by Scott Meadow | Editor & Publisher, IRREVERENT Magazine
THE EDITOR'S DESK — I don't know if Kharla is actually banned from Milan. I have read her piece from FAT Toronto — "I Am in Toronto Because I Cannot Legally Return to Milan Yet" — and I have stared at the phrase "legally return" for longer than I would care to admit. Is there a warrant? A restraining order? An incident with prosecco and a security guard named Marco that has been codified into municipal law? Kharla will not say. Kharla says, "You know how it is," and then changes the subject to a Balenciaga show from 2019 that she insists was "actually about grief."
The truth is, no, I don't know how it is. I don't know how any of this is. But I do know that Milan Menswear Summer/Spring 2027 opens on June 19th, and I do know that Kharla is my Fashion Director, and I do know that no one else on this staff can correctly identify a lapel width without making a joke about it.
So I approved the trip.
The Decision
The approval came through at 11:47 p.m. on a Monday, because that is when editorial decisions happen at this magazine: late, slightly drunk, and with the kind of confidence that only comes from having already made so many bad choices that one more feels statistically inevitable.
Kharla's request was not elaborate. She sent a text: "Milan. June. Marco says hi." I stared at this for several minutes. Marco, as far as I can determine, is either a former lover, a current creditor, or a minor functionary in the Italian fashion industry who once helped Kharla escape a showroom through a window. Kharla has mentioned Marco in three published pieces, two expense reports, and one police-adjacent incident that I am legally prevented from describing in detail.
I approved the expense report. I approved the travel. I did not ask about Marco. This is management, I have learned: the strategic deployment of willful ignorance.
The Context
We are a small satirical magazine. We have seven writers, a CMS that I recently migrated for "stability" (a word that now haunts me), and an editorial philosophy I can best summarize as: If it's funny and not actively criminal, we print it.
This philosophy has consequences.
Bradley Snipes, our Entertainment Correspondent, is currently homeless in L.A. He lost his passport at a Eurovision afterparty or at the custom's desk and has since filed three dispatches from something called "a sound bowl circle." I have yet to approve all three. The last one contained a meditation on the geopolitical implications of wind chimes, and it made me laugh at 2 a.m.
Sam Turge, our Political Correspondent, is filing from Room 614 of a mid-tier Manhattan hotel that he has slowly convinced himself is the Watergate for reasons I can't (won't) understand. He refers to the minibar as "the evidence locker." His last piece on Tulsi Gabbard's resignation contained a two-paragraph digression on the minibar, and it was the best political writing I have read this year.
Julian Cross reviewed a Brooklyn omakase restaurant while actively dismissing a CDC raw fish warning, and the piece was so good that the restaurant had to hire bouncers. Madison Garcia unboxed a smart-toilet at CES and the podcast it apparently started about her butt I will not search for. Tuck Chimes wrote 2,000 words on Nebraska's teen social media ID law and framed it as Schumpeterian economics, and he was — I am still not sure about this — completely sincere.
And Kharla — Kharla, who insists she is 29 despite having covered fashion weeks since 2007 — is legally barred from Milan, and I have just approved her flight.
The Justification
The easy answer is that I am a bad manager. This may be true. I have never taken a management course. My qualifications for running this magazine consist of: having read a lot of magazines, having written for several that folded, and having, at age something, inherited a small amount of money that I immediately spent on a domain name and a writer who turned out to be Kharla.
The harder answer is that there is a difference between responsible publishing and memorable journalism, and I have chosen, every time, to privilege the latter. Not because I am brave. Not because I am reckless. But because I have read enough "responsible" journalism to know that it is often forgettable, and I have read enough irresponsible journalism to know that it is often the only thing that makes us feel something.
Kharla in Milan is a risk. She may be detained. She may be deported. She may have another incident with Marco that I will learn about via text message at 3 a.m., accompanied by a photo of a prosecco bottle and no further explanation.
But she will also file a dispatch that no other magazine would publish. She will describe a menswear show with the kind of catty, melancholic, self-aggrandizing precision that makes our readers — who are smarter than I usually give them credit for — feel like they have seen something true.
That is the trade. That has always been the trade.
The Fallout
I have not told Kharla about this column. She will read it when it publishes, and she will text me within minutes. The text will say something like: "You make me sound insane. I love it. Marco says you're brave."
And I will not ask which Marco she means, because there may be more than one, and because I have learned that some questions are better left unasked when you are running a magazine that operates on the knife-edge of chaos.
Our legal counsel — a patient man named David who I pay monthly and who sends me emails with subject lines like "Re: The Kharla Situation (Again)" — has suggested that I include a disclaimer. So here it is: IRREVERENT Magazine does not condone illegal activity. We do, however, condone journalism that requires its practitioners to occupy legal gray zones, provided that the resulting prose meets our editorial standards, which are high, arbitrary, and enforced by me, at 11:47 p.m., with a glass of something I should not be drinking on a Tuesday.
Kharla flies to Milan on June 18th. The show opens on the 19th. I will be at my desk, refreshing the CMS, waiting for her dispatch, and wondering — as I always wonder — whether this is the piece that finally gets us sued, or gets her detained, or gets me that email from David with the subject line "We Need to Talk."
Probably all three. Probably before the espresso.
But until then: the coverage is approved. The expense report is signed. And my Fashion Director, who cannot legally return to Milan, is going back to Milan, because the menswear is non-negotiable and the prose is worth more than the risk.
This is what leadership looks like at IRREVERENT. It looks like insomnia. It looks like bad decisions made for good reasons. And it looks, if I am being completely honest, a little bit like love.
Il Secondo.
Scott Meadow is the Editor & Publisher of IRREVERENT Magazine. He recently migrated the CMS. He regrets this.