“Lanphearites” are the cult following of Kate Lanphear. These people see Kate as a fashion God, and
she certainly seems to fit that description.
She is constantly a front row fixture at the hottest fashion shows
across the globe. Her signature platinum
blonde locks, her punky, chic, and androgynous style has made her a regular on
online blog sites such as The Sartorialist and Jak & Jil, even having Tumblr
and blog sites devoted to her.
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From
top left, clockwise: off-glass.com, redcarpet-fashionawards.com,
anananasamiami.com, redcarpet-fashionawards.com, off-glass.com,
redcarpet-fashionawards.com |
Kate grew up in a conservative Irish Catholic family in
rural Virginia. She was inspired by her
aunt and Godmother, who were always so meticulously putting together their
outfits. She just could not tear her
eyes away from this attention to fashion and she soon followed suit. Kate decided to go to college for journalism,
but quickly discovered it was harder than she thought getting into the fashion
industry. She turned to London as her
new place to find her fashion calling.
She lived in a hostel with seven guys, and soon followed one of them to
Sydney. In Australia, Kate bartended,
picking up any fashion jobs that came along.
Finally, she landed a job at Australian Vogue, and then went onto
Australian Harper’s Bazaar. She gained
an immense amount of knowledge there.
From her experiences with the Australian fashion magazines, she says:
“The
staff were so small that if you put your hand up you were allowed to do
anything…I had no experience, but before I knew it, I was styling the cover
with amazing people. You’re allowed to
execute your own ideas, because it’s so small. It’s really like Fashion Editor 101. I became really well versed in budgets and how
to do production because you’re doing everything yourself”(businessoffashion.com).
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From top-left, clockwise: ananasamiami.com, talkshoes.com,
ananasamiami.com, monoxious.com, flare.com, ananasamiami.com.
Middle photo:
ananasamiami.com
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When she returned to the States, she
had a bounty of knowledge and experience under her belt. However, she found it tough that the HR teams
in the U.S. wanted more “defined” job descriptions, which she did not really
fit into due to her previous extremely broad jobs. She secured a job at Harper’s Bazaar,
moving onto a position as senior fashion editor at Elle. She is currently the style director for Elle
magazine, a position that she has held since 2008. She is also a huge supporter of her
designer friends, including the jewellery designer Eddie Borgo, whom she was part
of his fall/winter 2010 ad campaign.
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