The Next Chapter

US Bazaar’s Samira Nasr has a signature look that reflects her love of timeless pieces.

- Lucy Halfhead

I’ve always been a worker bee,” says Samira Nasr from her apartment in New York City’s Park Slope, a picturesque neighbourhood of tree-lined streets and classic brownstones in Brooklyn. It’s been a year since Nasr was named the Editor-in-Chief of the US edition of Harper’s BAZAAR after almost three decades in the fashion industry. “My first-ever boss sat me down and handed me a book that I still have—Passage by Irving Penn—and she said, ‘Study this and I’m going to give you some advice that will serve you your entire career: Be impeccable with your word and work hard.’ And I was like, ‘Noted.’”

Nasr was raised in the modest Montreal suburb of Pointe-Claire along with her older brother. “I come from parents who were immigrants and always worked hard, so I grew up with that example,” she says. When her parents divorced, she used fashion as an escape: “I could put my head in a magazine and be transported to another world, and I liked mixing and altering my clothes to create different personalities. I went through a period around the age of 16 where I explored these crazy tutus and wore them with combat boots.”