Who

Despite years of rumors that she's on the way out, British import Glenda Bailey has been the editor-in-chief of Harper's Bazaar since 2001.

Backstory

A working class girl from Derbyshire, England, Bailey trained as a fashion designer and worked in fashion forecasting, before moving into magazines with a job at a title called Honey. In 1988, she signed on as the founding editor of the U.K. version of Marie Claire; she moved to its American counterpart with great fanfare nine years later. After sweeping into power at Harper's Bazaar following Kate Betts's dismissal in 2001, Bailey brought back the old logo (Betts, as part of her modernist vision, had given the title new lettering), hired creative director Stephen Gan of Visionaire, and introduced two different covers: one for the newsstand and one for subscribers.

Now in her seventh year at Harper's Bazaar, Bailey has long been dogged by whispers that her days are numbered and that Harper's Bazaar has turned into a snooze under her watch. (In 2006, it was reported that Hearst's Cathie Black had hoped to replace her, but simply couldn't find a suitable candidate.) Nevertheless, the official line is that circulation has risen during Bailey's tenure, and the magazine has managed to grab some attention lately with quirky celebrity fashion spreads, such as one in June 2007 featuring Paris and Nicole as fugitives and the September '07 issue with Chloë Sevigny posing as a starlet in rehab.

In person

The antithesis of whippet-thin and sleek Anna Wintour, Bailey is big-boned, curly-haired, and loud, and her standards of polish don't always meet the exacting standards of the fashionistas she mixes with—although, funnily enough, she takes credit for coining the word "fashionista."

Personal

Bailey lives with her boyfriend Steve Sumner, a landscape painter whom she's known since the '70s, on Central Park West. Glenda's industry connections have helped Sumner's career: His work is now collected by fashion/beauty heavy-hitters like the Lauders and Nicole Miller.