Legendary Fashion Journalist Ingrid Sischy Dies Of Breast Cancer – Former Editor-In-Chief Of ‘Interview’ Was Just 63

Legendary fashion journalist Ingrid Sischy, the former editor-in-chief of Interview magazine, died of breast cancer. She was 63.

Sischy was one of the rare fashion and art journalists who helped people gain valuable insight into the elusive and often seemingly unapproachable world of art, fashion, and culture. She certainly made a mark in the pre-internet world, where reliable information about fashion could only be gained from magazines. During most of the 1980s and the 1990s, Ingrid Sischy lent her remarkable writing skills to the best of the fashion magazines and without hesitation let her written word flow with utmost impunity.

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Incidentally, Ingrid Sischy also worked as the photography and fashion critic for the New Yorker from 1988 to 1996, before joining Andy Warhol’s Interview, where she continued for 18 long and wonderful years, reported MSN. In midst of the glamor world, Sischy has always been the one to cut through the confusing jargon and offer a much clearer perspective, which made avant-garde accessible and approachable without inhibitions for those who always wanted to try and experiment but were unsure how to take the first step.

For many, the bookstore around the corner or at the nearest intersection was as close to the fashion world they could get, and Sischy made sure her readers were able to understand art and fashion with the simplest gesture of buying a fashion magazine. At 27, Ingrid Sischy took over the reins of Artforum and helped it blossom into a full-fledged platform for liberal feminism and postmodern art.

In the first ever issue after Sischy becoming the editor Artforum, she boldly chatted with “queer” partners Gilbert and George. Perhaps Sischy was so impressed by the couple that she had a wonderful relationship with her spouse, Sandra Brant, with whom she would serve as international co-editors of Italian, German, and Spanish Vanity Fair in the late 2000s, reported Slate.

During the times when gay and lesbian relationship weren’t openly tolerated, Ingrid Sischy not only spearheaded the crusade against those who used their power to abuse such relationships and the people, but even took on those who advocated racism. Sischy had once written that “[b]eauty is a call to admiration, not to action.” However, it was her actions that gave the fashion world power to influence before the internet made it even more so.

Remembering Ingrid Sischy, Vanity Fair editor-in-chief Graydon Carter, rightly summarized her lifelong efforts.

“When she sat down to write, she looked for truth, not fantasy.”

[Image Credit | Catherine McGann / Getty Images]