nss G-Club Muse: Tonne Goodman A new book retraces the incredible career of the former Vogue USA fashion director
Although not everyone knows her name, Tonne Goodman is definitely one of the most elegant and influential women in the fashion world. She appears always one step behind Anna Wintour or Grace Coddington, immediately recognizable thanks to her uniform: white jeans and black or navy blue sweaters. After almost twenty years as fashion director of Vogue America, last year she left the magazine to become a contributing editor. A few days ago Goodman published Point of View: Four Decades of Defining Style, a sort of a photobiography about her long career including several anecdotes from her private life such her Dutch sailor lover or when photographer Mario Testino drove her in his Fiat Cinquecento to the hospital. The book gives a chance to discover one of the most discreet and interesting names in fashion.
The love for art and beauty are in her family DNA
Goodman's first aesthetic influences were her parents. Her father, Edmund Goodman, was a charming surgeon and her mother was the artist Marian Powers. According to photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt, author of the famous photo of the kiss in Times Square, they were the most beautiful couple in New York. Tonne, her two sisters and her brother, grew up on the Upper East Side, spending their childhood visiting the Museum of Modern Art or the Metropolitan Museum, the New York City Ballet, going to theatres and to Ike and Tina Turner concerts or listening to their parents talking with friends, people like writer Roald Dahl, actress Patricia Neal or heiress Gloria Vanderbilt. This cultural education had a huge impact on the lives of Goodman's kids: Tonne worked in the world of fashion, Ed in design, Stacy, an expert in pre-Columbian art, is a senior consultant at Sotheby's, while Wendy is a design editor for the New York Magazine.
She worked as a model
Tonne has a signature look. The stylist always wears the same style of clothes: white (occasionally black) straight leg jeans, Levi's 511 or J Brand, turtleneck black sweater or shirt, Italian loafers and a silk Charvet scarf. She was given her first one in 1973 by her friend Nicky Vreeland, Diana Vreeland's nephew. Her style includes a jacket by Dries Van Noten, her favourite brand, and no makeup. She doesn't remember the origin of this outfit, but she chose it because
I just felt it worked and could take me into every kind of situation that I would run into in the course of a day and they could change rapidly - you could be on the set, then you’d have a cocktail and then put the kids to bed... it was just very versatile.
