August 31, 2022 • 58 mins
Thirty years after creating the magazine that inspired millions and launched her namesake brand, Martha reunites with the two women who helped her birth it: Founding Editor-in-Chief Isolde Motley, and Founding Art Director, Gael Towey. Relegated to the least desirable spaces of Time, Inc, and facing a chorus of doubters, the trio set about creating a magazine that broke the mold. Hear how they crafted each shoot by hand, with Martha doing her own hair and make-up, while also adopting technology early on. This special episode reveals the inside stories behind Martha’s start-up: Martha Stewart Living.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
You can make something beautiful. Your surroundings should be beautiful,
Your children's surroundings should be beautiful, and it's possible for everybody. Hi, everybody,
this is Martha Stewart and you're listening to my podcast
with Friends, and today that is really what we're doing.
(00:22):
We are talking to two old friends, colleagues, and terribly
important people in my life and in the life of
Martha Stewart Living Magazine. In the winter of the first
issue of Martha Stewart Living Magazine hit the news fans,
we chose to focus on eight key content areas cooking, entertaining, gardening, decorating,
(00:48):
celebrating holidays, housekeeping, crafting, and collecting. As the years came
and went, the mission stayed the same, to teach and
to inspire, to educate and suspire living as we know
it around here put an emphasis on beautiful visuals carefully
developed by our editors and art directors and stylists. And
(01:12):
today with me sitting right in the same room, and
I was so excited as old and Motley, our first
editor in chief of Martha Stewart Living Magazine and our
first art director, Gail Howe, so welcome both of you.
It is so nice to be sitting here reminiscing, and
(01:33):
I'm probably gonna cry during this interview. I'm almost crying
right there you are, and we are emotional because what
we created was something I think very very special that
hit accord and hit a nerve in the American woman's life.
And uh and I really I really feel that way
(01:54):
because the response has been over the years and now
the magazine is thirty one years old and we started it,
as I said, have the first issue right here with me,
and uh, there I am smiling sitting at Turkey Hill
Road on my porch with a basket of this and
(02:17):
that it was a Christmas issue and for me easy
to do right. Christmas was just part of our DNA,
even at that time, because I had been catering and
cooking for other people and entertaining and what I thought
was missing in the on the news stand at that
time was a magazine really devoted to the homemaker. And
(02:39):
I had to find like minded people. It was very important.
And after we found the publisher, which was also quite
a shore, we'll talk about that. Let me introduce you,
Gail Howie. How are you. I'm very well and I'm
very delighted to be here because I love talking about
the olden days, the wonderful, wonderful, magical, creative olden days,
(02:59):
and they were certainly some of the most creative days
I've ever spent in my life. Well, I'm so happy
to hear you say that, because I feel the same way.
And it is getting weepy. I promised not to get weepy.
This is much sterner. And she's she's really, she really
ran the show in the in the in the early
days of the tas absolute nonsense. No, you did. You
(03:22):
ran the show. I was off, you know, gallivanting, doing
all the photo shoots and and all, and you stayed
home and really took care of the text. No, no errors,
no errors. In those early issues, I don't remember correction
for I hardly remember any corrections in that magazine. Well,
it was so important to get it right because we
(03:44):
thought that if people if there was a mistake and
a recipe, it would be such a waste of somebody's
time and money and that was just not fair, exactly,
and and they would then lose faith in your expertness.
And uh, and I always, I've always said since day one,
that that authenticity and expertness is really important if you're
(04:09):
going to be the teacher. And this magazine was posed
as the teacher for the American homemaker, and it was
for women basically, but a lot of men picked it up.
And now with the with a two male household, more
men are are are reading these magazines than ever before.
Um and so it's really a male female audience. And
(04:34):
just it was an incredible effort. And do you remember
our first office is let's describe, Oh God, Time Inc.
Put us. It was at the forty six floor floor.
It was the floor right above the heating and air
conditioning floor of the Time Warner building on sixth Avenue,
(04:55):
and the floor when the heat was on was boiling hot.
It was so homember. So my feet were swollen. I
had to take my shoes off because the floor was
so high, and the carpets were I think what they
gave us the office is the dirtiest carpets in the
entire tobacco smelling, an old, smokey office that nobody wanted
(05:16):
any longer. And we got it. But it was ours,
and it was Time Inc. Which was a male, male orient,
male oriented, but they were very good at what they did.
They just were not quite sure what to do with us.
Every office when we moved in had a dictionary and
(05:37):
a tessaurus, but no phone. Do you know what they
left us alone? They did They didn't know what they didn't.
They would come around periodically and I would say, I'm
so sorry, it's already gone to the printer, or I'm
so sorry it's already been shot. We can't shoot it again,
or whatever, it's too late. Well, do you remember the
(05:59):
story when I was looking for the money, When I
was looking for the partner UM, I first went to
sign new House and he gave me the money to
create the prototype. And I did that with roche rochow You,
Dell and Doug person. Remember Rochelle was the art director
of Self magazine at the time, and and Churchen and
(06:20):
Doug had his own company as a design and they
helped me create a prototype UM which was interesting. It
was a July issue. It had a story about straw
straw hats, yes, and about a bicycle decorated. That was
the issue. And then so I said, well, what are
you gonna call this magazine? And I thought, oh, you
(06:40):
know Martha Stewart something or other. He said, oh, no,
it can't be that it has to be condist something
or other because it's my magazine. So he sent us
on our merry way, and then I went, did I
ever tell you that? You know? I was working for
Alex Lieberman at the time, because I was the art
director at House and Garden right, and I report to
(07:01):
Alex the creative director, the creative director of all Conde Nasket,
who was one of the meanest people I've ever met
in my life. But anyway, he was drakonian um. But
he would come down and he knew that you and
I were friends and that we knew each other and
had met at Clarkson Potter Publishers. And he said, you know,
(07:22):
I don't want to do this magazine. We can't have
a magazine with an editor's name on it. All of
the other editors at Conde Nast would want their name.
Our magazines are kind to be Diane of Briel and Vogue,
and it would have to be. But I think that
he thought you were too strong for him. He was
a maniacal control freak. Particularly he didn't like that's very flattering.
(07:48):
Thank you, You're quite welcome. I would love to be
thought for Oxy because he was scary. He was scary scary.
So we took the prototype then too, Oh my gosh.
I took it to Rupert Murdoch and I first met
with Rupert's team. They said, oh you didn't that was fabulous.
(08:13):
I got. I got to go and meet Rupert. He
was still married to his first wife. He was extremely attractive.
Second wife. Second which one was his second wife? Okay,
you keep track of that, well I can't. I don't know.
I don't keep tracking things like that. But he was
still married to that beautiful Anna, the mother of his
first children. Right, and there's an older sister. Oh, there's
(08:35):
an older sister. They may have the Succession family. Okay, alright,
so then then there is another another family before Anna,
and before Wendy, of course, I mean before Wendy Wendy Dong. Anyway,
that goes on and on. But I go and meet
with the team. The team was extremely interested in the magazine.
(08:57):
But then incomes Rupert, and I make my prison to
and Rupert when he came in the room, silence, just
like in the Succession silence, and they all stood up
and it sort of bowed to him. I mean, this
is even his general counsel and I couldn't believe what's
going on here. I mean, this guy is magnetic, you know,
and he's strong, but and he is a billionaire in
(09:18):
blah blah blah. But but he's Rupert and uh, he's
a magazine guy. This is before he became Fox News
and everything else, and um. And they looked at the magazine,
the prototype, and they said, you know, this is really
this is really inviting, and this is really interesting and
we would love to do it, but we're selling our magazines.
(09:39):
We don't believe in the future of the printed word.
That's what he told me this, And they said, we
suggest that was they were just a just sold seventeen magazine,
are they We're going to sell it? And they knew
what they were doing. They were they were getting out
of the printage magazine, going into TV and more into
(10:02):
the newspaper world. So um. So then I said, I said, okay,
well what should I do? I mean, I hear I
have this fantastic idea, and Rupert said, I take it
to time, And so I took it to time. I
never knew that story. And so I met with Red
Brock and Chris Mirror and who else was there a
(10:25):
few other guys. We went to Caravelle Restaurant, which was
their lunch room basically, And Caraville is owned by friends
of mine who are now the parents of Sweet Green.
Do you know that? No, I didn't know that. Oh yeah,
their son started Sweet Green and they all became billionaires
because every they cut. The convoluted history is really kind
(10:47):
of interesting. And anyway, so I take the prototype to lunch.
I showed the whole thing at Caraville Restaurant, which is
a little bit um and you're not supposed to take
out papers and stuff with those fancy French lunch places.
But I did it anyway, and the boys um looked
at it and they said, geez, this is fantastic. He said,
(11:08):
but this is the Julyisha, What would you do next July?
It looks like you covered fourth of July here. And
I said, gentlemen, you just don't understand what creativity is.
We have the best team, the best ideas. I could
go on for Fourth of July for at least thirty years,
which is exactly what we did, right. And we never
repeated a recipe. We never repeated anything. Um, maybe we
(11:32):
decorated a bicycle started like a bicycle we did twenty
five years ago, but not really. I mean, creativity is boundless,
and and and living. I kept saying to them, living
is limitless, Living is limitless. Were you know, into the
second or third millennial of human life here of productive
(11:54):
human life, and it's limitless. It changes all the time.
So anyway, they bit and they bought, they bought and
became our partners and they and they let me start
to hire the team. And that's when we got together
in big time. Now, you were at Clarkson Potter at
the time. Then I was in House and Garden. You
were still at House and Garden. Oh my gosh, I
(12:15):
thought you were you had already moved over to books,
but the books books came came first. So that's what happened. Okay.
I was trying to figure out that that chronology, and
you were you were also doing right doing books. So
what were you doing at that particular time? I was
doing your I was trying to get you to finish
the Old House book. Oh, the new Old House, the
(12:36):
new Old House, and you were really really late, as
with your deadlines. That turned out to be a really
good book. It was a great book, and you know
people are buying that book now. I still have it.
I Sews the House. If you don't have that book,
you should look for it. It's on It's on Amazon.
But it's a good book because it really told you
how to restore and rebuild an old house. And I
(12:59):
did it with my brother George right, who was a contractor.
It was so great. So um so is Older came
as editor in chief. I didn't know how to make
a magazine and is Older knew how to edit. She
knew how to get writers to write, and she knew
how to put together an issue. She knew what a
table of contents was. And you worked in magazines before,
(13:20):
so you had a magazine. I had been a magazine
editor until I had a baby, and I thought, well,
magazines are too time consuming. I'll do books instead because
there's never really a deadline, which turned out to be true.
So I did magazines for crib into the office. I
bought a porter crib for the office because so many
(13:42):
of us had babies, and I had the worst fight
with the time Inc. Accounting people because they said it
was a personal expense, and I kept explaining that no,
we all have babies. We need, we need somewhere to
put them more. Though I did on that hot floor,
they were at least warm. Yeah, you know. And but
(14:03):
we learned how to We learned, and you put together
an amazing team of creatives. Gail was like a magnet
for creativity, and um and so many of those they're
still all our friends, they are still all we work with.
What I wanted to ask you of your of the
pot who was the first photographer that we really really
(14:24):
clicked with? You know? I think it was Bill Alebrono
Wits and and can I tell my photography story? So
you know, I had been at House and Garden and
I'd been making friends with photographers and making relationships with photographers.
And when I left there to come to work for you,
and at time inc um I we had to get
(14:48):
busy right away. We started August one. We had our
first magazine on the news stand, the Christmas issue on
November twelve, which is an unheard of short period it
of time. But we had to get busy right away.
So I immediately started calling photographers and they all said
to me, I can't work for you, I can't work
(15:08):
for you, I can't work for you. And Finally somebody said, Gail,
you have been You and Martha have been embargoed by
Conde Nast. They sent us all a letter, none of
us are allowed to work for you. Well, I was
terrified because here I am, I had that responsibility, but
(15:29):
I wasn't terrified because I knew there was other talent
all around us. And we ended up hiring people who
were our friends from books. Chris Baker, who you worked with.
I worked with Chris so much, and and you did
one of your at least one, maybe two of your
books with Chris Baker, um Maria Blado, who was Elizabeth
(15:50):
Schene who was shooting your garden book, and that we
all worked on in between issues, and they hoped change
the look of the the story to the story was fantastic.
And then all those other photographers ultimately were allowed to
(16:10):
come back and work with us. There was also the
problem of photographers being snotty, and there was the one
who said, I don't want to photograph a housewife in Connecticut.
Who is that? Do you remember that? Oh? You know,
(16:34):
I think people really underestimated us in the beginning. A
lot of people, not just the photographers, but I didn't
know it was going to look completely different from anything
that we were. The modern Remember how we used to
talk about the television program called thirty something that was
all the rage at the time, and it was very
modern and it was aesthetically modern and good looking, and
(16:57):
we really thought, well, if that can be six testful,
we can completely change the aesthetics of the Woman's magazine. Well,
when we put the I mean this first issue it
was Christmas. But in this issue we have not only
a stencil for fabulous stars and moons, we have full
page picture of three forks and a butter knife, but
(17:20):
the most beautiful forks and butter knife, and and the
stenciled tablecloth that we made for the table in silver
silver stensil. People went nuts over these craft ideas. Crafting
became like a rage, and home crafting became a rage.
Making fantastic food that looked like it was prepared at
(17:40):
Lagrani in New York City. Look at this soup, the
pasta homemade pasta carrot and um. Let me see red
pepper pasta and basil pasta cut into stars, served in
a very fabulous boullion. But Martha, you changed the way
recipes were div eloped and photographed. You did it like
(18:02):
you were doing your books, And I think that's one
of the reasons we were able to do the magazine
the first issue so quickly. But but other magazines didn't
do the process that you created. You created a new
process for for recipes. I did. And it was like
one person or two people in the kitchen, not a gotten,
(18:23):
you know, giant crew. Each person was responsible for doing
something like I remember doing this whole thing with one
other person. She was phenomenal and fearless, totally fearless. In
the beginning, Alexis is doing the Oh look at this.
This was my favorite dessert, sponge sugar with a trial,
(18:46):
fabulous caramelized tweel at homemade ice cream, so elegant. But
then I think Alexis isn't here doing her her wrapping paper.
Oh yes, which was on which was on browncraft paper,
browncraft paper and paint. That changed the whole idea of
wrapping for people. You can Oh, there she is, looking amazing,
(19:09):
making a mess in my on my cencil floors in
my hall away, making the most beautiful wrapping paper. And
there she is, I mean, and it's and the the
wrappings were gorgeous. But this is what we did. We
we kind of we didn't internalize it at all. We
kind of expanded the whole idea of making doing creating
(19:29):
at home in a very sophisticated way, but not so
sophisticated that it couldn't do it to everybody. Now, Remember,
I think this was like an eye opener to people.
It really was. And didn't we create this magazine on
a Macintosh? None of us had ever used a computer
(19:50):
for layout and photography and all of that. I don't
know if you used a computer used for I remember
I bought an ID in two, so it was very
important for me to be totally modern and technologically savvy.
And you guys lived up to the desire because you really,
(20:12):
you really, it was so exciting. It was remember your name,
Tammy Tamara Tomorrow, who is married to Jeff Jervis, who
found it Entertainment Weekly. But I didn't find that out
until later. But she sat up the whole system and
it was hilarious because we had hard disks that we
(20:32):
passed around. Oh God, that was the end, you know,
you finished something and hand the physical disk to somebody
else to do that. Nobody had done that before with
an illustrated magazine of this magnitude. Nobody even there was
no Wired magazine at the time. That mean that came later.
(20:55):
But but other other Vogue and I came from Conde NaSTA.
We were doing paste up, we were doing photostats and
paste up, and that we should be so proud of
the fact that absolutely, and that was so innovative and
so fantastic. And this cookies for children, I mean, here
(21:15):
we have children making sophisticated, delicious cookies. There's my little
friend Monica pastor Neck and all these little neighbor kids
came in. I remember, and my um my nephew is
in this in this issue. In this issue, I think
they borrowed and sold children from everywhere. And the cookies
(21:37):
are so delicious, the recipes and beautiful looking. Well see
that's the thing about the recipes. This is what I recall.
There would be a recipe that would be developed, and
that person who was developing it, you and Laura in
the in those days, would be responsible for doing it
again for the camera. And so there was no you know,
none of the things, none of the tricks of food style.
(22:02):
From the beginning, I said, there's going to be no
figuri The food is going to look just like it
looks if you made it yourself. And there is no figuery,
there's no oil, glazes, ice cream made that mashed potatoes,
masotto cream, no nothing fake at all, and you can
and you can eat it right after you shoot at you,
(22:23):
which we did, which we did because otherwise we were starving.
But remember, yeah, remember shooting in Florida in the Keys,
the little children with ice cream because it was real
ice cream. It just kept Meanwhile, everybody dresses, you know,
that's I think that's in this issue. That's why I
(22:46):
brought this issue because that Florida shoot was I was
pregnant with August and I brought Maud with me. Maud
was like two or three. I still on issue number one,
but oh there's there's Kirk Sophie. Oh yeah, and we
(23:08):
had we made all of the of the dresses for
the children. I mean, that's the kind of extent that
we and I learned something from you on this one, Martha.
These are all these beautiful ice creams that we shot.
I think Davison star shot that, but you, you, you
made the most beautiful scoop and then each one was frozen,
(23:29):
so that when it came to the camera, which we
did not shoot in Florida. The kids we shot in
Florida solouettes, Oh my gosh, so fabulous. So you have
to look at all your early magazines of Martha Stewart living.
I mean, I love that layout. That was so pretty
(23:50):
and they were getting their chocolate all over there. Look
at that. You can see the big splash of chocolate
on the little girl's art. And we just kept shooting out.
Uh but you know what the other story that was
so fun and on that remember the storm. Oh yes,
we had this idea of creating this romantic dinner on
(24:10):
the beach and we put I don't know, four or
six posts in the ground. All of this this was
in the Key No No, that island later that this
is the one. You were standing up on a on
a on a ladder and I was on another ladder
(24:32):
and we building that building that beautiful, beautiful. So it's
this kind of drapy romand to having a fire permit
building fires anyway on hoping that the fire department wouldn't
catch on. So there was a storm coming and all
of a sudden, on the horizon we saw this like
(24:53):
black cloud coming and the wind was coming up, and
we all looked at you, like, what are we supposed
to do now? And you yelled to us keep going,
keep going. Only I knew it was our only chance.
And that's it. That's the shot. Vicky Incredible immediately put
(25:14):
all of her equipment in the car because it was
about to pour. The cloud moved over us, poured poured rain,
but it was and and then behind the rain cloud
was the sunset, the sunset. She ran out of the
car with her camera and she got it. It was
(25:36):
we had I would say, maybe ten minutes of light
and then the rest of it we had to fake
the next day because we totally lost drama and nobody
was executed. We were so we were so dedicated to
getting that picture. And this is before we were doing
really serious television. This is before we were synergizing with
(25:59):
all the other signs of media that we got into.
But we knew that what we were creating a day
in and day out was evergreen material that is as
good today as it was then. And uh and that
has been proven. That has been proven because these recipes
in are in many of our books. Many of these
(26:20):
the things that we created for the magazine ended up
in a book or on television. Uh. But it never
felt like we were reusing and reusing. It always felt
it was so experimental. It was and its And so
this is Past Christian and the same issue. I mean,
this is kind of an extraordinary istue because this is
(26:41):
also an incredible story. We went shrimping, and we were
there on the last day that the shrimp boats were
allowed to go out, but there was like a thunderstorm,
and so we couldn't shrimp. But then they said, we'll
take you out. We can fake it. But here's beautiful
Diro Diro Pucket, who was one of one of our
big helpers in the early days of Inspiration. She had
(27:03):
a beautiful house in Past Christian. If you know that
part of Louisiana, you'll you'll know that Past Christiane was
completely destroyed by Hurricane was that Katrina? Katrina? That's right,
Katrina that destroyed New Orleans. Her house, her found generations,
a big house. All that was left of that house
(27:24):
where the front stairs. Remember the picture I do, And
we have a picture of Deerro and her husband sitting
on their front steps, three stone steps and nothing behind them.
A three story monster house was blown away. Do you
remember why we were shooting everything in the south for
the summer issue is because it was the middle of winter.
(27:44):
Because we had just started, we had to shoot everything
in the wrong seasons. So that Christmas issue we did
in August, and I'm not sure I've ever and then
the summer and we we did a lot of crazy stuff.
And I always said, well, I've had three Christmas this
year because I would do a Christmas in August for
(28:06):
the magazine, and I would do a Christmas for television,
then I would do another another Christmas for somebody else,
and then by the time Christmas came, you always wanted
to travel, because that's right. That's when I started taking
the kids on those big trips around the wall. You know,
that's right, because it was a getaway from redecorating again.
But um, But so getting back to the photographers and
(28:27):
that first issue you mentioned Bill Lebrono Wits. I just
got a nice letter from Bill just this week, and
he's not living in Bedford any longer, you know, up
to where their skihouse was, and he's and he's anxious
to come and have dinner and talk somewhere because he
was fondly remembering all those early days used to these
(28:52):
Comrads catalogs. And Laura Harrigan, who was our one of
our designers, new Bill and she was working freelance on
the Conrads catalog, and so she introduced us to Bill,
and Bill came over and showed us his portfolio, and
I just loved the way he made things like Conrad's
(29:16):
furniture look active. You know, the cover had somebody carrying
the sofa into the house instead of like the more
typical way of doing things. You know, he was able
to get movement into things that were normally shot in
a very static way. But that that was one of
the things that was really different. One of the early
rules that was in the first outline was every room
(29:40):
needs to look as the family has just left it
or is about to come in. So glosses need to
have water in them, pillows need to have a little
bit of a dent in them, and people like Bill
understood that. So everything didn't look like a cattle, nothing
(30:00):
looked like a catalog. Everything looked and it didn't look
like other magazines overly perfected like Gourmet in those days,
or Architectural Digest, in those days that like weird lighting,
and we were using natural light, which you did in
your books, which all of our photographers cared about. Natural
(30:22):
light made everything look more delicious and more real, and
it meant you had to work really fast, and I
think that probably helped. We got a lot done every
single day, a lot, and we published everything. I mean
I came from a house and garden where they had
mountains and mountains of unpublished material. You know, they just
(30:42):
had files and files and files, and we said about
doing a lineup. We shot the lineup, We published the lineup.
Every cent had to go on the page because they
gave us so little money. Um well, sing back, that
was a lot of money in those days. Because now
(31:03):
the budgets are like one can true, I know what
they used to be. And when I think of the
amazing upholstery and the amazing amazing coverlets and pillows, throw
pillows that we were able to to make for the
magazine for those photos, you can't do that now. No,
But compared to everybody else, the cost per page was
(31:28):
so low. But I was proud of that. Yeah, I
was very proud that we had a budget and we
stuck to it well we didn't have an option and yet,
but it made us even more creative and I really
I was very very proud of that all through the years. Well,
and we were doing that stuff ourselves. We were sewing things,
we were doing the painting, the painting on the you know,
(31:49):
converting a dresser and doing the painting and changing the knobs.
And one of my favorites was that was that French
designer who did the painted furniture. Who was that French
designer that did the beautiful buchanicles botanicles on on a
creamy background. Right, you know, my sister bought that from
the magazine. She did that story. She has it, she does,
(32:11):
she still has it in her dining room. But that
was such a beautiful story. That idea came from that
wonderful Belgian designer who did that kind of thing in
the nineties. But it was essentially like a Dave Coupas. Yeah,
it was so beautiful and we got inspired by so
many different things all over the world. When we did
(32:33):
the Reads, Reads, I just loved. We decided we were
going to do not only a story about Reads of
all the states and the magazine, but we created a
book and Hannah worked on that. Remember with the cranberry.
I will never forget that. And you know that she
got Remember when everybody got sick and we arrived that
(32:58):
they were shooting the magnolia, and then they all of
them went on shoots afterwards, and I met Hannah and
Aspen and she could barely talk, and she ended up
with a terrible she was horribly sick, and she had
to go on oxygen. And because they were breathing in
the greenhouses, the pesticides that they were they were I
(33:21):
think spraying all the magnolia tree seedlings or something like that. Yeah,
but they lived. All of them are live. And you
know what they used to pass are great. Here's the
primary reason. Look at that. Here it is. Yeah, I
love that pary breath. If you make it, you're guaranteed
(33:41):
to have pricked fingers because it's a half of a
sharp wooden toothpick in each cranberry that then sticks into
the cranberry and also sticks into the styrofoam wreath. Afraid,
but you won't die. You won't die. Probably important to
know or something in your fingerships. But but this was handmade.
Reads the whole the whole beginning of the wreath craze
(34:05):
started in this magazine, and we did start a lot
of crazes that we did. We did so the whole
idea of handmade. I mean, I think that um we
were responsible for. I mean, d I Y obviously was
invented before that, but we made it so beautiful and
so creative. And I think you know remember how we
(34:28):
would get thousands of letters every week and they all
started with dear Martha, and it was really about how
this person who made this cake or made this dresser
or what they're reach the million litter mark and Kim
Dumer and her little team and oh and you remember
Susie Wall. She was head of communications and she got
(34:49):
all the litters and Kim Dumer was her assistant, and
now Kim Dumer is still working for us. And uh,
it was it was incredible reading those letters, month after months,
millions of letters. Well in the letters they would always
start dear Martha, but the next sentence was my neighbors,
my family call me the Martha of wherever. And then
(35:13):
there would be a lot of the time there'd be
a polaroid of something they've done, which is just lovely.
But it was because there was this huge hole in
the market between the fancy decorating magazines that like Architectural
Digest or House and Garden that assumed you had money
(35:35):
and a decorator um and the magazines that were for
people who didn't have a lot of money but assumed
you had no taste. So, Martha, you made it possible
for people to respect and still make things. Well, you
assumed that people who didn't have money still wanted things
to be beautiful. Well that's the whole kark star to
(35:57):
make a sheaf of wheat look like that with a
golden rib, so beautiful, so utterly beautiful. And this magnolia
wreath with the and I made this one for the
White House to remember. I made that giant for Mrs Clinton,
and I went and I hung it on the porch
of the White House on the seconds A great photograph.
(36:18):
That is a great photograph. And we we decorated parts
of the White House. We did a tree, we did
the Vice President's house. We did so much in other places,
and we photographed them and recorded them and we had
the best time. We did have a good time. Didn't
you do a gingerbread house at the White House? Or
(36:40):
gingerbread house off the White House. No I did that.
I did. We did for television Abbey. I didn't know that.
And the whole cast of Downton Abbey came to the
magazine to see the gingerbread. It was incredible. Good lord, Yeah,
we've done a lot of great things. Lot. Oh here
(37:01):
I am. I think this is a Ralph Floren jacket.
I was looking for. That is my Ralph Floren jacket.
And now is that the second Christmas issues? The second
Christmas issue December nine? And there I am in front
of my porch doors on Turkey Hill Road. Who knew
I would be living next door to Ralph Lauren here
(37:21):
in Bedford. That's right, And I still have that jacket.
I saved it. Oh yeah, I saved that. You look
great in that jacket. That's so beautiful. And again, uh,
talk about variety. There's nothing repetitive in this December from
the year before. Every single idea is new and different.
We introduced people to stationary too beautiful, how to embost
(37:43):
your own stationary, how to how to create stationary that
looks like it was made at the most extraordinary engravers.
But we also show engraves stationary so that you are
educated in the art of fine stationary and the cheeses
and the silver where, oh, the whole collecting thing. Maria company,
that's Maria. Yeah, you can tell him Maria photograph. She's
(38:07):
now making the most beautiful pottery. Can imagine. Look at
that beautiful photograph. Do you have that hanging in your house?
I have I I have two pictures from that shoot
hanging or what's actually they're sort of propped up. But
this is another art. You know. The whole thing about
(38:27):
being inspired by antique photography was a was a big
deal for people like Mario or Victor Schreeger or John
doug Dale. I mean, remember John, And this is this
is the this is the Chicken story photographed by Victor Schreeger.
And it's one of my favorite stories to tell because
(38:48):
I went to an exhibition of Victor's photographs at a
gallery and he was shooting wild birds and he was
holding He created this thing with a hand's backdrop with
a hole in it and then a slit and you'd
put your hand through the hole to hold the legs
of the bird, and then you'd have a kind of
(39:09):
silhouetted picture of the bird and it would be you'd
be able to see all the details of the bird
because there was no background. And that's the way they
used to take pictures of chickens in catalogs in order
to sell the chickens inform catogs being photographed at the
Turkey Turkey Hill. And so I arrived. Hannah had been
(39:31):
up all night. Hannah was hand Melman was our stylist,
our wonderful styles, dying these backdrops in coffee in her bathtub.
I thought you were going to say, dyeing the pens.
So Nasy was washing the chickens in a big um tub,
(39:53):
you know, a galvanized or an enamel tub um. And
then the chickens were being blown dry with a hair
dryer on a very very long extension cord so that
they were all nice and fluffy for the picture. And
so and Martha was like, yay, go go to the
palid pool and get me a good looking chicken. I
(40:15):
had never I thought to myself, Okay, this is the
first time as an art director I've ever had to
go running after chickens. And then this is one of
my favorite covers. I don't have that jacket from Martha, Yeah, no,
from the shoot. Oh you do know I did, you did.
I wore it for years. Yeah, this is a great
(40:37):
dress as it was not as it was an amid
though it definitely wasn't it was. We'll argue Jay Crewe,
I think, but it's the most natural, completely no makeup,
just standing there, you know, just absolutely beautiful, no hairdresser. Yeah,
(40:58):
and if I had makeup, I applied it myself. But
that was a beautiful pallid play meeting Chicken Palace. I'm
looking at a picture here of this. This is one
of our first inspired inspired stories about a wedding m
(41:19):
hm and Christmas wedding that was your house son, lillipan Lain. This, yes,
and this an amazing story photographed by oh John Dugdale
talking about and John John Dugdale developed a terrible eyesight
problem where he went went blind. And he is a
(41:41):
photographer with the finest, finest sense of of imagery. I
mean nobody had a better sense of imagery. And he
could see less and less and less, and he still
takes photographs. He's still he just had another show. He
uses a large format eight by ten some of us
photographs and we were just looking up, looking up at
(42:03):
the chag for the chag sail. I wasn't going to
sell his photographs, but somebody looked them up. There are
thousands and thousands of tars. Good. I'm happy that, I'm
very happy. But this image of the Stephanotis bouquet, this
is a Stephanotas bouquet, and I threaded the Stephanotis flowers
on ribbon so that long streamers of Stephanotis blossoms. Nobody,
(42:27):
nobody could even Meanwhile, the picture is like three by five.
I know, nobody could even imagine such a thing. And
that started my really really serious interest in weddings. Okay,
(42:48):
as if Living wasn't enough, weddings came second. And this
was in nine five years after the birth of Martha
Stewart Living magazine, we decided to do Martha Stewart Living Weddings.
And this was again, I mean, there were other magazines
devoted to weddings and brides, but this was again taking
(43:13):
the same philosophy of educating and inspiring the many many
brides in America. At that time there were about two million,
five hundred thousand brides and getting married every year. And
this bookay, remember that Bouquet, Okay, you made it. I
stripped I put them all together, hoping that I was
(43:35):
going to get a big, round bouquet of roses and
it turned out to be a heart. And wait, I
thought you planned that. Oh no, it was a mistake,
no idea, you're a kid. Take And everyone said, said,
you don't want a heart for a wedding book, And
I said, I think we said, that's a brilliant idea.
(43:59):
You were the model. Was an editorial assistant. Yeah right,
And I know, really I was reading even even Dorcy.
I was looking as skance, thinking, oh God, just make
it a hard Bookay, one of the most copy bouquet
wedding bocause and florists all over the country were begged
(44:24):
to make heart shaped rose bouquese. But this was a
very special thing. And uh, and the weddings business was born.
And who's the editor? Dorcy was laid away. She wasn't. Well,
we did that with the living, we did that with
your living. I had left to Vandy. I abandoned you
(44:45):
to have Ian, and then I came back for weddings.
And I also came back for television. Okay, so I
worked on that one. How dare you leave to have
a baby? How dare you gave us baby show. I know,
I was very nice. Well, we were all well, we
were we were all having babies, which is why the
(45:05):
Baby Magazine and then the Kids Magazine was such such
good magazines because we were living it. You know, we
were mothers. But you know, I should read my letters
from these these issues. That's here's the first issue from Martha.
I was the editor in chief of this magazine. They surprise, surprise, surprise, surprise.
What else was I doing in these days? Making all
(45:26):
these beautiful year are doing television? Um Daily Show? Oh
my gosh, Well no, I don't art director. I was
an editor in chief of this issue. So and then
then we had oh gosh, Susan Spung and was doing
the food, Sarah Medford who's now writing for so many
(45:47):
Fantastic U and Darcy Miller, she was a senior editor
at Hannah was a senior editor. We had We had
an amazing group and Francis Boswell. People were still working
with people we still talked to and who you'll meet
a lot of these people in the next few years
as we'd continue with our podcast. You know, I think
that the talent at our magazine was really everybody inspired
(46:10):
one another and and you know, I'll be maybe this
is sort of a crass thing to say, but everybody
had this idea that they were all Martha's ideas, but
in fact it was such a community of ideas and
everybody shared their ideas and by the time it got
on the page, you never knew like where it originated,
(46:31):
but that sense of being inspired by each other. People
like Fritz Carsh who had had the most amazing office
and was always finding things out there in the world
and bringing them to show collecting editor and his stories
were just inspiring. So it caused chaos in the antique
(46:52):
world because we did a story on something that he
wanted us to do a story on, and it became
the rage and the prices Scott rocketed. So it's true.
We knew so from the very beginning. We had a
source directory in the back because we knew that people
would want to get things. And in the very first
issue there was a cookie cutter that was made by
(47:14):
this tiny little Moravian shop somewhere in Pennsylvania, and a
week or so after the issue came out, we got
a phone call from them saying he'll help. Yeah, we sold,
So after that we had to start warning yeah, craftspeople
and shops if we were going to feature something, because
(47:36):
so many people would have rights. Actually, our bus Selline
cover of all time, wasn't it the Snowman? No, I
don't know. That was after my time. I don't know.
It wasn't it was? It was our well, you know
what I think the Christmas this was the newstand best
selling issue of all time. And I was recently on
(47:56):
a commercial shoot with John Travolta, and John Travolta said
to me, Martha, I have to show you some pictures
because every Christmas I make the little ice cream snowman
for my family. What was the commercial you're doing at
John Travolta, It was for okay, pre Miracle Growth, but
(48:18):
he said, and he showed me pictures of different years
of his snowman. That's that's the cutest thing. Isn't that nice?
And this is John Travolta whatever cream Snowman with coconut.
I love the idea of that hip people doing like
making things so great all. Do you remember our fight
(48:39):
about what John Dolan picture in this magazine? Yes, um,
it's I actually yes, because I was so upset, so
I know about it. I don't think it ever got
to because I did turn around. I did. I was
(49:00):
not I was not informed of lots of it's the
trunk of a car. But meanwhile, but John Dolan then
became you know, this is a picture that I found.
John Dolan is a famous and he had become as
this car. And the advertising stuff said we had to
(49:23):
remove the where we have, Yeah, we had to remove them,
but they wanted me to remove the picture. I wanted
to the picture. And then the compromise we came up
with was to remove remove the logo because they thought
it would upset the advertisers of other cars. So that
(49:44):
is that was the old fashioned way of thinking. Now, well, meanwhile,
I am now a practically over this proudly. Well, that's
exactly right. I practically quit over this. And there was
a big to do in a big fight. And about
two weeks later I sa Susanne Sobel in the elevator
and she said to me, Gail, guess what we got
(50:06):
advertising from Mercedes because of that picture. I almost I
could have run her neck. Yes, I practically lost my
job over She like politely says, you know, oh, I
know I love this cover. That's baby Jude, my first
(50:27):
grandchild and my only granddaughter, Jude Stewart. And uh, it's
not from in her play. This is her play. Oh,
this is what she was born eleven years ago, so
you figure that out. Truth thousand and twelve. And Jude
and Truman Truman was born already, because there's a Truman here. So, um,
(50:48):
what a fantastic picture. I love this picture so much.
And and any of you who are looking for a
picture of Jude now you will never find it. I
have been I am not allowed to ever show the
faces of my grandchildren. Well probably other all other people do,
but I'm not old. And so there's Jude the back
(51:10):
of her head. But what a she's a beautiful like
almost she's so tall as she's as almost as tall
as I am. And she's eleven and uh, and all
all of these toys have gone. These are now books, yeah,
because they're eleven, ten and eleven. So all these gorgeous
educational toys are now books. Well I guess it taught
(51:34):
them how to read. So listen, we could go on,
and I think we have to do a second, a
second editorial podcasts because um, but I want you to
I want you to say something that you want to
say is older about your years being the editor of
this magazine. What did it? What did it really mean
to you? I think it was incredibly important to me
(51:58):
because it's sort of wrought my life full circle in
a way, because I grew up um in Ireland in
a family that didn't have much money, and Ireland in
general in those days was used to call it a
third world country that just happened to be tacked onto Europe.
But my dad was an architect, and so the idea was,
(52:23):
things can be beautiful. We can't afford to buy them,
we have to make them. So he would make gorgeous,
would print Christmas cards and things like that. And you know,
if you wanted your room painted, you painted your own room,
that kind of thing. And my mother made organic food.
(52:45):
And then I came to America and sort of learned
to be a sophisticated magazine editor, and then I went
I met Martha, and everything came full circle and it
back to you can make something beautiful, and everything can
(53:05):
be beautiful. You can your surroundings should be beautiful, your
children's surroundings should be beautiful, and it's possible for everybody,
and Gail. I guess the thing that I loved the
most was the collaboration, the working with so many really
really talented people, photographers and stylists, and the way the
(53:28):
stories were made, because every story had a team, and
the team would work together to make, you know, things
that just weren't out there in the world that were new. UM,
and that idea of creativity and how each person wants
to be creative themselves. I think we gave that to people.
(53:50):
And then after I left Martha Stewart, I started a
website called Portraits and Creativity where I did videos about
artists and foundations, and I learned to love that idea,
that transition of going from the storytelling on the page
to the storytelling and video, which was so much a
(54:13):
part of our life at Martha Stewart. I think UM
was very inspiring to me and inspired me to take
that next step. But the thing that we didn't talk
about was building the brand and the and going into
Martha by Mail kmart. We haven't touched on any of
those great stories, and I think that that was an
(54:38):
extraordinarily creative moment in my life, and I know it
was for you as well. And UM, we just had
such a good time, such a good time, and we
did great stuff and we were so innovative, you know,
bringing such good design to the kmart audience. And everybody
(55:00):
pooh poo did everybody said you shouldn't do kmart, but
we were exposed to seventy two million Americans, um, and
it we did advertising, we traveled together. I'll have all
my products that I made a kmart because we too.
And nothing has failed, no nothing. The tools, the kitchen
(55:23):
tools are still working absolutely and the garden tools still work.
That's right now. It was a very extraordinary time. But
that was that was also an extraordinary time when we
were still not reliant on uh everything being made overseas.
We were still we were still a lot of American made.
It was just starting to really expand worldwide, and the
(55:43):
and the and uh as one economists said, the world
was becoming flatter and flatter and you know, no boundaries, um,
and sometimes you yearn for the olden days. But but
progress has really shown us that we can still be
tremendously creative and still do so many amazing things. And
(56:04):
and the two of you really helped a tremendous number
of people hone their craft, really, both of you and
Gail and as older we did exhibits. Do you remember
the Coopers and they are direct remember you know, these
were amazing exhibits. And we still have a book to write.
(56:24):
Gail and I put together a book. That book is
one of the most beautiful, beautiful books as I had,
I have it yet you do it, okay, It's one
of the most beautiful books. It's a history of the
creation of the Martha Stewart brand. And this this book
has to be published because well we tried to get
it published back in the day. Oh well, people were
(56:45):
not they didn't understand branding. Boy, But now it will.
It is very important and we will do it. But
really and truly, I love talking to you guys. I
love this, uh, this reminiscing of about a subject that is,
of course when you're en deared to my heart. But
but I'm glad to hear that it meant a lot
to you guys too. And um, and we will have
(57:08):
another conversation about all the other great things. And let's
bring in a couple of other people too. When you
start to meet all the people I have worked with,
you are going to be astonished at the at the amazing,
amazing people that uh, this one company has embraced, and
how they have expanded their horizons beyond anybody's wildest dreams
(57:33):
and gone on to be mother's, father's, aunt's, uncle's, grandma's
whatever is old the mother of three, wife of a
most amazing man, and Gail, mother of two, wife of
an amazing designer. Um, it's it's it makes me very proud.
Thank you, Thank you, Martha. We are so lucky to
(57:56):
have been able to work together and work with you
and to pick back up after thirty years. Uh huh
exactly
You can make something beautiful. Your surroundings should be beautiful,
Your children's surroundings should be beautiful, and it's possible for everybody. Hi, everybody,
this is Martha Stewart and you're listening to my podcast
with Friends, and today that is really what we're doing.
(00:22):
We are talking to two old friends, colleagues, and terribly
important people in my life and in the life of
Martha Stewart Living Magazine. In the winter of the first
issue of Martha Stewart Living Magazine hit the news fans,
we chose to focus on eight key content areas cooking, entertaining, gardening, decorating,
(00:48):
celebrating holidays, housekeeping, crafting, and collecting. As the years came
and went, the mission stayed the same, to teach and
to inspire, to educate and suspire living as we know
it around here put an emphasis on beautiful visuals carefully
developed by our editors and art directors and stylists. And
(01:12):
today with me sitting right in the same room, and
I was so excited as old and Motley, our first
editor in chief of Martha Stewart Living Magazine and our
first art director, Gail Howe, so welcome both of you.
It is so nice to be sitting here reminiscing, and
(01:33):
I'm probably gonna cry during this interview. I'm almost crying
right there you are, and we are emotional because what
we created was something I think very very special that
hit accord and hit a nerve in the American woman's life.
And uh and I really I really feel that way
(01:54):
because the response has been over the years and now
the magazine is thirty one years old and we started it,
as I said, have the first issue right here with me,
and uh, there I am smiling sitting at Turkey Hill
Road on my porch with a basket of this and
(02:17):
that it was a Christmas issue and for me easy
to do right. Christmas was just part of our DNA,
even at that time, because I had been catering and
cooking for other people and entertaining and what I thought
was missing in the on the news stand at that
time was a magazine really devoted to the homemaker. And
(02:39):
I had to find like minded people. It was very important.
And after we found the publisher, which was also quite
a shore, we'll talk about that. Let me introduce you,
Gail Howie. How are you. I'm very well and I'm
very delighted to be here because I love talking about
the olden days, the wonderful, wonderful, magical, creative olden days,
(02:59):
and they were certainly some of the most creative days
I've ever spent in my life. Well, I'm so happy
to hear you say that, because I feel the same way.
And it is getting weepy. I promised not to get weepy.
This is much sterner. And she's she's really, she really
ran the show in the in the in the early
days of the tas absolute nonsense. No, you did. You
(03:22):
ran the show. I was off, you know, gallivanting, doing
all the photo shoots and and all, and you stayed
home and really took care of the text. No, no errors,
no errors. In those early issues, I don't remember correction
for I hardly remember any corrections in that magazine. Well,
it was so important to get it right because we
(03:44):
thought that if people if there was a mistake and
a recipe, it would be such a waste of somebody's
time and money and that was just not fair, exactly,
and and they would then lose faith in your expertness.
And uh, and I always, I've always said since day one,
that that authenticity and expertness is really important if you're
(04:09):
going to be the teacher. And this magazine was posed
as the teacher for the American homemaker, and it was
for women basically, but a lot of men picked it up.
And now with the with a two male household, more
men are are are reading these magazines than ever before.
Um and so it's really a male female audience. And
(04:34):
just it was an incredible effort. And do you remember
our first office is let's describe, Oh God, Time Inc.
Put us. It was at the forty six floor floor.
It was the floor right above the heating and air
conditioning floor of the Time Warner building on sixth Avenue,
(04:55):
and the floor when the heat was on was boiling hot.
It was so homember. So my feet were swollen. I
had to take my shoes off because the floor was
so high, and the carpets were I think what they
gave us the office is the dirtiest carpets in the
entire tobacco smelling, an old, smokey office that nobody wanted
(05:16):
any longer. And we got it. But it was ours,
and it was Time Inc. Which was a male, male orient,
male oriented, but they were very good at what they did.
They just were not quite sure what to do with us.
Every office when we moved in had a dictionary and
(05:37):
a tessaurus, but no phone. Do you know what they
left us alone? They did They didn't know what they didn't.
They would come around periodically and I would say, I'm
so sorry, it's already gone to the printer, or I'm
so sorry it's already been shot. We can't shoot it again,
or whatever, it's too late. Well, do you remember the
(05:59):
story when I was looking for the money, When I
was looking for the partner UM, I first went to
sign new House and he gave me the money to
create the prototype. And I did that with roche rochow You,
Dell and Doug person. Remember Rochelle was the art director
of Self magazine at the time, and and Churchen and
(06:20):
Doug had his own company as a design and they
helped me create a prototype UM which was interesting. It
was a July issue. It had a story about straw
straw hats, yes, and about a bicycle decorated. That was
the issue. And then so I said, well, what are
you gonna call this magazine? And I thought, oh, you
(06:40):
know Martha Stewart something or other. He said, oh, no,
it can't be that it has to be condist something
or other because it's my magazine. So he sent us
on our merry way, and then I went, did I
ever tell you that? You know? I was working for
Alex Lieberman at the time, because I was the art
director at House and Garden right, and I report to
(07:01):
Alex the creative director, the creative director of all Conde Nasket,
who was one of the meanest people I've ever met
in my life. But anyway, he was drakonian um. But
he would come down and he knew that you and
I were friends and that we knew each other and
had met at Clarkson Potter Publishers. And he said, you know,
(07:22):
I don't want to do this magazine. We can't have
a magazine with an editor's name on it. All of
the other editors at Conde Nast would want their name.
Our magazines are kind to be Diane of Briel and Vogue,
and it would have to be. But I think that
he thought you were too strong for him. He was
a maniacal control freak. Particularly he didn't like that's very flattering.
(07:48):
Thank you, You're quite welcome. I would love to be
thought for Oxy because he was scary. He was scary scary.
So we took the prototype then too, Oh my gosh.
I took it to Rupert Murdoch and I first met
with Rupert's team. They said, oh you didn't that was fabulous.
(08:13):
I got. I got to go and meet Rupert. He
was still married to his first wife. He was extremely attractive.
Second wife. Second which one was his second wife? Okay,
you keep track of that, well I can't. I don't know.
I don't keep tracking things like that. But he was
still married to that beautiful Anna, the mother of his
first children. Right, and there's an older sister. Oh, there's
(08:35):
an older sister. They may have the Succession family. Okay, alright,
so then then there is another another family before Anna,
and before Wendy, of course, I mean before Wendy Wendy Dong. Anyway,
that goes on and on. But I go and meet
with the team. The team was extremely interested in the magazine.
(08:57):
But then incomes Rupert, and I make my prison to
and Rupert when he came in the room, silence, just
like in the Succession silence, and they all stood up
and it sort of bowed to him. I mean, this
is even his general counsel and I couldn't believe what's
going on here. I mean, this guy is magnetic, you know,
and he's strong, but and he is a billionaire in
(09:18):
blah blah blah. But but he's Rupert and uh, he's
a magazine guy. This is before he became Fox News
and everything else, and um. And they looked at the magazine,
the prototype, and they said, you know, this is really
this is really inviting, and this is really interesting and
we would love to do it, but we're selling our magazines.
(09:39):
We don't believe in the future of the printed word.
That's what he told me this, And they said, we
suggest that was they were just a just sold seventeen magazine,
are they We're going to sell it? And they knew
what they were doing. They were they were getting out
of the printage magazine, going into TV and more into
(10:02):
the newspaper world. So um. So then I said, I said, okay,
well what should I do? I mean, I hear I
have this fantastic idea, and Rupert said, I take it
to time, And so I took it to time. I
never knew that story. And so I met with Red
Brock and Chris Mirror and who else was there a
(10:25):
few other guys. We went to Caravelle Restaurant, which was
their lunch room basically, And Caraville is owned by friends
of mine who are now the parents of Sweet Green.
Do you know that? No, I didn't know that. Oh yeah,
their son started Sweet Green and they all became billionaires
because every they cut. The convoluted history is really kind
(10:47):
of interesting. And anyway, so I take the prototype to lunch.
I showed the whole thing at Caraville Restaurant, which is
a little bit um and you're not supposed to take
out papers and stuff with those fancy French lunch places.
But I did it anyway, and the boys um looked
at it and they said, geez, this is fantastic. He said,
(11:08):
but this is the Julyisha, What would you do next July?
It looks like you covered fourth of July here. And
I said, gentlemen, you just don't understand what creativity is.
We have the best team, the best ideas. I could
go on for Fourth of July for at least thirty years,
which is exactly what we did, right. And we never
repeated a recipe. We never repeated anything. Um, maybe we
(11:32):
decorated a bicycle started like a bicycle we did twenty
five years ago, but not really. I mean, creativity is boundless,
and and and living. I kept saying to them, living
is limitless, Living is limitless. Were you know, into the
second or third millennial of human life here of productive
(11:54):
human life, and it's limitless. It changes all the time.
So anyway, they bit and they bought, they bought and
became our partners and they and they let me start
to hire the team. And that's when we got together
in big time. Now, you were at Clarkson Potter at
the time. Then I was in House and Garden. You
were still at House and Garden. Oh my gosh, I
(12:15):
thought you were you had already moved over to books,
but the books books came came first. So that's what happened. Okay.
I was trying to figure out that that chronology, and
you were you were also doing right doing books. So
what were you doing at that particular time? I was
doing your I was trying to get you to finish
the Old House book. Oh, the new Old House, the
(12:36):
new Old House, and you were really really late, as
with your deadlines. That turned out to be a really
good book. It was a great book, and you know
people are buying that book now. I still have it.
I Sews the House. If you don't have that book,
you should look for it. It's on It's on Amazon.
But it's a good book because it really told you
how to restore and rebuild an old house. And I
(12:59):
did it with my brother George right, who was a contractor.
It was so great. So um so is Older came
as editor in chief. I didn't know how to make
a magazine and is Older knew how to edit. She
knew how to get writers to write, and she knew
how to put together an issue. She knew what a
table of contents was. And you worked in magazines before,
(13:20):
so you had a magazine. I had been a magazine
editor until I had a baby, and I thought, well,
magazines are too time consuming. I'll do books instead because
there's never really a deadline, which turned out to be true.
So I did magazines for crib into the office. I
bought a porter crib for the office because so many
(13:42):
of us had babies, and I had the worst fight
with the time Inc. Accounting people because they said it
was a personal expense, and I kept explaining that no,
we all have babies. We need, we need somewhere to
put them more. Though I did on that hot floor,
they were at least warm. Yeah, you know. And but
(14:03):
we learned how to We learned, and you put together
an amazing team of creatives. Gail was like a magnet
for creativity, and um and so many of those they're
still all our friends, they are still all we work with.
What I wanted to ask you of your of the
pot who was the first photographer that we really really
(14:24):
clicked with? You know? I think it was Bill Alebrono
Wits and and can I tell my photography story? So
you know, I had been at House and Garden and
I'd been making friends with photographers and making relationships with photographers.
And when I left there to come to work for you,
and at time inc um I we had to get
(14:48):
busy right away. We started August one. We had our
first magazine on the news stand, the Christmas issue on
November twelve, which is an unheard of short period it
of time. But we had to get busy right away.
So I immediately started calling photographers and they all said
to me, I can't work for you, I can't work
(15:08):
for you, I can't work for you. And Finally somebody said, Gail,
you have been You and Martha have been embargoed by
Conde Nast. They sent us all a letter, none of
us are allowed to work for you. Well, I was
terrified because here I am, I had that responsibility, but
(15:29):
I wasn't terrified because I knew there was other talent
all around us. And we ended up hiring people who
were our friends from books. Chris Baker, who you worked with.
I worked with Chris so much, and and you did
one of your at least one, maybe two of your
books with Chris Baker, um Maria Blado, who was Elizabeth
(15:50):
Schene who was shooting your garden book, and that we
all worked on in between issues, and they hoped change
the look of the the story to the story was fantastic.
And then all those other photographers ultimately were allowed to
(16:10):
come back and work with us. There was also the
problem of photographers being snotty, and there was the one
who said, I don't want to photograph a housewife in Connecticut.
Who is that? Do you remember that? Oh? You know,
(16:34):
I think people really underestimated us in the beginning. A
lot of people, not just the photographers, but I didn't
know it was going to look completely different from anything
that we were. The modern Remember how we used to
talk about the television program called thirty something that was
all the rage at the time, and it was very
modern and it was aesthetically modern and good looking, and
(16:57):
we really thought, well, if that can be six testful,
we can completely change the aesthetics of the Woman's magazine. Well,
when we put the I mean this first issue it
was Christmas. But in this issue we have not only
a stencil for fabulous stars and moons, we have full
page picture of three forks and a butter knife, but
(17:20):
the most beautiful forks and butter knife, and and the
stenciled tablecloth that we made for the table in silver
silver stensil. People went nuts over these craft ideas. Crafting
became like a rage, and home crafting became a rage.
Making fantastic food that looked like it was prepared at
(17:40):
Lagrani in New York City. Look at this soup, the
pasta homemade pasta carrot and um. Let me see red
pepper pasta and basil pasta cut into stars, served in
a very fabulous boullion. But Martha, you changed the way
recipes were div eloped and photographed. You did it like
(18:02):
you were doing your books, And I think that's one
of the reasons we were able to do the magazine
the first issue so quickly. But but other magazines didn't
do the process that you created. You created a new
process for for recipes. I did. And it was like
one person or two people in the kitchen, not a gotten,
(18:23):
you know, giant crew. Each person was responsible for doing
something like I remember doing this whole thing with one
other person. She was phenomenal and fearless, totally fearless. In
the beginning, Alexis is doing the Oh look at this.
This was my favorite dessert, sponge sugar with a trial,
(18:46):
fabulous caramelized tweel at homemade ice cream, so elegant. But
then I think Alexis isn't here doing her her wrapping paper.
Oh yes, which was on which was on browncraft paper,
browncraft paper and paint. That changed the whole idea of
wrapping for people. You can Oh, there she is, looking amazing,
(19:09):
making a mess in my on my cencil floors in
my hall away, making the most beautiful wrapping paper. And
there she is, I mean, and it's and the the
wrappings were gorgeous. But this is what we did. We
we kind of we didn't internalize it at all. We
kind of expanded the whole idea of making doing creating
(19:29):
at home in a very sophisticated way, but not so
sophisticated that it couldn't do it to everybody. Now, Remember,
I think this was like an eye opener to people.
It really was. And didn't we create this magazine on
a Macintosh? None of us had ever used a computer
(19:50):
for layout and photography and all of that. I don't
know if you used a computer used for I remember
I bought an ID in two, so it was very
important for me to be totally modern and technologically savvy.
And you guys lived up to the desire because you really,
(20:12):
you really, it was so exciting. It was remember your name,
Tammy Tamara Tomorrow, who is married to Jeff Jervis, who
found it Entertainment Weekly. But I didn't find that out
until later. But she sat up the whole system and
it was hilarious because we had hard disks that we
(20:32):
passed around. Oh God, that was the end, you know,
you finished something and hand the physical disk to somebody
else to do that. Nobody had done that before with
an illustrated magazine of this magnitude. Nobody even there was
no Wired magazine at the time. That mean that came later.
(20:55):
But but other other Vogue and I came from Conde NaSTA.
We were doing paste up, we were doing photostats and
paste up, and that we should be so proud of
the fact that absolutely, and that was so innovative and
so fantastic. And this cookies for children, I mean, here
(21:15):
we have children making sophisticated, delicious cookies. There's my little
friend Monica pastor Neck and all these little neighbor kids
came in. I remember, and my um my nephew is
in this in this issue. In this issue, I think
they borrowed and sold children from everywhere. And the cookies
(21:37):
are so delicious, the recipes and beautiful looking. Well see
that's the thing about the recipes. This is what I recall.
There would be a recipe that would be developed, and
that person who was developing it, you and Laura in
the in those days, would be responsible for doing it
again for the camera. And so there was no you know,
none of the things, none of the tricks of food style.
(22:02):
From the beginning, I said, there's going to be no
figuri The food is going to look just like it
looks if you made it yourself. And there is no figuery,
there's no oil, glazes, ice cream made that mashed potatoes,
masotto cream, no nothing fake at all, and you can
and you can eat it right after you shoot at you,
(22:23):
which we did, which we did because otherwise we were starving.
But remember, yeah, remember shooting in Florida in the Keys,
the little children with ice cream because it was real
ice cream. It just kept Meanwhile, everybody dresses, you know,
that's I think that's in this issue. That's why I
(22:46):
brought this issue because that Florida shoot was I was
pregnant with August and I brought Maud with me. Maud
was like two or three. I still on issue number one,
but oh there's there's Kirk Sophie. Oh yeah, and we
(23:08):
had we made all of the of the dresses for
the children. I mean, that's the kind of extent that
we and I learned something from you on this one, Martha.
These are all these beautiful ice creams that we shot.
I think Davison star shot that, but you, you, you
made the most beautiful scoop and then each one was frozen,
(23:29):
so that when it came to the camera, which we
did not shoot in Florida. The kids we shot in
Florida solouettes, Oh my gosh, so fabulous. So you have
to look at all your early magazines of Martha Stewart living.
I mean, I love that layout. That was so pretty
(23:50):
and they were getting their chocolate all over there. Look
at that. You can see the big splash of chocolate
on the little girl's art. And we just kept shooting out.
Uh but you know what the other story that was
so fun and on that remember the storm. Oh yes,
we had this idea of creating this romantic dinner on
(24:10):
the beach and we put I don't know, four or
six posts in the ground. All of this this was
in the Key No No, that island later that this
is the one. You were standing up on a on
a on a ladder and I was on another ladder
(24:32):
and we building that building that beautiful, beautiful. So it's
this kind of drapy romand to having a fire permit
building fires anyway on hoping that the fire department wouldn't
catch on. So there was a storm coming and all
of a sudden, on the horizon we saw this like
(24:53):
black cloud coming and the wind was coming up, and
we all looked at you, like, what are we supposed
to do now? And you yelled to us keep going,
keep going. Only I knew it was our only chance.
And that's it. That's the shot. Vicky Incredible immediately put
(25:14):
all of her equipment in the car because it was
about to pour. The cloud moved over us, poured poured rain,
but it was and and then behind the rain cloud
was the sunset, the sunset. She ran out of the
car with her camera and she got it. It was
(25:36):
we had I would say, maybe ten minutes of light
and then the rest of it we had to fake
the next day because we totally lost drama and nobody
was executed. We were so we were so dedicated to
getting that picture. And this is before we were doing
really serious television. This is before we were synergizing with
(25:59):
all the other signs of media that we got into.
But we knew that what we were creating a day
in and day out was evergreen material that is as
good today as it was then. And uh and that
has been proven. That has been proven because these recipes
in are in many of our books. Many of these
(26:20):
the things that we created for the magazine ended up
in a book or on television. Uh. But it never
felt like we were reusing and reusing. It always felt
it was so experimental. It was and its And so
this is Past Christian and the same issue. I mean,
this is kind of an extraordinary istue because this is
(26:41):
also an incredible story. We went shrimping, and we were
there on the last day that the shrimp boats were
allowed to go out, but there was like a thunderstorm,
and so we couldn't shrimp. But then they said, we'll
take you out. We can fake it. But here's beautiful
Diro Diro Pucket, who was one of one of our
big helpers in the early days of Inspiration. She had
(27:03):
a beautiful house in Past Christian. If you know that
part of Louisiana, you'll you'll know that Past Christiane was
completely destroyed by Hurricane was that Katrina? Katrina? That's right,
Katrina that destroyed New Orleans. Her house, her found generations,
a big house. All that was left of that house
(27:24):
where the front stairs. Remember the picture I do, And
we have a picture of Deerro and her husband sitting
on their front steps, three stone steps and nothing behind them.
A three story monster house was blown away. Do you
remember why we were shooting everything in the south for
the summer issue is because it was the middle of winter.
(27:44):
Because we had just started, we had to shoot everything
in the wrong seasons. So that Christmas issue we did
in August, and I'm not sure I've ever and then
the summer and we we did a lot of crazy stuff.
And I always said, well, I've had three Christmas this
year because I would do a Christmas in August for
(28:06):
the magazine, and I would do a Christmas for television,
then I would do another another Christmas for somebody else,
and then by the time Christmas came, you always wanted
to travel, because that's right. That's when I started taking
the kids on those big trips around the wall. You know,
that's right, because it was a getaway from redecorating again.
But um, But so getting back to the photographers and
(28:27):
that first issue you mentioned Bill Lebrono Wits. I just
got a nice letter from Bill just this week, and
he's not living in Bedford any longer, you know, up
to where their skihouse was, and he's and he's anxious
to come and have dinner and talk somewhere because he
was fondly remembering all those early days used to these
(28:52):
Comrads catalogs. And Laura Harrigan, who was our one of
our designers, new Bill and she was working freelance on
the Conrads catalog, and so she introduced us to Bill,
and Bill came over and showed us his portfolio, and
I just loved the way he made things like Conrad's
(29:16):
furniture look active. You know, the cover had somebody carrying
the sofa into the house instead of like the more
typical way of doing things. You know, he was able
to get movement into things that were normally shot in
a very static way. But that that was one of
the things that was really different. One of the early
rules that was in the first outline was every room
(29:40):
needs to look as the family has just left it
or is about to come in. So glosses need to
have water in them, pillows need to have a little
bit of a dent in them, and people like Bill
understood that. So everything didn't look like a cattle, nothing
(30:00):
looked like a catalog. Everything looked and it didn't look
like other magazines overly perfected like Gourmet in those days,
or Architectural Digest, in those days that like weird lighting,
and we were using natural light, which you did in
your books, which all of our photographers cared about. Natural
(30:22):
light made everything look more delicious and more real, and
it meant you had to work really fast, and I
think that probably helped. We got a lot done every
single day, a lot, and we published everything. I mean
I came from a house and garden where they had
mountains and mountains of unpublished material. You know, they just
(30:42):
had files and files and files, and we said about
doing a lineup. We shot the lineup, We published the lineup.
Every cent had to go on the page because they
gave us so little money. Um well, sing back, that
was a lot of money in those days. Because now
(31:03):
the budgets are like one can true, I know what
they used to be. And when I think of the
amazing upholstery and the amazing amazing coverlets and pillows, throw
pillows that we were able to to make for the
magazine for those photos, you can't do that now. No,
But compared to everybody else, the cost per page was
(31:28):
so low. But I was proud of that. Yeah, I
was very proud that we had a budget and we
stuck to it well we didn't have an option and yet,
but it made us even more creative and I really
I was very very proud of that all through the years. Well,
and we were doing that stuff ourselves. We were sewing things,
we were doing the painting, the painting on the you know,
(31:49):
converting a dresser and doing the painting and changing the knobs.
And one of my favorites was that was that French
designer who did the painted furniture. Who was that French
designer that did the beautiful buchanicles botanicles on on a
creamy background. Right, you know, my sister bought that from
the magazine. She did that story. She has it, she does,
(32:11):
she still has it in her dining room. But that
was such a beautiful story. That idea came from that
wonderful Belgian designer who did that kind of thing in
the nineties. But it was essentially like a Dave Coupas. Yeah,
it was so beautiful and we got inspired by so
many different things all over the world. When we did
(32:33):
the Reads, Reads, I just loved. We decided we were
going to do not only a story about Reads of
all the states and the magazine, but we created a
book and Hannah worked on that. Remember with the cranberry.
I will never forget that. And you know that she
got Remember when everybody got sick and we arrived that
(32:58):
they were shooting the magnolia, and then they all of
them went on shoots afterwards, and I met Hannah and
Aspen and she could barely talk, and she ended up
with a terrible she was horribly sick, and she had
to go on oxygen. And because they were breathing in
the greenhouses, the pesticides that they were they were I
(33:21):
think spraying all the magnolia tree seedlings or something like that. Yeah,
but they lived. All of them are live. And you
know what they used to pass are great. Here's the
primary reason. Look at that. Here it is. Yeah, I
love that pary breath. If you make it, you're guaranteed
(33:41):
to have pricked fingers because it's a half of a
sharp wooden toothpick in each cranberry that then sticks into
the cranberry and also sticks into the styrofoam wreath. Afraid,
but you won't die. You won't die. Probably important to
know or something in your fingerships. But but this was handmade.
Reads the whole the whole beginning of the wreath craze
(34:05):
started in this magazine, and we did start a lot
of crazes that we did. We did so the whole
idea of handmade. I mean, I think that um we
were responsible for. I mean, d I Y obviously was
invented before that, but we made it so beautiful and
so creative. And I think you know remember how we
(34:28):
would get thousands of letters every week and they all
started with dear Martha, and it was really about how
this person who made this cake or made this dresser
or what they're reach the million litter mark and Kim
Dumer and her little team and oh and you remember
Susie Wall. She was head of communications and she got
(34:49):
all the litters and Kim Dumer was her assistant, and
now Kim Dumer is still working for us. And uh,
it was it was incredible reading those letters, month after months,
millions of letters. Well in the letters they would always
start dear Martha, but the next sentence was my neighbors,
my family call me the Martha of wherever. And then
(35:13):
there would be a lot of the time there'd be
a polaroid of something they've done, which is just lovely.
But it was because there was this huge hole in
the market between the fancy decorating magazines that like Architectural
Digest or House and Garden that assumed you had money
(35:35):
and a decorator um and the magazines that were for
people who didn't have a lot of money but assumed
you had no taste. So, Martha, you made it possible
for people to respect and still make things. Well, you
assumed that people who didn't have money still wanted things
to be beautiful. Well that's the whole kark star to
(35:57):
make a sheaf of wheat look like that with a
golden rib, so beautiful, so utterly beautiful. And this magnolia
wreath with the and I made this one for the
White House to remember. I made that giant for Mrs Clinton,
and I went and I hung it on the porch
of the White House on the seconds A great photograph.
(36:18):
That is a great photograph. And we we decorated parts
of the White House. We did a tree, we did
the Vice President's house. We did so much in other places,
and we photographed them and recorded them and we had
the best time. We did have a good time. Didn't
you do a gingerbread house at the White House? Or
(36:40):
gingerbread house off the White House. No I did that.
I did. We did for television Abbey. I didn't know that.
And the whole cast of Downton Abbey came to the
magazine to see the gingerbread. It was incredible. Good lord, Yeah,
we've done a lot of great things. Lot. Oh here
(37:01):
I am. I think this is a Ralph Floren jacket.
I was looking for. That is my Ralph Floren jacket.
And now is that the second Christmas issues? The second
Christmas issue December nine? And there I am in front
of my porch doors on Turkey Hill Road. Who knew
I would be living next door to Ralph Lauren here
(37:21):
in Bedford. That's right, And I still have that jacket.
I saved it. Oh yeah, I saved that. You look
great in that jacket. That's so beautiful. And again, uh,
talk about variety. There's nothing repetitive in this December from
the year before. Every single idea is new and different.
We introduced people to stationary too beautiful, how to embost
(37:43):
your own stationary, how to how to create stationary that
looks like it was made at the most extraordinary engravers.
But we also show engraves stationary so that you are
educated in the art of fine stationary and the cheeses
and the silver where, oh, the whole collecting thing. Maria company,
that's Maria. Yeah, you can tell him Maria photograph. She's
(38:07):
now making the most beautiful pottery. Can imagine. Look at
that beautiful photograph. Do you have that hanging in your house?
I have I I have two pictures from that shoot
hanging or what's actually they're sort of propped up. But
this is another art. You know. The whole thing about
(38:27):
being inspired by antique photography was a was a big
deal for people like Mario or Victor Schreeger or John
doug Dale. I mean, remember John, And this is this
is the this is the Chicken story photographed by Victor Schreeger.
And it's one of my favorite stories to tell because
(38:48):
I went to an exhibition of Victor's photographs at a
gallery and he was shooting wild birds and he was
holding He created this thing with a hand's backdrop with
a hole in it and then a slit and you'd
put your hand through the hole to hold the legs
of the bird, and then you'd have a kind of
(39:09):
silhouetted picture of the bird and it would be you'd
be able to see all the details of the bird
because there was no background. And that's the way they
used to take pictures of chickens in catalogs in order
to sell the chickens inform catogs being photographed at the
Turkey Turkey Hill. And so I arrived. Hannah had been
(39:31):
up all night. Hannah was hand Melman was our stylist,
our wonderful styles, dying these backdrops in coffee in her bathtub.
I thought you were going to say, dyeing the pens.
So Nasy was washing the chickens in a big um tub,
(39:53):
you know, a galvanized or an enamel tub um. And
then the chickens were being blown dry with a hair
dryer on a very very long extension cord so that
they were all nice and fluffy for the picture. And
so and Martha was like, yay, go go to the
palid pool and get me a good looking chicken. I
(40:15):
had never I thought to myself, Okay, this is the
first time as an art director I've ever had to
go running after chickens. And then this is one of
my favorite covers. I don't have that jacket from Martha, Yeah, no,
from the shoot. Oh you do know I did, you did.
I wore it for years. Yeah, this is a great
(40:37):
dress as it was not as it was an amid
though it definitely wasn't it was. We'll argue Jay Crewe,
I think, but it's the most natural, completely no makeup,
just standing there, you know, just absolutely beautiful, no hairdresser. Yeah,
(40:58):
and if I had makeup, I applied it myself. But
that was a beautiful pallid play meeting Chicken Palace. I'm
looking at a picture here of this. This is one
of our first inspired inspired stories about a wedding m
(41:19):
hm and Christmas wedding that was your house son, lillipan Lain. This, yes,
and this an amazing story photographed by oh John Dugdale
talking about and John John Dugdale developed a terrible eyesight
problem where he went went blind. And he is a
(41:41):
photographer with the finest, finest sense of of imagery. I
mean nobody had a better sense of imagery. And he
could see less and less and less, and he still
takes photographs. He's still he just had another show. He
uses a large format eight by ten some of us
photographs and we were just looking up, looking up at
(42:03):
the chag for the chag sail. I wasn't going to
sell his photographs, but somebody looked them up. There are
thousands and thousands of tars. Good. I'm happy that, I'm
very happy. But this image of the Stephanotis bouquet, this
is a Stephanotas bouquet, and I threaded the Stephanotis flowers
on ribbon so that long streamers of Stephanotis blossoms. Nobody,
(42:27):
nobody could even Meanwhile, the picture is like three by five.
I know, nobody could even imagine such a thing. And
that started my really really serious interest in weddings. Okay,
(42:48):
as if Living wasn't enough, weddings came second. And this
was in nine five years after the birth of Martha
Stewart Living magazine, we decided to do Martha Stewart Living Weddings.
And this was again, I mean, there were other magazines
devoted to weddings and brides, but this was again taking
(43:13):
the same philosophy of educating and inspiring the many many
brides in America. At that time there were about two million,
five hundred thousand brides and getting married every year. And
this bookay, remember that Bouquet, Okay, you made it. I
stripped I put them all together, hoping that I was
(43:35):
going to get a big, round bouquet of roses and
it turned out to be a heart. And wait, I
thought you planned that. Oh no, it was a mistake,
no idea, you're a kid. Take And everyone said, said,
you don't want a heart for a wedding book, And
I said, I think we said, that's a brilliant idea.
(43:59):
You were the model. Was an editorial assistant. Yeah right,
And I know, really I was reading even even Dorcy.
I was looking as skance, thinking, oh God, just make
it a hard Bookay, one of the most copy bouquet
wedding bocause and florists all over the country were begged
(44:24):
to make heart shaped rose bouquese. But this was a
very special thing. And uh, and the weddings business was born.
And who's the editor? Dorcy was laid away. She wasn't. Well,
we did that with the living, we did that with
your living. I had left to Vandy. I abandoned you
(44:45):
to have Ian, and then I came back for weddings.
And I also came back for television. Okay, so I
worked on that one. How dare you leave to have
a baby? How dare you gave us baby show. I know,
I was very nice. Well, we were all well, we
were we were all having babies, which is why the
(45:05):
Baby Magazine and then the Kids Magazine was such such
good magazines because we were living it. You know, we
were mothers. But you know, I should read my letters
from these these issues. That's here's the first issue from Martha.
I was the editor in chief of this magazine. They surprise, surprise, surprise, surprise.
What else was I doing in these days? Making all
(45:26):
these beautiful year are doing television? Um Daily Show? Oh
my gosh, Well no, I don't art director. I was
an editor in chief of this issue. So and then
then we had oh gosh, Susan Spung and was doing
the food, Sarah Medford who's now writing for so many
(45:47):
Fantastic U and Darcy Miller, she was a senior editor
at Hannah was a senior editor. We had We had
an amazing group and Francis Boswell. People were still working
with people we still talked to and who you'll meet
a lot of these people in the next few years
as we'd continue with our podcast. You know, I think
that the talent at our magazine was really everybody inspired
(46:10):
one another and and you know, I'll be maybe this
is sort of a crass thing to say, but everybody
had this idea that they were all Martha's ideas, but
in fact it was such a community of ideas and
everybody shared their ideas and by the time it got
on the page, you never knew like where it originated,
(46:31):
but that sense of being inspired by each other. People
like Fritz Carsh who had had the most amazing office
and was always finding things out there in the world
and bringing them to show collecting editor and his stories
were just inspiring. So it caused chaos in the antique
(46:52):
world because we did a story on something that he
wanted us to do a story on, and it became
the rage and the prices Scott rocketed. So it's true.
We knew so from the very beginning. We had a
source directory in the back because we knew that people
would want to get things. And in the very first
issue there was a cookie cutter that was made by
(47:14):
this tiny little Moravian shop somewhere in Pennsylvania, and a
week or so after the issue came out, we got
a phone call from them saying he'll help. Yeah, we sold,
So after that we had to start warning yeah, craftspeople
and shops if we were going to feature something, because
(47:36):
so many people would have rights. Actually, our bus Selline
cover of all time, wasn't it the Snowman? No, I
don't know. That was after my time. I don't know.
It wasn't it was? It was our well, you know
what I think the Christmas this was the newstand best
selling issue of all time. And I was recently on
(47:56):
a commercial shoot with John Travolta, and John Travolta said
to me, Martha, I have to show you some pictures
because every Christmas I make the little ice cream snowman
for my family. What was the commercial you're doing at
John Travolta, It was for okay, pre Miracle Growth, but
(48:18):
he said, and he showed me pictures of different years
of his snowman. That's that's the cutest thing. Isn't that nice?
And this is John Travolta whatever cream Snowman with coconut.
I love the idea of that hip people doing like
making things so great all. Do you remember our fight
(48:39):
about what John Dolan picture in this magazine? Yes, um,
it's I actually yes, because I was so upset, so
I know about it. I don't think it ever got
to because I did turn around. I did. I was
(49:00):
not I was not informed of lots of it's the
trunk of a car. But meanwhile, but John Dolan then
became you know, this is a picture that I found.
John Dolan is a famous and he had become as
this car. And the advertising stuff said we had to
(49:23):
remove the where we have, Yeah, we had to remove them,
but they wanted me to remove the picture. I wanted
to the picture. And then the compromise we came up
with was to remove remove the logo because they thought
it would upset the advertisers of other cars. So that
(49:44):
is that was the old fashioned way of thinking. Now, well, meanwhile,
I am now a practically over this proudly. Well, that's
exactly right. I practically quit over this. And there was
a big to do in a big fight. And about
two weeks later I sa Susanne Sobel in the elevator
and she said to me, Gail, guess what we got
(50:06):
advertising from Mercedes because of that picture. I almost I
could have run her neck. Yes, I practically lost my
job over She like politely says, you know, oh, I
know I love this cover. That's baby Jude, my first
(50:27):
grandchild and my only granddaughter, Jude Stewart. And uh, it's
not from in her play. This is her play. Oh,
this is what she was born eleven years ago, so
you figure that out. Truth thousand and twelve. And Jude
and Truman Truman was born already, because there's a Truman here. So, um,
(50:48):
what a fantastic picture. I love this picture so much.
And and any of you who are looking for a
picture of Jude now you will never find it. I
have been I am not allowed to ever show the
faces of my grandchildren. Well probably other all other people do,
but I'm not old. And so there's Jude the back
(51:10):
of her head. But what a she's a beautiful like
almost she's so tall as she's as almost as tall
as I am. And she's eleven and uh, and all
all of these toys have gone. These are now books, yeah,
because they're eleven, ten and eleven. So all these gorgeous
educational toys are now books. Well I guess it taught
(51:34):
them how to read. So listen, we could go on,
and I think we have to do a second, a
second editorial podcasts because um, but I want you to
I want you to say something that you want to
say is older about your years being the editor of
this magazine. What did it? What did it really mean
to you? I think it was incredibly important to me
(51:58):
because it's sort of wrought my life full circle in
a way, because I grew up um in Ireland in
a family that didn't have much money, and Ireland in
general in those days was used to call it a
third world country that just happened to be tacked onto Europe.
But my dad was an architect, and so the idea was,
(52:23):
things can be beautiful. We can't afford to buy them,
we have to make them. So he would make gorgeous,
would print Christmas cards and things like that. And you know,
if you wanted your room painted, you painted your own room,
that kind of thing. And my mother made organic food.
(52:45):
And then I came to America and sort of learned
to be a sophisticated magazine editor, and then I went
I met Martha, and everything came full circle and it
back to you can make something beautiful, and everything can
(53:05):
be beautiful. You can your surroundings should be beautiful, your
children's surroundings should be beautiful, and it's possible for everybody,
and Gail. I guess the thing that I loved the
most was the collaboration, the working with so many really
really talented people, photographers and stylists, and the way the
(53:28):
stories were made, because every story had a team, and
the team would work together to make, you know, things
that just weren't out there in the world that were new. UM,
and that idea of creativity and how each person wants
to be creative themselves. I think we gave that to people.
(53:50):
And then after I left Martha Stewart, I started a
website called Portraits and Creativity where I did videos about
artists and foundations, and I learned to love that idea,
that transition of going from the storytelling on the page
to the storytelling and video, which was so much a
(54:13):
part of our life at Martha Stewart. I think UM
was very inspiring to me and inspired me to take
that next step. But the thing that we didn't talk
about was building the brand and the and going into
Martha by Mail kmart. We haven't touched on any of
those great stories, and I think that that was an
(54:38):
extraordinarily creative moment in my life, and I know it
was for you as well. And UM, we just had
such a good time, such a good time, and we
did great stuff and we were so innovative, you know,
bringing such good design to the kmart audience. And everybody
(55:00):
pooh poo did everybody said you shouldn't do kmart, but
we were exposed to seventy two million Americans, um, and
it we did advertising, we traveled together. I'll have all
my products that I made a kmart because we too.
And nothing has failed, no nothing. The tools, the kitchen
(55:23):
tools are still working absolutely and the garden tools still work.
That's right now. It was a very extraordinary time. But
that was that was also an extraordinary time when we
were still not reliant on uh everything being made overseas.
We were still we were still a lot of American made.
It was just starting to really expand worldwide, and the
(55:43):
and the and uh as one economists said, the world
was becoming flatter and flatter and you know, no boundaries, um,
and sometimes you yearn for the olden days. But but
progress has really shown us that we can still be
tremendously creative and still do so many amazing things. And
(56:04):
and the two of you really helped a tremendous number
of people hone their craft, really, both of you and
Gail and as older we did exhibits. Do you remember
the Coopers and they are direct remember you know, these
were amazing exhibits. And we still have a book to write.
(56:24):
Gail and I put together a book. That book is
one of the most beautiful, beautiful books as I had,
I have it yet you do it, okay, It's one
of the most beautiful books. It's a history of the
creation of the Martha Stewart brand. And this this book
has to be published because well we tried to get
it published back in the day. Oh well, people were
(56:45):
not they didn't understand branding. Boy, But now it will.
It is very important and we will do it. But
really and truly, I love talking to you guys. I
love this, uh, this reminiscing of about a subject that is,
of course when you're en deared to my heart. But
but I'm glad to hear that it meant a lot
to you guys too. And um, and we will have
(57:08):
another conversation about all the other great things. And let's
bring in a couple of other people too. When you
start to meet all the people I have worked with,
you are going to be astonished at the at the amazing,
amazing people that uh, this one company has embraced, and
how they have expanded their horizons beyond anybody's wildest dreams
(57:33):
and gone on to be mother's, father's, aunt's, uncle's, grandma's
whatever is old the mother of three, wife of a
most amazing man, and Gail, mother of two, wife of
an amazing designer. Um, it's it's it makes me very proud.
Thank you, Thank you, Martha. We are so lucky to
(57:56):
have been able to work together and work with you
and to pick back up after thirty years. Uh huh
exactly
Host
Martha Stewart
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