For 27 years, Jay Levine masterfully helmed the innovative series that was syndicated in more than 130 countries and turned generations on to the wonders of fashion, writes Jeanne Beker.Supplied
Back in the magical early eighties, shortly after I had joined Toronto’s CityPulse news team as an intrepid entertainment reporter, I went on a press junket to Mont-Tremblant.
It was on that wintry weekend that I first met Jay Levine, a quiet, rather earnest young man who had been tasked with the awkward job of schlepping our cameraman’s Portapak up the steep, snowy slopes in those ultra-frigid temperatures, while I tried my ski bunny best to deliver fluffy reportage from my perch on a rickety lift. Shortly thereafter, back in the buzzy newsroom on Queen Street East, Jay assumed the role of assignment editor, managing crews and on-air talent and making sure CityPulse was carrying out its mantra of being as “everywhere” as possible.
As I became increasingly busy with my co-hosting duties on The NewMusic and the launch of MuchMusic, Jay graduated to a more innovative role, in the promotions department. That was the brilliant thing about the hip media mecca that was Citytv: If you had big aspirations and kept your nose to the grindstone, the station’s legendary visionary Moses Znaimer would let you take the ball and run with it.
Jay’s creative cogs were spinning, and he had a hankering to bring the sexy side of fashion to the TV screen. By early 1985, he’d convinced the powers-that-be to let him produce a pilot that would highlight brazen Toronto street style and incorporate the intriguing fashion videos that designers were beginning to produce to help promote their brands. Around that time, I was feeling like I’d had my fill of the rock scene and was looking for the next big thing. Though Jay was likely more interested in casting some hot young model as a fashion veejay to host the show, I began to petition heavily for the role. After all, as a girl who grew up in the sixties, I adored fashion. And I believed that my six-year experience hosting a music magazine show would be an asset for this new series. Jay hemmed and hawed a bit, but eventually I got the gig. And the rest is Fashion Television history.
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For 27 years, Jay masterfully helmed the innovative series that was syndicated in more than 130 countries and turned generations on to the wonders of fashion. Jay was a deep thinker, and a real intellectual of sorts, but as heady as some of our stories could get, he always made sure that there was a healthy dose of irreverence in the mix. His brilliant, dry sense of humour and astute, sometimes cutting observations about the quirks of human nature always made for intriguing and lively story meetings.
Jay also realized that style is about so much more than the clothes we wear: It’s about the way we move through the world and the wondrous creations that surround us. From art and photography to design and architecture, Jay was adamant about exploring it all. Although he didn’t spend a lot of time in the field, especially during the show’s later years, we took some incredibly memorable trips together. From conventional fashion destinations like Paris, Milan, London and New York to more exotic climes such as Tokyo, Tel Aviv and Moscow, the world was a big candy store to Jay, and he approached it all with the curiosity of a kid.
How lucky we were to have savoured so much of the world through our Fashion Television lens, and to have introduced millions of viewers to some of the greatest creative minds on the planet. The Fashion Television team rode the zeitgeist of an inimitably spirited and often hedonistic era – fashion’s ‘Golden Age,’ you might say. Jay made sure that all of the larger-than-life egos and icons we captured, from Karl Lagerfeld and Sandra Bernhard to André Leon Talley and Fran Lebowitz, were given an ample platform to delight, entertain and edify us all.
We may not have always seen eye to eye on everything, but the savvy Jay forever inspired me to do my best – to go out into the field unapologetically, with untold guts and unlimited gusto, so my talented cameramen and I could bring home the best footage, the best interviews, the best sound bites and the best visuals. I guess I always just wanted Jay to be proud of me. I sure hope he was.