Etta Froio, Legendary WWD Editor, Dead at 94

Etta Froio, who chronicled 54 frenetic years of fashion with wit and efficiency at WWD and W, died early Thursday at a care facility in Shrewsbury, N.J., following a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease. 

She was 94 and leaves behind her a legion of co-workers and professional associates who, from the greenest newbie in the office to the top-tier designer, were all lucky enough to be counted as friends in her very full life. 

Giancarlo Giammetti, cofounder of Valentino, spoke for many when he remembered her: “Etta was not only a remarkable journalist; she was a unique voice in fashion journalism. She observed our world with insight, curiosity and a perspective that was entirely her own.”    

She built an impressive career, rising to become executive editor of both WWD and W Magazine, a large-format tabloid launched by her longtime boss, Fairchild Publications chairman John B. Fairchild, in 1972. Her colleagues valued her for her calm, steady authority, her ability to manage the most complex projects and difficult employees with aplomb, and the certainty she provided that everything would be executed smoothly and turn out perfectly. In heading up the coverage of the fashion collections, to which WWD devoted more ink than any other publication, she was like a great wartime general.

“Etta is the true icon of WWD and is a constant of the present, the past and the future,” Fairchild wrote of her in the special retirement issue WWD put together for her in March 2012 upon her retirement. “She’s been through several regime changes and handled them cheerfully and like the great lady she is. Women’s Wear Daily would never have gotten off the old ground if it hadn’t been for Etta and the other ladies of the crew. It was always fun doing everything with her, and I never regretted asking her for advice or guidance, since she was always inspiring to work with. She controlled several mad people, including me…and saved me from many a disaster. To me, Etta is like the U.N., but she always gets things done calmly and to the pinnacle of perfection.”

Fairchild often recalled his return to New York from Paris in 1960 to take over the-then struggling WWD, which at the time was very much a “trade” newspaper. Blowing in like a tornado of ideas, he immediately wanted to shake things up by covering not only Seventh Avenue, but the designers behind those labels and the women who wore the clothes. And he ran into a brick wall of resistance from many of the longtime male editors who questioned his crazy ideas. Froio and her female colleagues were often the only ones willing to give it a try.

But she had an excellent built-in detector for bad ideas, steering generations of reporters and editors through the thicket of publishing a daily newspaper on the lively world of fashion.

In 1999, after selling a Hamptons house to Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft for $900,000 — which they promptly flipped — she tried to retire from Fairchild Publications, but was persuaded to accept the offer of a three-day-a-week part-time position instead. She held it until she retired in 2012. 

Froio excelled at playing tennis, which she enjoyed doing on weekends throughout her long life. She was a good cook, liked to dance and got a kick out of fast cars. She changed autos nearly every year, usually leasing some racy model. And she loved cats. She always had a male Siamese of her own, which were apple-headed, rather than possessing the more attenuated look of many show cats today, and had Italian names. For years, that Siamese was a lilac-point named Marcello, and a photo of him in which he is standing on his hind legs and appears to be doing the choreography for the song, “Stop in the Name of Love!” was in her office. 

When the wife of one of her half brothers died, many people at the time didn’t believe a man could raise children as a single parent, so they were distributed to his siblings. Froio helped raise one of her nephews.

A slender, fine-boned woman who was always impeccably put together, Froio was renowned throughout the fashion industry for her beauty, style, charm, intelligence, professionalism and particularly her sense of humor. The original steel fist in a four-ply cashmere glove, she favored clean-cut tailored clothes by Oscar de la Renta, Giorgio Armani and Yves Saint Laurent. She was always tanned and wore little makeup; she didn’t need it. She had covered — and was friendly with — every major designer on both sides of the Atlantic and, as with Armani and de la Renta, had known most of them from the beginnings of their careers.

She was, however, quite self-deprecating, especially about her own writing — and even her personal style, which she tended to indicate was a bit too conservative. She appreciated good writing and helped train many prominent writers, among them Ben Brantley, who was The New York Times’ top theater critic for more than 20 years.

Born Antoinette Marie Froio in New Jersey, she was — as her longtime colleague Patrick McCarthy once described her in W — “a woman of substance.” 

Her father, Pantaleone, was a tailor; her mother, Maria Antoinetta, had been married before and had several children by her first husband. Theirs was a love match, and Etta was their only child together, but he helped raise his wife’s other children. 

Froio once recalled her early interest in fashion by saying that, when she was a child in school, several boys grabbed her immaculate little coat, which had been made for her by her father, and threw it to the ground. She was very distressed and began to stop at her father’s shop on her way to school to drop off her coat, retrieving it again on the way back home. 

The longtime editor attended the Tobe-Coburn School of Fashion and joined Women’s Wear Daily as a reporter in 1958.  

Froio was a longtime resident of both Manhattan, where she lived on the Upper East Side, and Southampton. She also bought and sold real estate in the Hamptons as a sideline. With friends, she published the social register The Blue Book of the Hamptons. And she belonged to the boards of the Parrish Art Museum, where she was renowned for her expertise at running benefits, and the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund, now known as Legal Momentum. 

In 1981, Froio, whose Italian-American family was originally from the South of Italy, was named a cavaliere for services to Italian fashion. She had made sure that WWD’s reporters were the first to write about Gianni Versace, Armani, Dolce & Gabbana, Byblos, Complice and other top Milanese fashion houses.

The Italian government wasn’t the only group to recognize her contributions. Froio was honored at the Fashion Group’s Night of Stars in 1985 and, the following year, received The Council of Fashion Designers of America’s first Eugenia Sheppard Award for Journalism. 

In July 1962, Froio prefigured her lifelong involvement with the Hamptons by writing a piece for WWD about what was selling at the boutiques in West Hampton, commenting on the merchandise at stores called Le Sorelle (The Sisters) and Treasure Trove. In addition, she and a colleague wrote a Hot Items column that featured descriptions of skirts, jackets and pants which were selling well in the nation’s department and specialty stores.

In 1970, when fashion was going through a highly eclectic moment, Froio interviewed designers Gale Kirkpatrick and Edie Gladstone for an article that captured the moment neatly: 

“Disturbing settled ideas can be an uphill battle.” She said of the designers: “They want to disturb the settled Fashion Establishment. Fashion, they believe, must change to meet the new mood and needs of today’s consumer. Not just style changes, but a complete reworking of the business of fashion.”

As Kirkpatrick put it: “We’re going through a reevaluation of everything, not just clothes. It’s very much like what happened in Hollywood. The actors, writers and truly creative people had to break away from the old studios. Today, filmmakers are ‘right on’ to what’s happening. The designer star system is finished.”

Well, that wasn’t quite true — in fact, Fairchild, Froio and their colleagues Patrick McCarthy — who succeeded Fairchild as chairman of the company — former WWD editor in chief Ed Nardoza, former WWD executive editor Bridget Foley and James Fallon, currently chief content officer at Fairchild Media Group, had plenty to do with both establishing the fashion star system and with keeping it in place for many years. 

In an article in WWD that appeared in the special retirement issue about her, Nardoza recalled some of the stories Etta had recounted to him about her working life: “Freezing up as a young reporter when Jackie Kennedy cut through a crowd and extended her hand to say hello; witnessing Yves Saint Laurent’s [1976] Ballets Russes collection, which she described as a ‘once-in-a-lifetime fashion  moment’; speeding along just outside Palm Beach with Gloria Guinness in a Buick Riviera, as Guinness wistfully noted, ‘There’s so little today that’s beautiful, even the Venus de Milo is too fat’; kibitzing with a 21-year-old Barbra Streisand about the up-and-coming singer’s thrift-shop clothes; interviewing the Duchess of Windsor in her Waldorf-Astoria suite, an astute Froio spotting a needlepoint pillow resting on a satin sofa that said it all, ‘You can’t be too rich or too thin.’”

Froio herself wrote in the 90th anniversary issue about the work she did throughout her decades at WWD and the people and events she covered. She wrote this of the Ladies Who Lunch, an influential group at the beginning of her career dubbed that way by John Fairchild:

“They had it all: beauty, style, wealth, status, magnificent homes, yachts, planes, helicopters, dogs, couture clothes and just about everything else their little hearts desired. They were renowned heiresses, world travelers and the backbone of Old-guard society. Women such as Babe Paley, Gloria Guinness, Jayne Wrightsman, Jane Englehard, Jacqueline de Ribes, the Duchess of Windsor. WWD chronicled their every move, especially in the Sixties and Seventies, when the members of the Ladies Who Lunch Club filled our Eye pages ad infinitum.”

Here’s how she remembered another of their number in the article: “One of the Duchess’s great friends and equally renowned hostesses was the coolly elegant C.Z. Guest, who knew just how to make a dramatic entrance. That’s exactly what she did when WWD came to call. As we drove past flowering trees, up a winding road that led to Templeton, her favorite house on Long Island, we spotted the blonde beauty. Across the rolling hills came C.Z., riding one of her many horses, followed by her many dogs — a black Labrador retriever, a beige mastiff, a golden retriever, a beige saluki and an Italian greyhound. She was wearing beige jodhpurs, a blue turtleneck and a cashmere pullover, and she was clearly in her element…”

She told Froio, “‘I think life should be as simple and uncomplicated as possible. I’m busy all the time. I’m up early every morning to take care of the children, run the house, ride every morning, go into the city, work in the garden. I wouldn’t get half as much done if I were complicated. I’m lucky as hell.’”

Froio ended the story by acknowledging that, with the many unusual experiences she had had throughout her career, she had been, too.

She is survived by her nephews Rick Colecchio, Dean Celia and wife, Dee; Paul Celia and wife, Melissa; Pete Celia, John Oram and Thomas Oram as well as her niece, Andrea Williams, and many great nieces and nephews.  

A memorial service is being planned and will be held in New York City.

— With contributions from Evan Clark and Luisa Zargani