Tuesday evening was devoted to toasting a trio of magazine editors turned novelists—and their newly released books—with suitably chic celebrations uptown and downtown.
At Temple Bar, guests wrapped in cashmere sweaters and tailored blazers gathered for Caroline Palmer’s launch of Workhorse. The soirée channeled early-aughts glamour, complete with an era-appropriate playlist and glittering bowls of cigarettes and matches. The scene could have been plucked straight from the pages of Palmer’s debut novel, which follows Clo, a determined editorial assistant climbing the ranks of a prestigious fashion magazine in 2001 New York.
Lacking family connections or insider access, Clo quickly earns the “workhorse” moniker among her more privileged “showhorse” peers. “We all see these women characters we’re meant to relate to, but they somehow can’t be bad,” Palmer said. “In the end, they’re good—or inherently good—otherwise it’s hard to root for them.” Clo’s ambition, grit, and pre-owned Manolo Blahniks propel her through the glossy yet cutthroat world of magazine publishing—a setting Palmer knows well, having spent years as a top editor at Vogue.
Meanwhile, high above Rockefeller Center, Laura Brown (formerly InStyle’s editor in chief) and Kristina O’Neill (formerly WSJ. Magazine’s editor in chief) gathered longtime friends and colleagues on the Rockefeller Rooftop to fête their new book, All The Cool Girls Get Fired. The 200-person guest list included Julianne Moore, Candace Bushnell, and Sophia Bush.
Dressed by Veronica de Piante, Brown wore a chamois-hued corduroy two-piece, while O’Neill opted for an all-black look with a sequined top—their complementary ensembles a perfect reflection of their yin-and-yang dynamic. Friends since 2001, the pair met at a fashion show, later working together for eight years at Harper’s Bazaar before taking the reins at their respective magazines.
Their book was born from an infamous Instagram post the duo shared after both were dismissed from their editor-in-chief roles within fourteen months of each other. “We were greeted by an absolute deluge from women of all different stripes—some we knew, some we didn’t,” Brown recalled. “We knew we’d uncorked something that needed to be released—women and the shame around job loss.” Shortly thereafter, O’Neill texted Brown mid-morning: This is a book.
All The Cool Girls Get Fired examines resilience, reinvention, and the humor in professional setbacks, with interviews featuring Oprah Winfrey, Katie Couric, Lisa Kudrow, Carol Burnett, and Jamie Lee Curtis, among others.
