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Kate Betts  

Fashion and Style Expert, Author of "Everyday Icon: Michelle Obama and the Power of Style" and Bestseller "My Paris Dream"

Kate Betts is a contributing editor at TIME magazine where she has written about the worlds of style and design since 2003. Betts is also a columnist at the Daily Beast. Until 2009 she was also the editor of TIME Style & Design, a special issue published six times a year in the United States, Europe, and Asia. Betts was named one of the Top 10 fashion editors by Forbes magazine

Previously Betts was the editor in chief of Harper’s Bazaar from June 1999 to June 2001, where she completely redesigned the 134-year-old fashion publication. She moved to Bazaar from Vogue, where she was the fashion news director from 1991 to 1999. At Vogue Betts was responsible for developing and producing all fashion features, including runway reports, designer profiles, and popular culture stories.

Betts was also a reporter for and later the bureau chief of the Paris office of Fairchild Publications from 1988 to 1991. In Paris she managed the daily trade newspaper Women’s Wear Daily and W and M magazines. She also helped to conceive and launch W Europe.

She has appeared on network and cable television regularly since 1993, including shows such as The Charlie Rose Show, The View, Today, Good Morning America, Power Lunch, and NPR’s Marketplace. She reports regularly for CNN, covering fashion shows in New York, Paris, and Milan. She was the subject of a Lifetime documentary Putting Baby to Bed: Wife, Mother, and Editor in Chief, about her experience as the youngest editor ever to take over a fashion magazine.

Betts is the author of the new book Everyday Icon: Michelle Obama and the Power of Style (Clarkson Potter/Publishers, 2011). A graduate of Princeton University, she resides in New York.

Speech Topics


How to make it in the Magazine Business

Kate Betts shares her experience working across the pages of Vogue, Harper's Bazaar and Time.

Style in the Workplace

A look at the new etiquette of corporate dress codes and and why style matters for professional women. Exploring how to tweak your look and turn style into an asset, rather than a liability.

The History of First Lady Style and its Impact on American Fashion

Why style matters in the White House and how First Lady style has mirrored the advent and rise of feminism from Eleanor Roosevelt to Hillary Clinton.

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