According to the iconic fashion designer Pauline Trigere, Miss Virginia Pope virtually invented the field of American fashion journalism, but I remember her as the person who gave me the confidence to pursue a career. As the first Fashion Editor of the New York Times, from 1933-1955, Miss Pope was a trailblazer, simultaneously covering and molding the fledgling American fashion industry. She went behind the scenes to the wholesale markets to report on American fashion designers as news when most mainstream fashion news came from Paris. Later, she helped plan the founding of the Fashion Institute of Technology, (SUNY), acting as a mentor and inspiration to students there and preparing them for careers in fashion and merchandising. She guided generations of students to Seventh Avenue showrooms to cover fashion shows, giving them a glimpse behind the scenes of the fledgling industry and a chance to try out their reporting skills. Ms. Pope also originated The Fashions of the Times, a live fashion show showcasing American designers that later became the prestigious New York Times fashion supplement, still published today. As one of her student charges, I recall buying my first real hat to accompany her to a Seventh Avenue showroom to cover my first fashion show. I sketched and took copious notes on the show, searching for fresh metaphors to describe what I’d seen and impress the great journalist. The result was worth the effort: I got an A+, from Miss Pope, along with the scrawled comment, “where did you learn to write?” Though I eventually decided not to pursue a career in fashion, I kept that paper in my briefcase for years as a good luck charm. The verdict of the dean of fashion journalism gave me the confidence to write, and I did, for the next 40 years. ###