Jeanne Beker – A life in fashion and storytelling

Jennifer Stewart: Jeanne, congrats on the new book, which you agreed to write during COVID and right after battling breast cancer – obviously a really tough time personally and just globally. What kind of emotions were you battling personally as you wrote this book?

Jeanne Beker: For me, writing has always been my happy place. Whatever I might have been battling—whether uncertainty about my situation or any kind of fear—writing helped me process it. Fear, in particular, is something I try to put on the table and leave there because I believe it’s our biggest enemy. When we’re overrun with fear, we become paralyzed. But for me, writing was about plunging into my past in the most joyful way, filled with gratitude. I still can’t believe I’ve had the chance to lead such an extraordinary life. I really pinch myself. It can feel like a dream, but when you focus on the moment and take yourself back—remembering every beat, what people said, what the scene looked like—you can recount those experiences as honestly as possible.

Writing is incredibly therapeutic, healing, and joyful. It transported me. If I was writing about what happened to me at Karl Lagerfeld’s Chanel atelier on the eve of a couture show, suddenly, I was right back there, feeling those same emotions all over again. That’s precious—being able to recapture those memories and share them with others. What a fantastic feeling.

It was a joyful and surprisingly easy experience for me, and it came at just the right time. As you said, I was still deep in my cancer journey and emerging from the pandemic. Writing helped me through it all.

Catherine Clark: You had such a varied career before Fashion Television, and I loved reading also about what you’d studied. You studied acting in New York, and mime in Paris.. I mean, that’s not a career path you hear about every day. But you covered the arts, you hosted a music show. How do you end up at Fashion Television, which became this kind of defining element of your life, but also such an important part of the lives of so many other people? 

Jeanne Beker: I was never a big fashion expert in that way. I was a great fan of fashion, and grew up absolutely loving it. My mom was a kind of fashionista herself, not that she ever had the funds to spend on designer clothes, but she made a lot of her clothes or had them made, and she made all of our clothes for my sister and myself. 

It was a great joy having a mother who was that crafty and that aware of fashion, and in a way, she instilled in us a great love of fashion. Of course, growing up in the 60s, you were going to love it. I ended up at City TV in 1979 hosting a show called The New Music, which was the forerunner of Music Television. MTV was not even in existence when we started that show. So, I got to do a lot of trailblazing. And, you know, I sort of landed a job at City TV because I got into it through radio and I got into radio as a mime artist. I mean, that’s a whole other long story that you might be able to glean something about from my book, but once I started working in the trenches of the music world, it was wonderful, and I loved it. 

But after about six years of doing that, I’m sort of looking for the next big thing. And there was a young producer who was working in the promos department at City TV by the name of Jane Levine, that very much wanted to create a fashion video show, almost like a music video show, but it would be fashion videos, and he wanted to have some hot, young model host it, you know, as a fashion VJ. But when I caught wind of this, I was looking for the next big thing. I started growing a little weary of that rock and roll scene, music wasn’t really going where I wanted it to go in the mid 80s, and I just was looking for something else. When I heard that there was a pilot in the works for a show of that nature, I just kicked and screamed and demanded that they give me a chance to host it. And they were like, ‘Well, we don’t know if you’re really right for it. We don’t want a lot of talking heads. It’s just going to be a sexy show about fashion.’ And I said, whatever it is, I’ll do it. 

I was hoping that they would want to do interviews with designers and essentially demystify it a little bit and unearth some of these incredible characters on the scene. So anyway, I ended up hosting the pilot for them. I don’t know if they really, really were keen on me doing it, but I think they figured I paid my dues, and I was such a hard worker, and they let me do it. And it was a success right off the bat! Then next thing I knew, they were sending me to New York to interview Bob Mackey and Betsy Johnson and I really got my feet wet doing that. And it was just the most fabulous, joyful experience. The fashion scene was really bubbling up in those days. It hadn’t been overexposed the way it kind of is now. And we got to cover fashion during this golden age. 

Jennifer Stewart: You said that they were looking for a certain type of host, but you kicked down the door and you self-advocated. So many women are afraid to self advocate or don’t, and then they wait for opportunities like. Who instilled that in you? Because that’s a really special characteristic.

Jeanne Beker: Without question, my parents were hugely responsible for who I am. They certainly taught me the meaning of survival. They are Holocaust survivors and their lives were really, totally rocked during the war. They lost their entire families. They were on the run from the Nazis the whole time. I mean, the stories that they told me growing up were just incredible to me, but I didn’t like hearing them when I was a kid, but now I’m so thankful that they told them to me and that I heard them because they made me who I am. My father’s motto, and what he said was the thing that always got him through the war was: Don’t be afraid and never give up. As long as you’re fearless and tenacious, you can really do just about anything. You’ve just got to really hang in there, and you got to hang tough, and you just can’t be intimidated and afraid. 

So I always add that kind of edge to me, that kind of, we call it in Yiddish chutzpah, nerve and, you know, balls, if you will. And I think that’s something that really helped me. In retrospect, I wish I had been more that way. When I was going through the early stages of my career, people would look at me, go, “Oh, that Jeanne is so pushy!” I don’t think I ever would have achieved what I achieved if I would have just sat back. I didn’t want to just have a good life, or even a great life. I wanted to have a freaking fantastic life, and I was determined to do that, really, on behalf of my parents, whose youth was nipped in the bud. They couldn’t realize so many of their dreams. So, yeah, I wish I would have done that even more because I always think that I might have gone further.

Jennifer Stewart: Jeanne, you have literally talked to everyone, and I think people are so intrigued by your life. In the fashion world who are your top two favorite people to interview?

Jeanne Beker: There were so many incredible interviews and so many great people that I love so much. If you think people that I have special relationships with, well, certainly from the world of music, and this is someone that I know didn’t even write about in the book, Frank Zappa. Very strange, right? Because he could be really kind of mean.. But is just such a brilliant genius and so irreverent. But I had this relationship with him and he actually used to give me career advice every time he came to Toronto and I interviewed him. He was incredible, a total genius and the nicest guy. 

Paul McCartney, of course, like, wow. I grew up with a big poster of them over my bed. I mean, this is a guy I was just devoted to. I finally did get to meet him, and then I actually interviewed him subsequently, many times, because of his daughter, Stella, who is a great designer. I would see him backstage at her shows all the time. He was just the nicest down to earth. You know, when your heroes don’t disappoint you, like, wow, that is so incredible. He’s just so unpretentious and so real and so generous. 

Karl Lagerfeld is another. He was like a mentor. He was always looking forward, you know, he didn’t want to talk about what he had just sent down the runway. He wanted to talk about what he was going to design tomorrow in his next collection. And that was very inspiring to me. I just absolutely loved him, and again, was someone who was very irreverent and could be a little difficult and say things that were pretty outrageous, but having a conversation with him was like, you’re playing a tennis match, or he’d lob these balls at you, and you had to come right back with something. And I think he always appreciated my enthusiasm and that I didn’t ask the conventional, typical, you know, fashion editor questions. 

And then, of course, the late great Alexander McQueen. I had a great relationship with him. And again, someone who was very irreverent, someone who could be very difficult, someone who was no question, a genius, who really just taught me a lot about the kind of, maybe pain and suffering that an artist often has to go through in order to get their vision out there. He was just a brilliant soul, truly a poet, and I absolutely adore him as well. 

Catherine Clark: Who gave you a hard time?

Jeanne Beker: Oh, God, Iggy Pop. I’ll say right off the bat, number one. You can Google that, you know, Iggy Pop dissed me on The New Music. You could watch it on YouTube. I’m very proud of myself that I walked out of that interview. I started interviewing people for CBC radio back in 1975 and until this day, and I’m still actively interviewing people, I’ve never shut down an interview, but did it with him. 

Jennifer Stewart: How has your perspective on fashion changed with social media and influencers? It’s at the tip of your fingertips now, and you can go on Pinterest and you can create an outfit. I can go watch Erica on Instagram today, and she does a fabulous job. Like, how, how have you seen it evolve? And what do you think of where it is today? 

Jeanne Beker: Listen, there always will be incredibly creative people in that field, and some people are more inspiring than others. There’s a lot of repetition going on. There’s a lot of the same. I’m not really seeing as much innovation as I would have expected to see by now. Covering fashion since the mid 80s, there has been some innovation in terms of, you know, sustainability efforts and fabrications. That kind of thing is very exciting, but I really don’t see boundaries being pushed. And maybe we’ve gone as far as we can go. But, I thought it would have gone further. 

Some of it does get a little boring to me now. I know that might make me sound jaded, but I still appreciate the incredible artisanal work that comes out of couture ateliers. The artistry involved is undeniable—it’s mind-blowing, really. But fashion today feels so over-the-top. There are too many labels, too much fashion, too much of everything. In a way, I feel a bit responsible. We helped popularize it, and suddenly, everyone wanted to jump on the fashion bandwagon—becoming a designer, creating a label. But do we really need this much fashion? Yes, of course, we need it, and we love it. But it should be about quality and craftsmanship. Now, you can see everything instantly on your phone. You scroll through Instagram, and suddenly, you’re a fashion expert. That’s just how it is.

For me, fashion journalism was never just about hemlines, silhouettes, or the changing shades of the season. I mean, I didn’t really care that much about that, and I still don’t. Even though I’m a fashion editor at TSC and host Style Matters, which I absolutely love, my passion for fashion has always been about its transformational possibilities—how it makes people feel. But what excited me the most were the characters in fashion—the designers, who were like rock stars. It’s not like that anymore. Now, these big, historic fashion houses cycle through young designers, bringing them in for a few years before replacing them with someone new. It’s hard for any designer today to make a lasting name for themselves or be recognized for a true signature style.

Fashion just isn’t what it used to be, and fashion journalism certainly isn’t either. It’s a different world now, but of course, it would be. We’ve lived through so many decades of change. Still, I feel for the young fashion lovers today, the true fashionistas who are so passionate about it. I wish I could take each and every one of them by the hand and bring them back to the old days with me, just to show them what that magical scene was like. It was extraordinary.

Jennifer Stewart: If you could go back and give young Jeanne Beker, who’s kicking down the door at Fashion Television to host the show, a piece of advice or a reflection or a perspective, what would that be?

Jeanne Beker: Kick harder! Like I said, I could have kicked a little harder. Maybe I should have. Maybe I should have had even more faith. I always believed that faith was important—that you had to believe in higher powers, in something greater that would keep you going.

There were very dark days in my life, like during my marriage breakup, when I felt like I couldn’t go on. I wish I had realized then that if you stay true to yourself and hang in there, somehow, your prayers will be answered. The universe has a way of helping you. Even now, I have days where I wonder what’s going to happen. I worry about my kids, about how things will turn out. But I have to remind myself to have faith.

Everyone needs to hear that sometimes—to be reminded that there are higher powers at play. We have to take ourselves a little more lightly and just believe. That’s really important. It’s one thing to dream, but if you don’t believe, your dreams will never come true. So dream and believe. Don’t be afraid. And never give up.