Samira Nasr
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Samira Nasr (born 1970), is a Canadian journalist and fashion editor of Lebanese and Trinidadian descent.[1] She became editor-in-chief of Harper's Bazaar in 2020 and is the first person of color to hold the position.
Nasr was born in 1970 to a Lebanese father and a Trinidadian mother; she grew up in the Montreal suburb of Pointe-Claire.[2] Her brother Riad Nasr is a chef. Nasr grew up reading Elle and the French edition of Glamour. Growing up, "[Fashion magazines] provided me an escape route into another world, and a fantasy."[2]
She attended Concordia University before going to New York City to study a master's in journalism at New York University.[2]
Career
Nasr began her career in the mid-1990s as an intern at Mirabella whilst studying her masters at New York University.[2] She worked under editor Jade Hobson in a conference room[3] alongside Tracee Ellis Ross and Beth Buccini. After Hobson left Mirabella, Nasr continued working as an intern for her at New York.[2] Nasr assisted Mary Alice Stevenson at Allure as a freelancer,[3] before becoming market assistant at Vogue and then the assistant to Grace Coddington around 1996/97. In 1999, she became junior market editor at Allure.[2]
Nasr first worked at Harper's Bazaar under Kate Betts as a fashion writer.[2] She then became a freelance stylist, working with Cameron Diaz and Jennifer Lopez, before joining InStyle as style director in 2012.[4][5]
In 2013, Nasr became the fashion director of U.S. Elle.[6] She then joined Vanity Fair in 2018, taking on the role of Executive Fashion Director.[7]
Nasr was appointed editor-in-chief of Harper's Bazaar in June 2020, becoming the first person of color to be in the position.[8][3] She told Magazeum, “I just want to bring more people with me to the party,” interpreted to mean making the magazine more inclusive. Bazaar took home its first-ever National Magazine Award for General Excellence after her first year.[2] She told System Magazine in a 2023 joint interview with Hanya Yanagihara:
I have a wonderful team and we are rooted in a lot of shared values; so we don’t do news, but we can do things our way. When Bazaar was founded in 1867, it was a place where women would go for the issues that caught them, but their world was so, so small; it really was just fashion. Now our lives have expanded so much, and we need to meet our audience in all these places. When I took over Bazaar, I wanted to create something that I didn’t think was already out there, to bring in what interests me, which is luxury at the intersection of culture.[3]