Katherine Hadley Betts (born March 8, 1964) is an American fashion journalist. Currently she is a contributing editor at Time and The Daily Beast, among other freelance writing positions, and reporting on fashion for CNN. She lives in New York with her family. She began her career at Fairchild Publications' European office in Paris. During the 1990s, she became a senior editor at American Vogue, where she was considered the likely successor to Anna Wintour as editor-in-chief. She later became the editor of Harper's Bazaar instead, one of the youngest editors of a fashion magazine ever, for two years. In 2011, her book Everyday Icon: Michelle Obama and the Power of Style was published by Clarkson Potter. Life and career 1980s Betts was born into an affluent family and raised in New York City. Her father, Hobart Betts, was a prominent architect; her mother Glynne was a photographer and socialite. She attended Princeton University, where she wrote for The Daily Princetonian and graduated with an A.B. in history in 1986 after completing an 127-page-long senior thesis titled "Beauty in the Streets: The Impact of Student-Worker Action on French Political Consciousness in the Events of May, 1968." After graduating, she went to work in France as a freelance journalist for Metropolitan Home, European Travel & Life and the International Herald Tribune. An article she wrote for one of these publications about boar hunting in Brittany caught the attention of publishing mogul John Fairchild. He hired her as a features writer for Fairchild Publications' Paris bureau, overseeing fashion coverage for Women's Wear Daily, W and M magazines. She has recalled this period of her career as essential to her development as a fashion journalist. She wrote stories about the Sénanque Abbey's lavender fields, interviewed Jeane Kirkpatrick and penetrated closed fashion shows. In that capacity she also helped to launch W Europe. 1990s After two years, she became the bureau chief. The following year, 1991, she left Fairchild and Paris for New York and Condé Nast, where she took over as fashion news director at Vogue. After a difficult initial adjustment, she beefed up the magazine's news coverage. In 1995, she created its Index section, an aggregate of beauty, health and style briefs that soon became one of the magazine's most popular sections. "Kate felt you should be able to tear out pages and have information you really need," said Vogue's arts editor