Compared with other British media editors in New York, Jamie Pallot, editorial director of Condé Nast Digital, maintains a low profile. Once headed for a career in academia, he diverted to New York and now, more than two decades later, he oversees the publishing group’s three standalone websites: fashion destination Style.com, culinary site Epicurious, and Concierge, which is devoted to travel. What is more, he oversees them at a profit and with more than 10 million unique users.
His bright, 15th-floor corner office in a monolithic former JP Morgan Chase building looks up Sixth Avenue to Central Park. It’s decorated with publishing awards and books on photography and architecture. But there’s nothing that speaks of a craze for power that characterizes similar offices. The only thing that signals that this is a significant crossroads for the worlds of fashion, food, luxury and travel is a box from Gucci that has been sitting there for long enough to acquire a layer of dust.
Pallot is the dapper, 50-year-old son of a Jersey farmer. “I grew up digging potatoes,” he recalls. He arrived in America in October 1987 as a scholar attached to a visiting William Wordsworth exhibition. But the day of the opening was Black Monday; few of the invited bankers turned up. “They were throwing themselves out of windows,” Pallot says.
Since then he’s worked in digital publishing, at News Corp (NSDQ: NWS). Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT), People magazine and now for the Newhouse family, publishers of such legendary titles as Vanity Fair, Vogue and the New Yorker.
He might, on the face of it, seem a rather unlikely figure to have been drawn into such a glittering beau monde. He recalls getting the call from Condé Nast, a name he says has an “undeniable allure, though I knew nothing about fashion at that point”.
On his way to the subsequent interview with an unnamed (but identifiable) editor-in-chief for the job, a salesman at People pointed out he was wearing pleated trousers. “I had to run home to change. It would have been a terrible fashion faux pas
This article originally appeared in Guardian.

Comments have been disabled for this post