Omaha Fashion Week is excited to share that Kate Betts, an award-winning fashion journalist and best selling author, will attend a portion of Omaha Fashion Week set for February 23-29. Betts is the author of the New York Times bestseller, My Paris Dream: An Education in Style, Slang and Seduction in the Great City on the Seine as well as the critically acclaimed book on the First Lady’s style, Everyday Icon: Michelle Obama and the Power of Style. She also edited Cindy Crawford’s best-selling memoir, Becoming and most recently ghost-edited and wrote a book commemorating Brooks Brothers’ 200th anniversary.
While in Omaha, Betts will visit fashion, journalism and communications students at Omaha South High School, Metropolitan Community College [MCC] and the University of Nebraska - Lincoln. She will also sit on a discussion panel during MCC’s High School Student Night at OFW on Feb. 25.
“Our goal was to get Kate in front of as many students as possible during her stay in Omaha. She has a heart for young people and an amazing story that will inspire students to ‘just go’ [reference from her book] and achieve their dreams,” said OFW Producer, Brook Hudson.
Admission to MCC Student Night is waived for students who present a student ID. A limited number of free ticket blocks are also available to educators and youth group leaders. In past years, up to 700 students have attended. In addition to the discussion panel, 135 high school designers from schools and organizations around Nebraska will present their work on the runway. Student-designers will be vying for a $500 cash prize for the top look of the night, as selected by Betts and the discussion panel.
Signed copies of Kate’s book, My Paris Dream: An Education in Style, Slang and Seduction in the Great City on the Seine, will be available for purchase in the Omaha Fashion Week pop up shop.
###
About Kate Betts:
Kate Betts is a best-selling author and award-winning magazine editor and manager who has held top positions at two of the worlds most successful fashion magazines, Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue. In 2003 she was named editor at large at Time magazine where she created the first globally published style supplement, Time Style & Design, in addition to writing and managing a popular blog for Time.com and covering the business of fashion for the newsweekly.
Betts is the author of the New York Times bestseller, My Paris Dream: An Education in Style, Slang and Seduction in the Great City on the Seine as well as the critically acclaimed book on the First Lady’s style, Everyday Icon: Michelle Obama and the Power of Style. She also edited Cindy Crawford’s best-selling memoir, Becoming and is currently ghost-editing and writing a book commemorating Brooks Brothers’ 200th anniversary.
Betts was the subject of the 2001 Lifetime documentary, Putting Baby to Bed: Wife, Mother, and Editor in Chief, about her experience as the youngest editor ever to take over a national fashion magazine. Betts was named editor in chief of Harper’s Bazaar in June 1999. She completely redesigned the 134-year-old fashion title and increased advertising pages 25%. She moved to Bazaar from Vogue, where she was the fashion news director from 1991 to 1999. At Vogue, Betts was editor of many of the magazine's most popular sections, including Vogue's View and Vogue's Index, an innovative shopping section she created in 1995 to attract readers and advertisers to the back of the magazine.
Betts began her career as a reporter for and later the bureau chief of the Paris office of Fairchild Publications from 1988 to 1991. In Paris she managed daily trade newspaper Women's Wear Daily and W and M magazines. She also helped to conceive and launch W Europe, a global edition of W that was published in four languages. From 1986 to 1988, she held various positions including Paris editor of Metropolitan Home and jobs at the International Herald Tribune and European Travel & Life.
In 2014 Betts launched Kate Betts+Co., a New York City-based content company specializing in the creation of compelling luxury brand narratives for a broad range of clients in the fashion, beauty, and hospitality sectors, including DFS, Ritz-Carlton, David Yurman, Estée Lauder, and Chanel.
Fluent in French and Spanish, Betts was recently named one of the top 10 fashion editors by Forbes magazine. She was the 2011 recipient of the Mary Lou Luther Award for excellence in fashion journalism. She has written for over twenty publications including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Glamour, New York, W, Elle, Departures, Food+Wine, and Travel+Leisure. She has also appeared on television regularly since 1993 including The Charlie Rose Show, The View, The Today Show, Good Morning America, CBS This Morning, Entertainment Tonight, and Power Lunch. She reports regularly for CNN and NPR’s Marketplace and lectures frequently at top universities on the topics of managing innovation, mentoring in the workplace, and First Lady style.
A graduate of Princeton University, Betts lives in New York City with her husband and two children.