Top Fashion Editor Reveals Style Secrets

Those who braved the stormy night on Tuesday to go to Queen’s college were greeted by Stylist editor Lisa Smosarski, ready to reveal all about making it in the cut-throat world of editorial.

Top fashion journalist Lisa Smosarski

Following the trajectory of her career was a fascinating insight into the workings of the media industry – from the highs (working with a pre-discovery Natasha Kaplinsky and Sacha Baron Cohen during her first year in television) to the lows: doing research for Bliss magazine as a junior writer and often not being credited for it.

Fashion fanatics and media moguls with Lisa at the event.

Perhaps the greatest moment was when she described some of the dubious practices of teen magazine journalism when she was editor of Bliss.

She explained that, in order for her writers to understand their target market, she sent them back to school for a day to ‘shadow’ teenage girls. She admitted, it “‘now sounds a bit dodgy, but it was great market research”.

The floor was then opened up to questions from budding student journalists in the audience. She successfully fended off some probing questions about the morality of the fashion industry, arguing that Stylist is tailored towards celebrating ‘intelligent, urban women’ and that her team are proscriptive when it comes to diets and criticising other women.

Style students take note at Lisa’s lecture

What about the future of media? Smosarski was confident in the continued appetite for print: ‘it’s the intimacy of it, I think, that appeals.’

But what advice did she have to offer to Oxford students looking to get a foot on the industry ladder?

Smosarski admitted that ‘hard graft’ was the only way to get to her position. As an intern, she would stay until late at night helping out at the office, ‘my advice would be to make yourself indispensable’.