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Jeanne Beker has been the host and sometime-producer of FashionTelevision for nearly 30 years.Illustration by Photo Illustration by The Globe and Mail. Source: Fabian Di Corcia
Were it not for Jeanne Beker, the world’s fashion IQ would not be half as high as it is today. As the host and sometime-producer of FashionTelevision for nearly 30 years, Beker’s onscreen journalistic chutzpah have given zoomers, boomers, Gen Xers and millennials a behind-the-curtain look into high style.
From Paris to Milan, New York to Toronto, Beker’s hard-won backstage access at fashion shows – a far-from-inclusive ecosystem (she was once famously filmed getting elbowed) – enabled the show to nab candid one-on-one interviews with iconic designers and models (Karl Lagerfeld, Madonna and Linda Evangelista among them). The show launched in 1985 – long before social-media bloggers and influencers waxed on ad nauseam. Aside from bringing a sense of humour and substance to the runway and the red carpet, Beker launched two magazines, a podcast (Beyond Style Matters), a number of clothing collections, wrote five books and was designated a member of the Order of Canada in 2013. On the cusp of releasing her coming (and sixth) book, Heart on My Sleeve: Stories from a Life Well Worn, Beker opens up on her life pre- and post-FT, speaking to the culture that helped her whilst dealing with a breast-cancer diagnosis.
What was it like to announce your diagnosis on social media?
It wasn’t even a conscious decision – of course, I have to tell everybody about what’s going on in my life. I had a friend who was going through breast cancer a year leading up to my own diagnosis. She wasn’t going to tell her aging parents about it. Carrying all that felt like such a burden.
I did it on the first day I sat in a chemo pod at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre. It happened to be National Cancer Wellness Awareness Day and I just said, “Okay, everybody, this is it. I’ve got it.” The love, support and prayers that came back to me were so heart swelling. My Instagram following doubled overnight. It restored my faith in humanity.
What was the first piece of literature you turned to after you were diagnosed?
I reread my parents’ memoir, Joy Runs Deeper. My parents’ Holocaust survival story helped me realize that it is possible to get through anything with the right frame of mind. Then, there was Dr. Edith Eger’s book called The Choice. She is also a Holocaust survivor and is in her 90s now. She has an extraordinary story of survival and feels everyone has the choice to look at any challenging situation in a way that can benefit them. It confirmed that I was – and still am – determined to live in the light.
What is your definition of living in the light?
The first horrifying thing that happened to me was my marriage breakup back in 1998 – my world exploded. I had this great career, two gorgeous kids, two cats, two houses, two boats, two cars and the Fashion Television gig, which was phenomenal. When my life erupted, I stood back and looked at my life as a tapestry, one which somebody burned a hole in. I wasn’t going to spend my life letting that hole make me feel bitter. Living in the light meant turning away from the flaw in the fabric and focusing on the beauty in that glorious tapestry.
In your new book, Heart on My Sleeve: Stories from a Life Well Worn, which will be released this fall, which chapter or memory could you never leave out?
The book is told through the lens of wardrobe. Pieces of clothing and accessories act as springboards for storytelling. There’s one incredible jacket that I got back in the eighties – I don’t know who designed it – but it was hand-dyed and coloured. I wore it for a photo shoot that I did with the late, great journalist Peter Goddard, who wrote about me when I got up on stage, at 17, to dance with Ronnie Hawkins at the Toronto Pop Festival in 1969. I was wearing a pompom yellow bikini top. I write about it all in the book because it was such a moment. [Goddard’s] article set things in motion and changed my life.
What did the move from hosting a music program like The NewMusic to a fashion program like FashionTelevision offer you?
An opportunity to shine on my own. I was really struggling for credibility with The NewMusic because I was not accepted. Maybe it’s just because I was so unconventional. Thank you to the brilliant visionary, Moses Znaimer, for putting a big-nose, big-mouth chick like me on the air in the first place. The fact that I’m even sitting here across from you means the world to me because the media was not very kind to me at all. I survived in spite of them!
What is the next big trip you have planned?
Calgary. I’m working on a big project at the Glenbow Museum with fashion designer Paul Hardy that I’m co-curating.
When you look back at your onscreen career, do you think those programs influenced current TV and social media?
Oh, yes. The idea of smash-and-grab, in-your-face television with just unapologetically being there in the moment and improvising. That was incredible training for everything that I ended up doing, because it is essentially the art of improv. John Martin and I started our show in 1979. It was pre-MTV. That hadn’t even been invented yet but that immediacy is everywhere now.
Which fashion documentary stands as the most important in history?
The 2018 documentary called McQueen. I had a very special relationship with him [fashion designer Alexander McQueen] and he told me things that he didn’t tell any other journalists. That film went beyond a portrait of someone working in fashion – it explored a great creative visionary who got done in by big business.
A professor named Rinaldo Walcott from University of Toronto deems fashion to be a breeding ground for complicated icons. What’s your point of view?
I was determined to expose the scene, warts and all. I want to humanize these incredible designers and models. I was in that world, but I was never of that world. It was a joy to get personal with these brilliant minds, and find out about their foibles, vulnerabilities and insecurities.
If you had to choose a soundtrack which represents your journey, what music would be on it?
Motown, Bee Gees, Michael Jackson, Earth Wind & Fire. I danced around the house like crazy during that whole summer I was diagnosed. I still do.
This interview has been edited and condensed.