Photograph by Emma Milligan
The eccentric fashionista has built a career with her bold takes on haute couture.
Fashion journalist Katharine K. Zarrella ’08 makes no apologies for who she is: “fearless, unbothered, and unhinged.”
Such boldness has marked — and sparked — her fashion reporting career, which has included stints with Women’s Wear Daily, V Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, and, most recently, with Document Journal.
Indeed, before her name was “on the list” at VIP-only fashion events, she’d get in — somehow.
“I was not afraid of being screamed at,” says Zarrella, who once wore Alaïa hot pants, fishnets, thigh-high boots, a one-arm leather jacket, and Chanel cap when caught climbing a brick wall to see a Jason Wu show. She apologized, but insisted, “‘I HAVE to see this show’ — and I did.”
These days, “everyday experiences” have included a warehouse photoshoot where a naked Lady Gaga awaited a selection of archival Alexander McQueen clothes, the photographer’s two Great Danes roamed, and a tuxedoed bartender served cocktails.
But it’s Zarrella who often draws notice, in her omnipresent turbans, top hats, and funereal yet sculptural garb. With such customary attire, she’s no fan of Halloween, “because people on the street assume I’m in costume.”
Her attitude and determination have helped her slice through the snark-infested waters of fashion to become the Wall Street Journal’s fashion director in 2019 and, most recently, fashion critic-at-large for the independent fashion magazine Document Journal.
“I write like I talk,” says Zarrella, who loves punny double entendres and cheeky headlines (for a 2023 WSJ story on worn-in fashion: “Should you beat up your Birken?”). She’ll also take unpopular stances, as in a recent New York Times guest essay in which she decried big-name brands for becoming “obscenely, disgracefully, inconceivably costly.”
Zarrella’s fashion obsession began early. Her über chic mother, an anthropologist and philanthropist, indulged both of their style whims. Classmates teased her for preferring tulle puff skirts to jeans. “I refused to wear pants,” says Zarrella — who was “more outrageous” than her mom, “but she understood.”
She also enjoyed writing, yet never imagined making a living from her passions.
At Colgate, she majored in English and lucked into a summer internship with Women’s Wear Daily. “That’s when I decided I was going to do this the rest of my life.”
She later interned with designer Zac Posen, “when he was hot, hot, hot,” holding fabric as he draped it, packing his travel bags — and ferrying his poodle to and from grooming appointments.
A hiring freeze in publishing greeted the aspiring fashion writer upon graduating from Colgate in 2008. So she moved to Paris, as she’d vowed to her mother on a trip at age 12. “I recall saying, ‘I have no idea what I want to do, but I’m going to do it in Paris.’”
She returned to New York a few months later, where she covered fashion week — though not always invited. After sneaking in and making her way backstage, she wasn’t afraid to approach designers and launch into her questions.
Her favorite designers are surrealistic, irreverent, witty, and not for the faint of heart. In those days, she financed her fetish for Alaïa, Schiaparelli, and Comme des Garçons writing for indie magazines such as i-D, Dazed, and the Dossier Journal.
But she loathed interviewing celebs, recalling a party where she ranted that fashion coverage should focus on the art of making clothes “and not some idiot in the front row.” A man nearby overheard — and offered Zarrella a writing job on the spot. She accepted before learning that he was Christopher Bollen, then–editor-in-chief of Interview magazine.
“That’s how my whole career started. He knew everybody, people saw my work, and I started getting commissions.”
To hone her skills, she earned a master’s in fashion journalism at London’s lauded Central Saint Martins (CSM) in 2012. She later landed at Style.com, then V Magazine and its men’s fashion offshoot VMAN, all based in Manhattan. In 2016 she launched digital platform Fashion Unfiltered (“no fluff, just fashion”), now part of CSM’s master’s program.
As Wall Street Journal’s fashion director from 2019–24, she’d try to sneak her racy headlines past editors. (“Clothes Before Hoes” almost got through for a gardening feature.)
Today, Zarrella lives in New York — amid 300 hats and mannequins — with her three rabbits: Schiaparelli, Coco, and Dalí. The pets accompany their owner to Nantucket when she works on her novel, a satire of the publishing industry, and feed her lifelong obsession with Alice in Wonderland — a fitting literary metaphor for Zarrella’s perspective on fashion at large: “I love clothes that transport me — lift me out of this world to another one,” she says. “I still want to be down that rabbit hole, but in a happy place.”