Grace Mirabella, the editor-in-chief at the helm of American Vogue throughout the 1970s and much of the 1980s, died this morning at 91 years old. Mirabella, who had worked as Diana Vreeland’s assistant at Vogue in the 1960s, succeeded Vreeland as editor-in-chief in 1971 and remained in the role until 1988.
Mirabella was raised in suburban Maplewood, New Jersey, to parents of Italian descent—and nothing about her background, she later said, prepared her for a career at Vogue. She graduated from Skidmore College, majoring in economics, and earned a place on the Macy’s executive training course. She soon moved to the publicity department at Saks Fifth Avenue.
In 1951, Mirabella first joined Vogue as an assistant in the merchandising department, before moving to its editorial staff three years later. After a brief stint as head of publicity for the Roman couturier Simonetta, she returned to the U.S. and to Vogue, where she rapidly rose through the ranks in the 1960s, eventually holding the position of associate editor-in-chief under Diana Vreeland. “It was very difficult to work for her,” Mirabella later conceded. “But you can get along with someone who is difficult if you admire them. And I admired Diana Vreeland—for all of her style and know-how, which she was about.”
While acknowledging Vreeland’s genius as a fashion editor, Mirabella’s fashion predilections were more utilitarian. For bohemian socialite Vreeland, the 1960s were psychedelic, but for Mirabella, they represented a political shift. She was part of a new generation of working women who wanted to put their careers first, and from an early age, her mother had taught her that a woman must be financially independent, a belief that went on to influence her editorship at Vogue.
In her role as Vreeland’s envoy, she grew close to Alexander Liberman, Condé Nast’s editorial director. When Vreeland left in 1971, he installed Mirabella in her place. Vreeland’s red and leopard office was painted beige for Mirabella’s arrival, announcing a shift away from the avant-garde and toward what Vogue fashion editor Jade Hobson later described as “a very reader-focused approach.” Mirabella believed there was an army of women entering the workplace who needed clothes that helped them to progress up the career ladder. For these women, she said, fashion did not necessarily come first. “Grace is a businesswoman really,” her friend Dawn Mello, president of Bergdorf Goodman, once said. “She’s not ethereal. She always has the reader in mind.”
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