David Livingstone: Social Media Tributes to the Former Men’s FASHION Editor

by FASHION Staff

We were devastated to learn our dear friend and colleague David Livingstone, the former Editor-in-Chief of Men’s FASHION passed away April 20, 2017 at his apartment in Toronto. He was 69. David was a gifted writer and colourful character with a sharp, caustic tongue. He was well-loved in Canadian media circles, and while it might rankle him to know this, it didn’t take long for the social media tributes to roll in.

Noreen Flanagan, FASHION Editor-in-Chief

Natalie Atkinson, The Globe and Mail newspaper

The Canadian journalist David Livingstone has died. He was terrifyingly smart and eclectic and in recent years, a friend. A cantankerous, curious and bracingly frank voice punctuated by coughing fits + laughter. And deaf in one ear, which usually meant that at runway shows etc his attempt at sotto voce withering running commentary was usually more of a roast than a whisper. He could be Stadler AND Waldorf. Charming and funny, scathing, often downright harrowing candour was just David being David. The kind of candour that most people find either embarrassing or rude (or both). I hope this doesn’t sound condescending—I mean it with deep affection and a lot of awe. Part of the 1970s Toronto punk scene he knew film and art and music, and saw fashion through a prismatic cultural lens. David had seen things and had taste and was something of a zelig, and if he didn’t know it, he researched the hell out of it. And if it didn’t measure up or was full of bullshit—consider what it was like for David to be David in today’s fashion journalism landscape—he could be counted on to be the one with integrity to heckle the emperor’s new clothes. But beauty? His enthusiastic rhapsodies were like nothing else. ?This is a photograph of Leonor Fini. David was inquisitive and impish and would, among the mostly limp and forgettable crowd-pleasing style book round-ups fashion editors are expected to churn out, slip in a monograph on someone like Fini. A fierce, influential and now mostly-forgotten avant-garde artist, libertine and the onetime bohemian queen of Paris who created Elsa Schiaparelli’s Shocking perfume bottle while generally being a chic unapologetic badass. In our recent conversations we sometimes (ok, often) commiserated with rueful gallows humour. How it feels like there is less welcoming room in fashion journalism for his sort of zig, when so much of the watered-down mainstream not only zags predictably, but air-kisses ass all the while. I am going to try not to feel discouraged and remember his usual riposte to my defence of anything that fell short. Oh come on David, be fair—she’s trying. “Well, she needs to try harder.” Okay David. I will.

A post shared by Nathalie Atkinson (@jadedjournalista) on

Jeanne Beker, editor

Bernadette Morra, former FASHION editor-in-chief

A brilliant mind and icon of fashion journalism, gone. David Livingstone dies of sudden heart failure #RIP

A post shared by Bernadette Morra (@bernadettemorra) on

Susie Sheffman Fashion Stylist

The fashion world just lost a true original! #RIP David Livingstone #icon #fashion #journalist #legend #susiesays

A post shared by susie sheffman (@ssheffman) on

Jane Gill PR

Brilliant, curious, honest. We will miss you David Livingstone! #RIP

A post shared by Jane Gill PR (@janegill_pr) on

Eng C. Lau, art director

Mary Dickie, writer

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