Unflappable Grace Mirabella Describes Her UPS And Downs

Much of Grace Mirabella's magazine career has been very public.

First there was her ascension to the throne of Vogue editor after Diana Vreeland's demotion in 1971. Next came her own rude and public dumping from the job in 1988. The launching of Mirabella magazine followed two years later.

Then, earlier this year, its demise was announced, followed a week later by news of its sale to Hachette Filipacchi magazines, which recently re-launched it on newsstands.

Through it all, Mirabella maintained her trademark cool serenity. You wanted to know how she felt and what she was thinking through it all, but her public comments were circumspect.

Now the woman behind the image is more in focus, thanks to the publication of Mirabella's candid memoir, "In and Out of Vogue" (Doubleday, $25).

While Mirabella worries that people buying the book expecting gossip will be disappointed, that's unlikely. It may not be gossip, but Mirabella has a knack for exquisitely skewering certain people with detailed descriptions of them and their actions.

To dedicated followers of fashion, it's a gold mine of information on the inside workings of magazine editors, how they influence designers, how designers court them with discounts and free clothing, and what they really think of one another and the designers. Those with a strong interest in the media will be fascinated by her insider's account of the founding and floundering of Mirabella magazine and its resuscitation.

Not personally devastated

Perhaps the most surprising news in the book is that Mirabella wasn't personally devastated by the firing.

"Being fired from Vogue the way I was made it very dramatic, but being fired at all helped me get out of there," Mirabella says. "I'd wanted out for two years, but I didn't want to leave without having a job."

Mirabella says she didn't plan to wait almost a decade to tell her side of the Vogue firing story. In fact, she never planned to tell it publicly at all.

"I was asked to do it," she says of the book in a recent interview after an appearance at Saks Fifth Avenue in San Francisco. "I don't think I'd have thought of it, frankly."

While Mirabella's actions offer guidance, she is not one to give advice.

"I have no advice to share," she says. "I've been very lucky. It's my very good luck at having the husband I have. Whenever you talk to Bill about a worry you have he says, `You don't know what a real worry is.' This is from a man dealing with lung-cancer patients."

There's no doubt that noted cancer surgeon Dr. William Cahan has had a dramatic effect on Mirabella's life. In her book she writes about giving up smoking after their first date when he told her he calls his operating room "Marlboro Country."

One of the most visible results of their union has been her campaigns to de-glamorize smoking, first at Vogue and then at Mirabella. It is "one of my causes," she says. The two will celebrate their 21st wedding anniversary in November.

The other is the lack of what Mirabella considers fashion at the middle price range.

"Why can't a woman have good design in the middle price point? She doesn't deserve it because she can't afford the higher price? I don't get it," she says.

Today, Mirabella says she is no longer "hands on" at the magazine that bears her name. She says the magazine hasn't reflected her vision for the past year and a half, but she is optimistic it will in the future, thanks to the return of founding editor Amy Gross, who has added Mirabella to her already-full plate as editor of Elle.

"Same kind of sensibility"

"Amy started it with me, and she has the same kind of sensibility and the same kind of interest in life and women that I have. Amy will take it and do it her own way, and she's doing it wonderfully with a lean staff," Mirabella says.

As for her own future, the 65-year-old Mirabella says, "I don't know if I want to do anything next, and if I do, I don't know what that would be."

Despite what she says, Mirabella does write at the end of her memoir, "The story continues. The ending is not yet written."