A career on the cutting edge - Annie Flanders

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, April 1, 1994 by Erika Isler

Annie Flanders has kept a low profile since selling Details, but her influence as a mentor remains strong.

Annie Flanders is standing in the foyer of Smashbox Studios, a Los Angeles-based operation owned by Davis Factor, grandson of one of Hollywood's best known make-up executives. Flanders has spent a busy morning overseeing a fashion shoot for Buzz.

At the moment, however, she is lost in thought, staring at a large black-and-white picture hanging in the entryway. The photo, probably a late 1960s Avedon, features some of the leading pop artists of that era, including Andy Warhol. As Flanders studies the images suspended in perpetual youth, someone asks if she knows any of the avant-garde figures peering back at her. "They're all old friends," she replies distantly, taking in more of the print. "It gives me goose bumps to see them."

Although Annie Flanders is best known in the publishing world as the founder of Details--the first and most successful title in a wave of magazines that chronicled New York's downtown scene in the 1980s--her creative talents are deeply rooted in the arts community, making her one of fashion journalism's preeminent voices. Viewing herself merely as a peripheral player in the magazine industry, she nonetheless wields behind-the-scenes influence over some of the profession's more innovative personalities. In addition to overseeing the incorporation of the now-defunct L.A. Style into the pages of Buzz (where she served a temporary stint as style consultant last year), Flanders is a contributing editor to TV Guide and is starting her own advertising and marketing company in Los Angeles.

When not working on a publication directly, she's helping to cultivate the talents of people who will. Marvin Jarrett, editor and publisher of Santa Monica-based Ray Gun, credits Flanders in the premier issue of sister title Bikini as the "special editorial consultant." Similarly, Flanders remains a mentor to Angela Janklow Harrington, creator of Mouth2Mouth, the Time Inc. Ventures' launch set to appear in March.

Those who got their starts under Flanders' tutelage are quick to point out her eye for spotting talent, and her own talent for letting those people run. They note her ability to push others toward their own strengths while operating with a decidedly hands-off style. Martha Frankel, today a successful freelancer and contributing editor at Movieline and Spin, never entertained the notion of writing as a profession until meeting Flanders in the late seventies. "Annie never gave you a piece you weren't completely passionate about," she recalls. "She knows this business completely. I'm fearless now, and that's from Annie."

Adds Anita Sarko, a former music editor at Details and now a New York-based freelancer for Ray Gun, Mouth2Mouth, Playboy and others: "Working with Annie was fabulous. She hired people for their voice, really, and she loved young people. She truly is a visionary."

Ahead of the curve

Since her start in the design world as an assistant fashion coordinator at Gimbels in New York, Flanders has had a keen eye for recognizing trends and creating opportunities for others. In 1966, she opened a New York store called Abracadabra that helped change the course of fashion merchandising. (Unlike major department stores that worked mainly with well-known designers, Abracadabra purchased its clothing lines directly from independent designers producing small quantities of their products.) "That was probably the most important thing I've done in my life," she says.

During the seventies, Flanders spent three years in Ethiopia, where she established a clothing factory. Located in the northern desert, it employed hundreds of people and created desperately needed trade opportunities for the region.

It was also during the seventies that Flanders made her entry into publishing. In 1976, she became style editor of the Soho Weekly News, a 4,000-circulation paper covering the downtown scene. It didn't take long to make her mark. "I just did what I did," she says. "I didn't know how to write or type, but I had very clear ideas about fashion. And Soho was a hotbed of creativity then."

Flanders left the paper in 1980 because of a change in management. Although her original plan was to start a newsletter for the downtown crowd--she actually drew up a six-month business plan--she was instead persuaded to try a magazine by four former colleagues who would become her partners in Details: Steve Saban, Ronnie Cooke, Megan Haungs and Lesley Vinson. Although Flanders jokingly refers to the decision as "the start of my hell," the early years at Details were full of a raw energy and enthusiasm that evoke fond memories. "It was balancing acts and tricks and no money and all these people willing to work for 'stock.' But it felt fantastic. We really thought we were doing a magazine for ourselves and 100 other people."

There were the all-night mailing parties. "Everyone would come over and put the labels on and then stack the magazines by Zip Code," Flanders remembers. "Sometimes those parties would go into the early mornings. We'd be done when the post office opened." And there was the challenge of collecting money froth the magazine's fledgling nightclub advertisers. "They kept telling me to come at night when there was money in the register," she says of one in particular. "Finally, one night I took a bus downtown at 3 AM and collected the money they owed us."