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Why Elle Editor Nina García Is Sitting Out Fashion Week

Nina García. Photo: Jean Baptiste Lacroix/WireImage

On Thursday afternoon, as fashion editors uploaded blurry runway photos from their front-row seats at New York Fashion Week, Elle editor-in-chief Nina García shared a more personal announcement. For the first time in 25 years, she will not be attending runway shows. “Instead, I’ll be watching from the sidelines at home,” she wrote, “recovering from a preventative double mastectomy.”

In a longer online essay titled, “A Personal Choice,” García details what she calls her “battle of the boobs,” which began in 2015.

Because of a family history, García decided to get genetic testing done. She learned she had a mutation, meaning she was at high risk for breast cancer. Over the course of three years, she got regular mammograms and breast checks. In January, she and her doctors decided it was time for a preventive double mastectomy.

“I was living in a loop of testing, every day waking up thinking: Is today the day I will get cancer?” García writes. “I no longer wanted to have these scary thoughts, and I knew the only way they would stop was to schedule the surgery. The answer was clear.”

García joined Elle in September 2017 from Marie Claire, replacing longtime editor Robbie Myers. She made no mention, however, of going anywhere.

“While I may be having a hard time feeling brave at this very minute, I know that my sisters will be waiting for me on the other side,” she wrote, “ready to put me back together again.”

Why Elle Editor Nina García Is Sitting Out Fashion Week