How Rickie De Sole Has Built a Fashion Career Across Magazines, Luxury & Retail

Welcome to Second Life, a podcast spotlighting successful women who've made major career changes—and fearlessly mastered the pivot. Hosted by Hillary Kerr, cofounder and chief content officer at Who What Wear, each episode gives you a direct line to women who are game changers in their fields. Subscribe to Second Life on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere you get your podcasts to stay tuned.

In the fashion industry—especially in the publishing world—few careers arc quite like Rickie De Sole's. The editor of AirMail's style vertical, Dress Code, has lived many impressive career lives before this one.

De Sole started as a Fashion Assistant at Vanity Fair, moved into PR at Prada from 2007 to 2010, then came back to media at Vogue as a market editor, eventually climbing to Accessories Director. From there, she went to W Magazine as Fashion Director, returned to Vogue as Executive Fashion Director of Vogue.com, and then did something that surprised the entire industry: she left publishing entirely for retail, joining Nordstrom and ultimately becoming VP Fashion Director.

Along the way, she served on the boards of Rent the Runway and Vestiaire Collective—two companies that were reshaping how people thought about ownership and access in fashion before most editors were paying attention.

Now, her move to AirMail makes complete sense, as De Sole has sat at every seat at the table—editorial, PR, retail, board-level, and beyond—so when she writes about style, she draws on a perspective few editors can claim. Listen to the latest episode of Second Life to discover how De Sole's 360-degree approach to fashion has made her one of the industry's most valuable players.

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