographer, his work has been exhibited in Sweden; Portland, Maine and New York. To view a sampling see http://homepage.mac.com/jvipper Johan rides his cherished Trek Bruiser bicycle to his studio in the very happening meatpacking district every day, where it’s only been stolen twice (and he’s been through four wheels and two saddles). He plans to switch to a Surly Steamroller in the spring. Maybe that will help.
	Photographer John Paul Endress had a New York studio for many years, but felt he needed a change and moved to New Jersey. He’s shot “everything in the world: a lot of cars, a lot of food, a lot of celebrities, a lot of special effects,” (and a lot of our products) and won a lot of art director awards. After retiring for three weeks, he’s back full throttle. But no photograph of him. Typical.
	What’s distinctive about illustrator and painter Tina Berning’s style is that she has so many. “Each job requires its own language of illustration,” she says. “You can’t do a car ad the way you do a social essay on teenage mothers, despite what they tell you in art school (‘You have to have your own one style….’).” And clients (now ranging from BMW to Procter & Gamble, Nokia and Nylon) never really know what they’ll get when they order an illustration. Tina’s work for advertising and print journalism has won several awards, including a Clio in 2004. After studying graphic design in Nuremberg, Germany, she now lives in Berlin, “the coolest big city I know.” With four friends, she’s invented the online bilderklub (picture club), where each of them must add a picture, five days a week, and which gives them an impetus to produce “a lot of nice work without the demands of jobs.” You can see it at http://www.bilderklub.de
	Ray here, Tracy Young's Cornish Rex, is looking for a good book—or a collector’s issue of Mirabella. Tracy, who had a lot to do with adding a certain je ne sais quois to this magazine, has worked for just about every major publication in New York City, for more years than she cares to remember. At every one she has managed to showcase one of her cats, so it’s only by sheer luck that we have kept them out of this issue. Well, except for the photo.
	An Army brat, Catherine Calvert worked in New York City as an editor and writer after winning a Mademoiselle magazine guest editorship smack out of college. She became a staff writer at Mademoiselle, then worked at Town & Country and Victoria magazines, and the New York Daily News, and co-wrote the start-up of Martha Stewart Living before moving to Europe in 1994. She’s written nine books (a few: Having Tea; The Romance of British Colonial Style; The Heart of England; The Heart of France; Williamsburg: Decorating With Style, all by Clarkson Potter) and, from London, where she lives with her Scottish husband and three almost grown-up children, freelances for a variety of British and American magazines. “The best part of living in Europe: traveling, and perspective. The worst: when children fly away, they really fly far.”
	Our fact-checker/proofreader/editor Julienne Marshall has always inhabited the worlds of music, theater and publishing. She’s performed on and off-Broadway, broadcast on BBC Radio, and fronted a rock band. She’s been a contributing writer for travel books; and written an article for the American Planning Association deemed one of the last 25 years’ most outstanding; reported for Gannett newspapers; toiled in the research room at Condé Nast Traveler magazine and fact-checked special sections for The New York Times for many years. Although she is now firmly embedded in the suburban culture wars with her son and British husband, it is her fondest wish, after multiple readings at the Actors Studio, to see the play she has co-written about Kurt Weill and Lotte Lenya produced.
	Susan O’Doherty (Horse with No Name) is a writer, parent and psychologist whose work has been featured in Eureka Literary Magazine, Apalachee Review, Poetry Magazine Online, on Pacifica Radio’s Peacewatch program, and in the award-winning documentary film Transforming Vicarious Trauma Through Art. New work has been accepted by Northwest Review, Soundings East, Bayou, Phoebe, and the forthcoming anthologies Familiar (The People’s Press) and It’s a Boy! (Seal Press). Her story “Passing” was recently selected as the New York story for Ballyhoo Stories’ “50 States” project. Her novel, Brooklyn Heights, is under consideration by several major publishers and she is holding her breath.
	Judith Hutchinson Clark wrote Over the Bridge as a loving tribute to her sister, who tends their mother in rural Pennsylvania. When asked for a bio, Judith said there wasn’t much—just three degrees from Sarah Lawrence College. When pressed, she’ll tell you she studied voice for 20 years and sang with the Blue Hill Troupe. She’s had two stories published in grad school magazines and thinks Style & Sense is her big breakthrough. There are 40 more stories waiting to go, she says, “if anybody’s interested.” Maybe her whole problem is she never adjusted to moving from Hawaii to the mainland (Port Washington, NY) and having to wear shoes.