Who

Fashion guru Stephen Gan is creative director at Harper's Bazaar, co-founder of Visionaire, and editor-in-chief of V Magazine.

Backstory

Arriving in New York City from the Philippines when he was 18, Gan enrolled at Parsons to study photography. In 1986—while he was still a student—legendary Times lensman Bill Cunningham shot a photo of Gan on the street in SoHo, took him for coffee and a cookie, and gave him a quarter to call Annie Flanders, the soon-to-be editor of Details. Gan's meeting with Cunningham proved fortuitous: Flanders later offered him the position of fashion editor at Details. After the magazine was sold to Condé Nast and Gan was kicked to the curb, he used $7,000 of his severance pay to print 1,000 copies of Visionaire with co-founders James Kaliardos and Cecilia Dean. In 1999, he launched V Magazine, an offshoot of Visionaire focusing on young art, fashion, and culture. His day job, though, is at Harper's Bazaar, where he was named creative director in 2001, one of Glenda Bailey's first hires as editor-in-chief. Gan is also director of Dream Project, a design firm launched in 2004 that does art direction for ad campaigns for the likes of Calvin Klein, Dior, Fendi, and D&G.

Of note

Visionaire is more of an eccentric, art/fashion project than a business venture. Each issue is themed and its circulation is minimal, reportedly just a few thousand subscribers. It ain't cheap, though. It costs $675 for a one-year subscription, which consists of only three or four issues. The fashion crowd eats it up, sometimes literally: Previous issues have included "Blue" (each magazine was wrapped in a small Levi's denim jacket) and "Taste" (which came with small flavor strips meant to melt on the tongue).

Personal

Gan was in a relationship with Visionaire co-founder James Kaliardos for years. The two have since broken up, and Gan now lives on Mercer Street.

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