How To Win (Famous) Friends & Influence (Powerful) People

He hangs out with Gigi, parties with Kendall and persuaded naomi to launch a youtube channel. But who is derek blasberg? And how did he become the most connected man in fashion?

- Laura Craik

On the one hand, it’s easy to interview Derek Blasberg: he’s funny, open, engaging and, thanks to his journalistic background, knows the kind of quotes you need. On the other, it’s an effing nightmare. Not once, even in the limo where I first meet him, speeding off from the Burberry show to his next appointment at The Connaught, do we enjoy uninterrupted facetime. “Hi, Rianne!” he yells out of the window, midsentence, in honeyed Midwestern tones, as one of his 1,095,638 supermodel friends walks by. “Look how pretty she is…”

At Burberry, Blasberg was placed where he is always placed: in the best seat in the house, a few bums down from Anna Wintour, the editor from whose magazine he was once fired (more on that later). Always sandwiched between two beautiful celebrities, he loves to mischievously catch the eye of whichever supermodel friend is walking past him on the catwalk, winking at Gigi, pulling a face at Bella, causing them to crack a smile.

Even if you haven’t heard of Blasberg, 37, head of fashion and beauty partnerships at YouTube (“In simplistic terms, my job is to help create more fashion and beauty content on the platform”), you’ll have seen him. There he is, front row with Kate Moss and Julianne Moore. There he is again, at a party with Serena Williams, Jennifer Lawrence, Kendall Jenner and the Hadids. Up he pops, draped around Victoria Beckham, hanging out with Mark Ronson, posing with Jake Gyllenhaal, giggling with Dasha Zhukova, chatting with Gwyneth Paltrow… and that was just last September.