Michael Coady, former editor in chief of both WWD and W magazine, and chief executive officer of Fairchild Publications, died on Aug. 24.
He died peacefully of natural causes in his sleep at his home in Old Saybrook, Conn., according to his daughter Nicole.
For three decades, Coady was a spirited, knowledgeable and feared force in the fashion orbit, especially in the 1970s and 1980s, when Yves Saint Laurent, Calvin Klein, Karl Lagerfeld, Ralph Lauren, Marc Bohan, Gianfranco Ferre, Donna Karan and Perry Ellis were bursting onto the scene and blurring the lines between men’s and women’s styles. By his own account, “Never before or since has there been such a happening.”
By day, Coady went to see designers’ collections, and after business lunches at his designated table at the 21 Club and dinners, he whiled the night away with fashion types too. WWD’s former editor in chief Ed Nardoza described Coady as “something of a contradiction. He was exhilarating to work for…and terrifying. A quick Irish temper and a fierce intelligence that contained more mischief than even the larger-than-life fashion industry could handle. Whether it was literally hanging from a chandelier in PJ Clarke’s while egged on by George Steinbrenner, or riding a horse up to the front door of Le Cirque, ‘Michael stories’ were many, often outrageous, and often true.”
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Nardoza, who spent 39 years at Fairchild, said, “But he was a great newsman. Driven and creative, Michael was possessed by a competitive sense of urgency that caused generations of journalists to perform at their peak, or wilt away into less visible corners of the newsroom. I can remember many times having a blue index card sitting on my phone when I arrived at my desk in the morning. ‘Please see Mr. Coady’ was written on the card. Alarm bordering on panic shot through my nervous system. The end result, if we were scooped or put out a lackluster issue, would be a severe dressing down. Or, praised to the heights for our own scoop, or a particularly lively issue, or a great page one headline or chic photo. He was as quick and generous with praise as he was caustic with criticism. And when we’d done well, he made sure Mr. Fairchild knew what geniuses we all were.”
Nardoza added, “Bottom line: we were rarely scooped by anyone. And when we were, Michael’s rule was that we came back with a series of in-depth spreads the next day, turned on a dime, that would grab the story away from whatever outlet managed to scoop us.”
How Coady was plucked from Fairchild Publications’ Chicago bureau at the age of 31 to head up WWD is a tale in itself.
Born and raised in Millville, Mass., a tiny town of 3,000 residents outside of Worcester, Mass., Coady and his two siblings were raised by his aunt Betty Haggerty after the death of their mother, when he was just two years old. Their father worked as a fireman. Eager to get out of his hometown to explore the world, Coady set his sights on enlisting in the U.S. Air Force, but making the minimum weight requirement was a concern. “He was very, very skinny so he ate a crazy amount of bananas for instant weight, so that he would weigh enough to join the Air Force,” his daughter said.
After preliminary tests in the Air Force indicated that Coady had code-breaking skills, he was assigned to work in intelligence with top-level security clearance. While stationed in Okinawa, Japan, Coady helped to intercept codes that were detected by American spy planes over Russia. He also was tapped to run a military publication, which unearthed his talent for headline writing and layout design, and a real thirst for the news.
Once Coady returned to civilian life, he took a job at the Boston Herald in the 1960s. It was in Boston that he met his future wife Helen Mendosa at a Halloween party, despite the fact he was dressed like the fictional gangster-type “Bugsy Malone” character. By the late 1960s, the couple had wed and relocated to Chicago, where Coady wrote business stories for Electronic News and other Fairchild-owned publications. In 1970, when Fairchild Publications’ chairman and CEO John B. Fairchild summoned Coady to the New York office for an interview, he did not let a 103-degree fever derail that plan. Well-dressed in one of the beautifully tailored suits that he had had made in Okinawa, Coady and Fairchild immediately hit it off.
By his own admission, after being installed as WWD’s editor in chief, Coady “didn’t have a clue about what its fashion, high society and café society coverage was all about.” An early assignment was covering a black tie ball in Newport, R.I. After a waiter spilled a carafe of wine on Coady’s trousers and insisted that he remove them so that they could be quickly cleaned in the kitchen, he obliged. Then Jackie Kennedy’s mother Janet Auchincloss approached him for a dance. Coady explained in his memoir “Fashion Madness,” that “having had a fair bit of wine, pants less as I was, I accepted.”
The following day Fairchild asked Coady if he had danced with Kennedy’s mother without pants, and Coady said he had. Despite having received a call from Kennedy’s sister Lee Radziwill telling him that Coady should be fired, Fairchild looked at him for a minute and laughed as he walked away. Coady’s trial-by-fire education required grasping how the fashion industry melded into New York City’s social world and beyond. That led to lunch invitations from such notables as then-Israeli ambassador Benjamin Netanyahu, New York City’s former mayor Ed Koch, Canada’s ex-First Lady Margaret Trudeau, and beauty maven Estée Lauder among others, all of whom were looking for favorable coverage, according to Coady.
Although he once said he and Fairchild had a “pilot-co-pilot relationship,” Fairchild described it as “two mad monks stirring up a witches’ brew.” However humorous and at time mischievous that the pair could be, their influence in the 1970s and 1980s coincided with the ascent of designers becoming major celebrities transcending the fashion world. Under Fairchild, WWD didn’t pull any punches covering collections or in spotlighting fashion personalities. But Coady attributed the power of WWD and its sister publication at that time W magazine to the fact that John B. Fairchild knew how clothes should be made. Along with having impeccable taste, “he understood fabrics, cut and color. Designers feared him because they knew he knew,” Coady said.
He could hold his own too. Allen Questrom, the former CEO of JCPenney, Federated Department Stores, Barneys New York and Neiman Marcus, said of Coady, “He was very aggressive as a reporter and he did not give up easily on any story. I often saw him and his wife.”
Despite a subscription base of 100,000, WWD was reaching influential readers in fashion, retail and business. In “Fashion Madness,” Coady mentioned how WWD’s society set and celebrity-centric coverage that is called “The Eye” rippled through other publishing circles. WWD’s former publisher James Brady started Page Six at the New York Post. And Time Inc.’s former editor in chief Henry Grunwald told Coady years ago that The Eye had a lot to do with Time Inc. starting People magazine.
In a 1989 Spy magazine article by Graydon Carter, Coady faced his own close up and it was not flattering. He was dubbed “the meanest man on Seventh Avenue” for abusive behavior, his drinking habits, and WWD’s might in making or breaking a designer’s business with a review. Coady’s habit of secretly urinating in a wineglass was also referenced.
Carter said Thursday, “He never mentioned the Spy piece we did on him. But the last time I saw him he was breathing fire at me from across the runway at a Ralph Lauren show in the mid 1990s. I couldn’t really blame the poor fellow.”
Regarding the Spy article, Nicole Coady said, “The mean part was not true. He was honest. If he had something to say, he would say it. He did have issues with drinking. He did get sober.”
Although Coady “definitely went out and partied a lot, which was part of his life,” his daughter said, “I think that was pretty common in New York City in the ‘70s and ‘80s in the fashion scene. But I would hate for people to think that that’s all there was. My understanding is that he was a very good and fair leader of those publications. And there was a very deep, wise part of him.”
In 1983, after the 58-story gold-mirrored Trump Tower debuted on Fifth Avenue, W magazine sent a reporter for a critique and deemed it tacky. Coady’s daughter said that Donald Trump called Coady to tell him to fire the reporter. “He said he was not going to fire the reporter, because the reporter was right — the building was really tacky.’ And he hung up on him.”
Michael Gould, former chairman and CEO of Bloomingdale’s, said of Coady, “In his day, he was a real newspaper man, a real print man. He had enormous connections and a great feel for business. He was always friendly.”
“Michael Coady was a very complicated person, but when he knew something was needed, he went after it like nobody else could,” said Robin Lewis, of the Robin Report and former WWD executive editor and associate publisher. “I met him at one of his turning points in his career. He knew what was required to make Women’s Wear Daily great and he went for it.”
In 1999, Coady exited Fairchild Publications when it was sold to Condé Nast’s parent company Advance Publications by Disney for $650 million. As soon as the ink was dry on the deal, Advance’s then CEO S.I. Newhouse Jr. replaced Coady with Mary Berner. Once on the sidelines, he dabbled in consulting and writing for the Robb Report, and published a memoir entitled “Fashion Madness.” Coady later moved to the West Coast and bought a 20-acre ranch in California, where he picked up horseback riding. In 2005, he was named president and editorial director of C magazine in California.
A fervent sailor, Coady relished time on the ocean aboard his 40-foot sailboat “Freestyle.” At one point, he kept a sports fishing boat called “Eleven” at the 23rd Street pier in the East River. While cleaning his boat one day, Coady was asked by New York City police officers to navigate the boat so that they could pull a suicidal woman out of the waters. Coady was later recognized by the mayor’s office for that effort with an award. Coady was also recognized by a national women’s organization for advancing women in the workforce. “He also hired many people in the LGBTQ community,” his daughter said. “He really hired based on who was really good at their job. In the ‘70s, that wasn’t very common,” his daughter said.
Nardoza recalled Thursday, “Aside from the daily ups and downs, Michael was the best person to know when trouble came. You name it: family problems, a health emergency, personal crisis, especially drug addiction or alcohol issues, that were pretty common in a fast-paced, pressure-filled newsroom. Countless times, Michael made sure any employee in crisis was not only supported, but given rehab, counseling, time off, and a very understanding ear. This softer, empathetic side of Michael’s, was rarely spoken about but it was there, and I saw it demonstrated many times. With Mr. Fairchild and Patrick McCarthy, Michael was instrumental in some of WWD and W’s most dynamic, glamorous, financially prosperous…and outrageous years.”
Coady’s personal mantra was Henry David Thoreau’s, “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.”
A private family tribute is being planned for a sail on Long Island Sound.
As for how Coady would want to be remembered, his daughter said, “As someone who was committed to journalism and always reading the truth of the matter if people liked it or didn’t like it. He was really proud of the fact that he maintained those standards. That really mattered to him.”
Predeceased by his sister Kay and brother James, as well as his first wife Helen, Coady is survived by his two daughters, the second one being Pamela, and his second wife Linda.
— With contributions from David Moin
