Jane Larkworthy, a veteran beauty writer and top-ranking editor during “The Devil Wears Prada” era of influential print fashion magazines, died on Wednesday at her home in New Marlborough, Mass. She was 62.
Her sister, Kate Larkworthy, said the cause was breast cancer.
Ms. Larkworthy’s work began appearing in magazines in the mid-1980s; her first job was at Glamour, followed by a stint at Mademoiselle. By 1997, she was the beauty director of Jane, a popular magazine aimed at young women. (It was named after another journalist Jane — Jane Pratt.)
Later moving on to W magazine, Ms. Larkworthy became its executive beauty director. She was active online, too, writing for websites like Air Mail and New York magazine’s The Cut, where for a time she was beauty editor at large.
Ms. Larkworthy looked the part of an editor at a glossy fashion magazine, the kind satirized in the 2006 movie “The Devil Wears Prada,” with her straight long hair in a refined shade of celebrity-colorist-applied straw and, more often than not, polished outfits that might have well brought Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy to mind.
But while her fields of expertise might seem superficial, her views on fillers and face creams were infused with industry knowledge and a large dose of well-grounded skepticism.
“There is never an overly sappy ‘I’m obsessed with’ kind of thing in my beauty writing,” she told the online beauty magazine Into the Gloss in 2011. “If anything, it’s like, ‘Let’s weed out the BS, let’s weed out the stuff we don’t need,’ but I’m a great admirer of all things beautiful.”
“She definitely wasn’t a pushover,” said Kerry Diamond, editorial director of the food publication Cherry Bombe and a former beauty editor who was a friend of Ms. Larkworthy’s. “You certainly had editors who would just write what was expected of them, and that was never Jane.”
When she especially liked something — a Le Labo candle redolent of sandalwood and cedar; a nail polish in the perfect neutral shade of greige — Ms. Larkworthy championed it.
Her tone was that of a trusted friend rather than a pushy evangelist or fawning fan, leavened by a clever sense of humor. For a 2016 W magazine roundup of citrus-scented perfumes, she wrote, “No one wants to smell like lemon Pledge.” After trying out a new cream with yogurt in its formula, she wrote, “I wake up with supple skin — and sometimes a craving for Fage.”
Her joie de vivre extended beyond the latest beauty products. She had a cooking blog, “The Fraudulent Chef,” offering recipes like a sesame chicken salad, which was an attempt to replicate a dish from a favorite lunchtime takeout spot. She also wrote posts on subjects like dishware, entertaining and places to buy fancy ingredients and sugary drinks. As someone who appreciated food but wasn’t professionally entrenched in that world, the name was selected, she wrote in her first blog post, in 2014, “because I consider myself a fraud of many, master of none.”
Over the past few years, she wrote longer-form articles about food as well, including several pieces for Cherry Bombe. Her love of baking was manifested in an Instagram account that Ms. Larkworthy, who might be accurately described as a WASP, named with self-deprecating aplomb: @shiksabagels.
Ms. Larkworthy drew a different sort of attention in 2007, when she testified in the trial of Peter Braunstein, a former Women’s Wear Daily writer and her ex-boyfriend. He was ultimately found guilty of a violent and theatrical attack in which he dressed in a firefighter’s uniform on Halloween night to gain entry into the apartment of a woman, whom he drugged and molested. The victim, prosecutors said in a sensational trial that garnered wide news media coverage, was a surrogate of sorts for Ms. Larkworthy.
As The New York Times wrote, “Prosecutors say that in Mr. Braunstein’s twisted mind, the victim was a stand-in for his ex-girlfriend Jane Larkworthy, the beauty editor of W magazine, who had rejected him.”
When the trial was over, her husband, Bertrand Garbassi, said, “She very much wanted to put it behind her.”
On myriad subjects — beauty, music, theater, food, dogs and more — Ms. Larkworthy often had a witty comment. But when it came to the Braunstein case, Mr. Garbassi said, “She had a quip about everything but that.”
She drew scrutiny again in 2022 with the resurfacing of a comment she had posted years earlier on Twitter (now X) that was seen to support a post by Adam Rapoport, then editor in chief of the magazine Bon Appétit, that was widely considered to be racist.
In the wake of that episode, The Cut suspended her from her position as beauty editor-at-large. By that point, Ms. Larkworthy was already well into a period of reinvention, consulting for beauty brands, acquiring a real estate license and settling full time in western Massachusetts, in the Berkshires, with her husband.
Jane Hazen Larkworthy was born on Nov. 27, 1962, in Merrick, N.Y., on Long Island, the youngest of three children of William and Marjean (McKay) Larkworthy.
Her father oversaw community relations for South Nassau Communities Hospital (now Mount Sinai South Nassau) in nearby Oceanside. Her mother, who was known as Midge, remained at home rearing Jane and her older siblings, Kate and Peter. There, she also designed and sewed hostess skirts that were sold at Bergdorf Goodman, as well as place mats for local boutiques.
She also made clothes for her daughters, including a checked cape for Jane that inspired her lifelong love of that type of garment. And she did some freelance writing for publications like Woman’s Day Magazine and Family Circle.
Like her daughter Jane, Ms. Atkinson died of breast cancer, in 1980, also on June 4. Jane was 17.
“For most people, something like losing your mother at such a young age might be the only terrible thing that fate deals you,” said her friend Ms. Diamond of Cherry Bombe. “Unfortunately, Jane had to deal with a lot of complicated things over and over and over.”
Ms. Larkworthy earned a bachelor’s degree from Ithaca College in 1984. She started at Glamour after graduating, landing a job through a temporary employment agency (though it proved not to be temporary).
She married Mr. Garbassi in 2006. In addition to him, she is survived by her siblings, two stepchildren and two step-grandchildren.
To some of her contemporaries, Ms. Larkworthy’s death represented the end of a print-journalism era in the world of fashion magazines.
“Jane really was the last of the great magazine beauty editors,” Ms. Diamond said.
The post Jane Larkworthy, 62, a Top Magazine Writer and Editor on Beauty, Dies appeared first on New York Times.
