In my ongoing pursuit of interviewing Candy Pratts Price – repetitive emailing, endless phone calls, and weekly inbox updates and reminders, she graciously invited me to exclusive blog coverage of a private guest appearance and speech for the SPCA program at NYU. The professor is fashion legend June Weir, who previously was the top fashion editor and journalist at Harper’s Bazaar and WWD and remains invested and involved in the fashion industry today. Weir asked Candy to speak to her class about “The Changing World of Fashion Magazines,” and who better than the Creative Director of vogue.com?

Candy opened by showing her first “Candycast Blast” as an example of what the new online world of fashion journalism looks like. It was like getting a sneak peek at the last page of a great book. The infiltration and domination of the internet age has forced fashion editors and journalists to think differently and, as Candy said, start a “new conversation” and dialogue for the web.

Although her work for vogue.com, relationships, and even her personal life exist in a virtual world, she she confidently states that there always be  a place for print. She recognizes the endless opportunities and benefits of the WWW, but also admits, “I love paper… holding it, flipping it is in your own control.” She discussed some of the latest tech devices for wireless reading, specifically the iPad, as having vast potential due to it’s universal “lean back” appeal – similar to to how one reads a magzine or book.

Then Candy hearkened back to the beginning of her career, honestly and openly walking us through chapters, describing in detail her past fashion careers and her personal accomplishments. She started with a rhetorical question, “how did I get where I am today?” her answer,”I wanted to be at the top, live a glamorous life, and be financially independent!”

She led us through her internships at FIT; first being a Christmas Angel at Bergdorf Goodman and second Bachrach, the society photographers. This is when Candy realized the power of an image and was incredibly inspired and intrigued with the idea of “ how an image is captured.” After graduating FIT, Candy’s various jobs and power in the fashion industry can be summed up by one word: “windows.”

She began as a window shopper or at least in a position on the outside looking in. One day she was walking past the Charles Jourdan boutique and out corner of her eye she spotted a fabulous pair of yellow suede sandals in the window display. Knowing she needed to have them, she went inside and asked for a job selling shoes, disregarding the store’s elite and selective recruiting process and a preference for hiring French women. She got the job though, and moved from humble shoe-girl, to the untouchable master of window dressing and displays. Candy borrowed art from the MOMA, which was across the street, everyday to decorate the store and window display. Every single day was a different window – and fashion at its most sensational. Candy noted that the window display was essentially “where liberal arts landed.”

Once Candy’s windows caught the attention of Marvin Traub the Bloomingdales family, Candy went from working solo at Charles Jourdan, to the Creative Director of all of the Bloomingdale’s window displays and storefronts, with a staff of 150, plus the union, plus an on-hand team of carpenters under her belt. She describes her time at Bloomingdale’s as “the best time of her life” and one of the hottest and most exciting times in retail history.

She loved retail, but after mastering the system, she wanted to face new challenges – thus, she entered the world of publishing. After one phone call from Anna Wintour asking Candy to become a part of her “New Vogue,” Candy knew she wanted “in and to be part of this new revolution”. She created and organized the VH1 Vogue Fashion Awards which was one of the first events bringing fashion and music together – branding. The second the internet and online world hit the fashion publishing industry, Candy received another call from Anna this time asking her to move to www.style.com.

Candy immediately took the job, helping to develop the site, to make it special and successful. She insisted that to truly succeed, the website should reflect a “curated magazine with no borrowed content.” Candy describes the “world of a website as 24/7,” leaving her little time for her personal life, although she does get to travel. Interacting and observing real people still has its merits. As Candy points out, “I need to see how you walk, what you eat, and how you wear your pearls otherwise I would never be able to tell people the proper way to wear them.”

Candy Pratts Price has recently moved to www.vogue.com where she is the Creative Director.

As she closed her talk, Candy asked for questions from Weir’s students. One asked, “Is the digital world crowding out magazine print?” Candy responded in a sentence that perfectly reinforced the lecture’s bottom line: “No. There is room for both a short story article as well as a breaking fashion news one-liner.”

In an interview, Valerie Steele, the Chief Curator of the Museum of Fashion at FIT, describes the word “fashion” as the “F-word.”  In the 70’s, fashion had negative connotations, and Steele fought a long, uphill battle to create Fashion Studies in a world that did not yet respect it.

Later, in the 90’s with the introduction of waif-like and fragile teenage model Kate Moss, the “F-word” has come to represent the stigma of “fat.”  Despite hopeful attempts by some of the most influential in modern media, “fat” retains its “F word” status when it applies to models in the fashion industry.

V magazine dedicated its #63 release to the “Size Issue.” Unfortunately, New York Magazine’s cover story, “Return of the Voluptuous,” seemed promising, but led readers only to a disappointing two-page spread.  And the subject, Christina Hendricks, is actually an actress, not a model at all.  The cover featuring Christina with her lustrous red hair cascading down one bare shoulder, her white eyelet corset and matching rompers, appeared more objectified than soldier for the cause.

“Because I am a plus-size model, they make me an example,” says Crystal Renn in a New York Times article The Triumph of the Size 12. “When designers and editors choose one fat girl to salivate over, and revel in her avoirdupois, I’m not sure how much it advances the cause of using girls in all sizes in a magazine.”

Just a month after the V Magazine Size Issue was released, dialogue was sparked during New York Fashion Week.  Last Tuesday a panel organized by the CFDA’s Health Initiate Committee was held in New York City.  The committee included fashion journalists, casting agents, fashion designers, fashion editors, showroom representatives, models and an eating disorder specialist.  The hope was to save prepubescent size-zero children, and those fighting anorexia or any other self-destructive behavior that combats their bodies’ natural ability to grow and develop.

One goal for the panel was to investigate “resizing the sample size.”  Consistently, designers create samples in only a size zero.  This forces models to achieve the size zero body type.  But the conversation quickly turned from the models’ sizes to the model’s ages.  It seems the two can never truly be separate issues.

Tonne Goodman, the stylist from Vogue, slyly explained her role in the micro-mini sample sizes, almost deflecting blame onto others in the industry.  “The designers, casting agents and stylist all precede me before the sample is in my hands… the size of the sample dictates the model I can put in it.”  One would think, though, that Vogue might have the power to persuade a designer to create a bigger sample.

In fact, if sample sizes are too small, it seems obvious that all of the panel members could strategize, collaborate and demand to change the sample size at its inception.  This change would thereby alter the shape of the model at the fashion shoot, on the runway, and then, finally, the size of the garment in our shops.

It also seems a bit ironic that these tiny samples sizes and the waif-like spindly models, portrayed parading around the runways and in the ubiquitous fashion  campaigns, are the opposite profile of the actual consumer demographic who can afford to shop and spend religiously and routinely on designer clothing and accessories. A 12 year old doesn’t have the income to buy a $7,000 jacket and $4,500 tote, so, why  does the fashion industry continue to promote and present their ideas through an identity that off the runway or photo shoot, does not resemble physically, emotionally or financially, the women who can actually afford to buy these items. The majority of the young models only get a glimpse into the high end designer filled closet and beautiful clothes for the duration of the shoot or runway show. After the last picture is taken or the model has walked her last look for a show, she immediately changes back into her Target jeans from the childrens’ section, an oversize white American Apparel t shirt, and her beat up old Chucks.

Zac Posen, always an advocate for women of all sizes, represented the fashion designers at the panel.  Along with Diane Von Furstenberg this season, Zac proudly cast the gorgeous supermodel Coco Rocha, a whopping size four.  Rocha was undeniably the most beautiful, sexy, and still incredibly thin, model to walk the runway.  At the CFDA panel, both she and Zac agreed that the sample size should be changed to a size four.

Recently, there was discussion in the news about plus sized models generally being a size twelve.  In reality, size fourteen is actually the average size of regular American women.  Adding insult to injury, only a few weeks later, a size four is argued to be too large for the runway.

“I am not in demand for shows anymore,” a frustrated Coco Rocha tells the New York Times.  At only a size four, she has been kicked out of castings, runway shows and print ads.  On her blog, she writes “I’m a 21 year old model, six inches taller and ten sizes smaller than the average American woman.  Yet in another parallel universe I’m considered fat.”

All of this begs the question, can’t we all unite, throw away our hypocrisy and merge the dichotomy of the real world and the fashion world into one?  Can’t we make Coco’s parallel universes meet at a crossroads?  Can’t we work collectively to change the sample size for the bigger, better and more accepting?  The answer is dependent upon every person involved in all aspects of the fashion cycle.  Without every one aboard for the same destination, our ship is stuck at port with a size zero.  That the discussion is happening makes me hopeful that we will pull anchor and embrace the sea’s full array of shapes and sizes.  Maybe this will help average American women utter with relief the F-word we’ve wanted to say to the fashion industry for years – “Finally!”