Former Montreal Gazette fashion writer Iona Monahan dead at 83
Anonymous.Canadian Press NewsWire; Toronto [Toronto]. 09 Mar 2006: n/a.
MONTREAL (CP) – Iona Monahan, who helped define haute couture and style in 40 years as a fashion journalist, has died. She was 82.
Monahan, who retired from the Montreal Gazette in 2002, had been suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. She died Wednesday.
Monahan was a tireless cheerleader for the Canadian fashion industry and organized hundreds of fashion shows – including Montreal Mode, at Expo 67, the first showcase for Canadian designers from coast to coast.
“Not only was she elegant and classy but also principled, stubborn, clear as glass in her vision, and very tough,” Gazette publisher Alan Allnutt said Thursday.
Monahan once wrote her job “is to make mediocre things look better and good things look terrific.
“Even garbage nicely packaged can be made to look divine. That’s what I do for a living,” she liked to say.
Monahan was born on Aug. 4, 1923. She dropped out of college at age 17 to sell clothes at Eaton’s department store.
She had an intuitive ability to spot style trends. Six months after she was hired at Eaton’s, she was promoted to manager of its European clothes boutique. By the time she was 21, she was a couture buyer for the chain.
In 1947, she landed a job working for a commercial photographer and soon began producing and directing fashion shows, co-ordinating models and supervising fashion photography shoots.
Her breakthrough came in 1959 with a spread she produced for Mayfair magazine, the Vogue of its day, on the fledgling Canadian fashion industry. She also wrote for The Montrealer magazine and edited Elan-Image de la Mode, a quarterly trade fashion magazine.
She joined the Montreal Star in 1968 as a fashion reporter and switched to the Gazette 10 years later.
Brian Kappler, now The Gazette’s editorial-page editor, was her supervisor when she joined the paper.
“Mark Harrison, the editor-in-chief, called me in and told me, politely but firmly, that Iona was more important to the organization than I was, and to keep her happy,” Kappler recalled Thursday. “As it turned out, she was a pleasure to work with.
“She was so enthusiastic about fashion and so devoted to covering it, readers got the benefit of her energy and insight, and all her colleagues respected that enormously.”
Monahan was invested as a companion of the Order of Canada in 1985 and was honoured by the fashion industry with a lifetime achievement award in 2000.
She was predeceased by a daughter in 1984.
She is survived by Hy Waxman, her husband of 52 years, and by their other daughter.
(Montreal Gazette)
Copyright Canadian Press Mar 9, 2006
Iona Monahan was born August 4, 1923 in Point St. Charles, Quebec. She attended St. Gabriel’s Academy elementary school and D’Arcy McGee secondary school. She also attended Marianopolis College, but did not complete her studies. She began working as a parcel girl at Eaton’s when she was 14 in downtown Montreal. According to several sources, she had an intuitive ability to spot style trends, and she was promoted to manager of the European clothes boutique. She became the couture buyer for Eaton’s by the time she was 21 (1944). She began working for the commercial photographic studio Arnott, Rogers & Sauer in 1947, (1947-1951) first as a receptionist/model and began to gather experience producing and directing fashion shows, co-ordinating models and supervising photography shoots. She worked freelance for public relations agencies, including Garber/Cossman. She appeared on television as a fashion commentator/personality having created fashion shows specifically for television. Some of the fashion shows she produced over the years include Furs-on-Floats at the Montreal Forum, a fashion-in-miniatures puppet show with Québec puppeteer Micheline Legendre, and fur show at Studio 54 in New York.
She signed on with Mayfair magazine as fashion editor in 1956, with her first contributing issue appearing in January 1956 (The magazine, which started in 1927, published it’s first issue independently of it’s parent organization in December 1955). She stayed until shortly before the magazine folded in 1959. The last issue with her name on the masthead is the July 1959 issue, after which the fashion section became greatly diminished. The magazines last issue was December 1959. During her tenure at Mayfair, she had the opportunity to travel extensively, attending the Paris fashion shows twice yearly to report on the Spring and Fall collections, as well as several other European cities, such as Rome and London. In 1956, she meet with Christian Dior, who had designed a dress specifically for the magazine, called the Mayfair Dress, covered in the Feb 1956 issue. In 1958 she traveled around the world (London, Rome, Paris, Istanbul, Tel Aviv, Nicosia, Beirut, Calcutta, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Athens, and Tokyo) for 4 weeks as fashion editor with photographer Sam Getz, 4 models, 4 cameras, crates of film and 110 fashion items, for a shoot detailing Canadian fashion industry that appeared in the February-June 1959 issues of Mayfair magazine under the title “Canadian Fashion at Home Everywhere in the World”. This fashion editorial is considered a benchmark in the Canadian fashion industry. The show also travelled across Canada to help raise money for various charities. During her time at Mayfair, in addition to hiring well know fashion photographers, she also seems to have photographed certain fashion editorials herself (for example, the June 1959 fashion editorial shot in West Berlin).
She also wrote (and photographed) for The Montrealer magazine, edited the Montreal Star 1972-1976, and Élan -Image de la Mode (a quarterly trade fashion magazine) 1970-72. She was also the Contributing editor at Élan Magazine 1975. French and Italian couture associations produced their Montreal shows under Monahan’s direction in the 1960’s. During Expo’67, she produced 99 fashion shoes over 10 days at the Canadian Pavilion, and also produced the Montreal Mode fashion show series in 1973-75. She began working for the Montreal Gazette in 1978 and retired in 2002. In the course of her tenure at the Gazette, she would produce, research and write the 5-6 fashion stories that appeared each week, and organize the photo sessions. She also served as the editor of the Gazette’s supplemental magazine “Fashion and Beauty”.
Over the years she received numerous awards including:
Voted one of Canada’s 10 best-dressed women in a poll of lifestyle editors 1955
YWCA’s Woman of Merit Award – 1976
Woman of the Year (Fashion/Canada) Government of Canada – 1977
20 Great Montrealers (The Queen Elizabeth Hotel) – 1978
Companion of the Order of Canada – 1985
Lifetime achievement award – 2000
Gala held in her honour at the Montreal Ritz-Carleton by the fashion industry – 2000
Appointed Gazette Senior Fashion Editor – 2000
Appointed Gazette Fashion Editor Emeritus – 2002
Archival reference no.
Author of the article:Lucinda Chodan • Montreal Gazette Publishing date:Aug 31, 2016 •
Editor’s notebook: A fitting honour for Iona Monahan
Ten years after her death, the iconic fashion journalist will have a square named after her in Montreal’s garment district.
I remember my first glimpse of legendary fashion journalist Iona Monahan.
It was in the late 1980s, and I had just moved from Edmonton to work at the Gazette. On my second day at the office, a regal woman swept by, an assistant and a photographer in her retinue. She was clad all in black, she had severely coiffed short grey hair and enormous round black glasses.
“That’s Iona Monahan !” one of my new colleagues hissed, as if she needed no introduction.
She didn’t, to anyone who knew anything about style in Canada. Monahan had already been named one of 20 Great Montrealers for her role in raising awareness of fashion in Canada, and she was about to be invested as a member of the Order of Canada.
To someone who already felt like a country mouse in a very big city, she was the epitome of elegance — an impression that lasted until Monahan, perpetually in black with those owl-eye glasses, retired in 2002 after more than 50 years in the world of fashion.
Now, 10 years after her death, the city is honouring Monahan with a square named after her in Montreal’s fashion district.
Place Iona Monahan will be inaugurated Thursday at the corner of Chabanel St. and Esplanade Ave. Presiding over the ceremony will be Ahuntsic-Cartierville mayor Pierre Gagnier and Liberal MP Mélanie Joly, who represents the federal riding that is home to the fashion district.
The square is welcome recognition of a pioneering Montreal journalist and fashion champion. It’s also part of an initiative to address a gap in the cityscape: a vast underrepresentation of women.
In the run-up to Montreal’s 375th anniversary next year, municipal officials observed that only six per cent of the 6,000 named locations in Montreal — streets, parks, public spaces — acknowledged the achievements of women. More than 50 per cent were named for men; the rest honour families or are gender neutral — named for flowers or trees, for instance.
The administration of Mayor Denis Coderre launched an initiative to find 375 names of women who deserve recognition on city maps.
“Montreal society is one of the most egalitarian in the world,” Coderre told my colleague Graeme Hamilton earlier this year. “We want this to be better reflected in our toponymy.”
Monahan is an admirable addition. Born in 1923, she began her career at Eaton’s department store, where she became couture buyer for the entire chain at the age of 21. By 1947, she was working for a commercial photographer, directing fashion shoots and producing fashion shows.
By 1959, she had stopped creating fashion and began chronicling it. That year, she produced a feature about the Canadian scene for Mayfair, an elite fashion magazine, that is widely acknowledged as putting this country on the international fashion map.
Monahan went on to work at the Montreal Star for a decade until she joined the staff of the Gazette in 1978. She worked here for the next quarter century, retiring in 2002 after one last trip to Paris to cover the runway shows for this newspaper.
There is so much that is right about recognizing Monahan’s contributions.
She became an internationally recognized female journalist at a time when newsrooms were hard-drinking, chain-smoking, pub-brawling male-dominated precincts.
From humble beginnings in working-class Point St-Charles she ended up on a first-name basis with designers like Christian Dior, Christian Lacroix, Issey Miyake and Sonia Rykiel.
She championed Canadian fashion and designers like Marie Saint Pierre, who was instrumental in the movement to recognize Monahan’s contributions.
And it will be nice to see an anglophone name returning to the street signs of a community where many have disappeared.
Monahan, who died in March 2006, would have loved the tribute. Beneath that imperious public bearing — she was called “the Dragon Lady” by some who ran afoul of her uncompromising approach — was an unpretentious woman with a soft voice who would sometimes emit a surprising girlish giggle when amused.
Sadly Monahan’s husband Hy Waxman will not be there for the celebration. He died in June. He and Iona were predeceased by a daughter, Maggie. Their other daughter, Katherine, and granddaughter Holly are expected to attend.
Montreal inaugurates Place Iona-Monahan, honouring fashion journalist
It was her innate ability to capture fashion trends and relate them to Montrealers that made her a Canadian fashion journalism icon, friends, colleagues and city officials recalled Thursday as the city inaugurated a public square dedicated to Iona Monahan, who died in 2006 at age 82.
Author of the article:Andy Riga Publishing date:Sep 02, 2016 • July 15, 2020
They would pile into several limousines – models, assistants, photographers – and head to photo shoots at 6 a.m., the clothes and shoes having been prepared and packed late into the night before under fashion editor Iona Monahan’s watchful eye.
“We had locations chosen but if we were going somewhere and she saw a street corner with great light she would say, ‘Let’s stop here, let’s do it now,’” Dick Walsh , a creative director who worked with Monahan for 15 years, recalled of those weekly 1970s shoots.
“She was very organized but also very instinctive.”
It was her innate ability to capture fashion trends and relate them to Montrealers that made her a Canadian fashion journalism icon, friends, colleagues and city officials recalled Thursday as the city inaugurated a public square dedicated to Monahan, who died in 2006 at age 82.
Born in 1923, she started in the fashion industry in the 1940s. After working as couture buyer, fashion-shoot director, fashion show producer and magazine writer, she joined the Montreal Star before moving to the Montreal Gazette in 1978 , retiring 24 years later in 2002.
The $1-million Place Iona-Monahan is at Chabanel St. and Esplanade Ave. in the city’s historic garment district in Ahuntsic-Cartierville borough. Part green space, part square, it features a water fountain and a long, white concrete table. Resembling a catwalk, it’s used as a lunch table by workers from nearby factories.
“It’s a marvellous way to underline someone who made an important contribution to fashion,” said Pierre Desrochers, chair of Montreal’s executive committee and an Ahuntsic-Cartierville city councillor.
Fashion designer Marie Saint-Pierre , whose offices are on Chabanel, suggested naming the square after Monahan.
“Iona died without any recognition from the industry,” Saint-Pierre said. “She was a pioneer, she was an inspiration, she was knowledge. She was everything to designers. We needed Iona in order to grow our business, to know what to do.”
Saint-Pierre described Monahan as “a grand lady and a legendary journalist” whose reputation as a fashion maven extended far beyond Canada’s borders.
“You could call her any time. She would always give the right advice. It would never be: ‘This is what you have to do.” (Instead) she suggested the right moves in order to be who you were and to also grow.”
Monahan “had a very strong knowledge of cuts, fabrics,” Saint-Pierre added. “When she looked at the garments, you knew that when she was not happy with something you had to make changes.”
