- Flair magazine, started by Florence Friedman (her maiden name), better known as Fleur Cowles, in 1950. With financial support from her husband Mike Cowles, it was a snazzy magazine with peek-a-boo die cuts, inserts, and fancy papers, some even scented to accompany an issue on the Rose, and all manner of special design features, not to mention a superb cast of contributors from Colette to John Steinbeck. Unfortunately, the high cost of production, estimated at $2.5 million for the 12 monthly issues, soon put the magazine out of business. Fleur Cowles said, describing herself: “Few women have lived more multiple lives than I have: as editor; as that anomaly, an American president’s personal representative, decorated by six governments; as a writer of thirteen books and contributor to six others; as a painter, with fifty-one one-man exhibitions throughout the world; patron of the arts and sciences, irrepressible traveler and, more importantly, friend-gatherer…”.
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