News Story

Washington Post reporter Robin Givhan didn’t always know much about fashion. After graduating from the University of Michigan with a master’s degree in journalism, she started her first job at the Detroit Free Press working in the entertainment section as a generalist.

“I always joke that I got the backwash of everyone’s beat,” Givhan said. “I reviewed movies that opened in drive-in theaters, reviewed horrible concerts. If there was a C-list movie, I was the one doing the interview. I just really wanted something to call my own.”

Working at the Detroit Free Press, then The Washington Post, Givhan made fashion reporting her own, bringing a unique style on the beat that earned her a 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. Pulitzer judges said they chose her “for her witty, closely observed essays that transform fashion criticism into cultural criticism.”

Givhan told students about her path from Jill-of-all-trades reporter to Pulitzer winner during a March 28 sessions with professor of practice Tom French’s Behind the Prize class. French brings winners and finalists of top prizes to campus nearly each week to share their stories with students.

Givhan said she didn’t set out to become a fashion reporter but instead wanted to dive into a beat and own it. So when the Free Press’ fashion editor started looking for someone to cover the fashion, Givhan jumped at the opportunity. At the time, newspapers considered fashion to be of the utmost importance, and reporters wouldn’t miss a single round of fashion shows.

Givhan started her fashion-writing career covering menswear, what she called the stepchild of the industry at the time. Given her lack of knowledge of the fashion industry, specifically of menswear, Givhan said that she made sure to ask questions—a lot of them.

“I would go to as many events as I could. I talked to other journalists who were covering the fashion industry. I walked into stores and chatted up the owners and asked them about their business,” Givhan said. “I asked a lot of questions to understand how a garment went from an idea to an actual product in the store. I asked about fabric and construction, production and sales.”

She met lots of “eccentric characters,” she recalled, including many successful and knowledgeable, whom she wove into her stories.  Her work led her to jump to the Post, where she gained an even deeper understanding of the fashion industry, one that gave a sharper angle in this city where fashion is a symbol of power.

“Because I wasn’t in love with fashion, the clothing and the trend part of it was nice but it wasn’t particularly where my passion was,” Givhan said. “I was curious about the players.”

This meant her fashion stories were less about “the 10 things that they should buy, which I really suck at being able to tell people,” and were more about what makes people look powerful.

It was in Givhan’s first story for the Post where she started to really see how fashion works in Washington. When covering a trial during the end of the Clinton era, she couldn’t help but notice the striking style of Clinton advisor Vernon Jordan as he appeared before the grand jury.

“Vernon Jordan is tall, dark-skinned African American man, who at the time was probably in his 60s. He is extraordinarily elegant and dignified, and he’s known for being extraordinarily well dressed. He wears custom-made shirts, French ties that are probably $300 a tie, and beautifully tailored suits,” Givhan said. “I wrote about how when he walked into that room, he was by far going to be the best dressed person in it—and that it was not by accident. He came of age at a time when a person of his background, this black guy from the South, really had to make a point of letting people know that he was the boss, that he was a person of status. And he did that by the way that he dressed.”

Givhan soon became one of the most respected fashion critics in the industry, tackling topics from Hillary Clinton’s ongoing struggle with her femininity while maintaining an image of toughness and power to Kanye’s first fashion show in Paris.

“I like people watching, so I would notice that some of these guys who would go to a political rally at a union hall would invariably take off their sport jacket sand roll up their sleeves,” Givhan said. “I realized that the gesture was meant as a way of them saying ‘Now I’m going to speak openly and honestly.’ The rolling up of the sleeves became this symbolic political gesture.”

Her perceptions sometimes rankle those inside and outside the fashion industry, but that’s also what has made her columns Pulitzer-worthy.

“I’m not writing about whether or not I think someone is too fat or too thin, whether I think their nose is too big or not the right shape. It’s not about their physicality,” she said. “It’s about their use of fashion.”