You Can Never Retire From Conde Nastiness
Is there anybody Steve Florio likes? WWD's hulking Jeff Bercovici gets a peek at the proposal for the former Conde Nast president and CEO's memoir and management guide, and he passes along Florio's putdowns of everyone from Ron Galotti (who gets his own chapter) to Bonnie Fuller to Mr. Shawn to the GQ sales staff.
• Legendary New Yorker editor William Shawn: "He was one of the most manipulative human beings I had ever encountered." Case in point: According to Florio, Shawn wheedled a generous retirement package out of Conde Nast, only to turn around and claim to his staff that he'd been pushed out.
• Bonnie Fuller, former editor in chief of Glamour: "She damn near killed the magazine. She made it trashy as hell."
• GQ's sales staff, circa 1980: "One guy in ad sales was a cocaine freak; another was a notorious sex fanatic. An out-of-town sales rep was a cross-dressing nut hose, bras, hats and the works with a wife and kids. At our first sales meeting, at the Montauk Yacht Club ... all the gay guys showed up in dresses. Strapless numbers."
Galotti, from his farm in Vermont, shoots back: "The really wonderful thing about it is, since it's Steve Florio's book, no one will read it."