1972:  The Price of Ambition: Inside Vogue, Power, and Reinvention with Caroline Palmer

**Farnoosh Torabi** (0:00)
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**SPEAKER_2** (0:39)
You're listening to So Money with award-winning money guru Farnoosh Torabi. Each day, get a 30-minute dose of financial inspiration from the world's top business minds, authors, influencers, and from Farnoosh yourself.
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**Caroline Palmer** (1:05)
I would get up at 4.15 every morning, seven days a week for two years.
I wrote from 4.45 to 7.45. My first child gets up at 7.45 and then I was done.
I couldn't do any, whatever the, after I'm looking for somebody's trumpet or croc or making lunch or screaming at people, I can't return to whatever that writing space is. So I was done writing every day by 7.45 and that was how I did it. I don't know who that person is now because I cannot find her. She has left the building. She has completely left the building.

**Farnoosh Torabi** (1:46)
Welcome to So Money, everybody. I'm sitting down with Caroline Palmer today. She's a former Vogue editor and author of the buzzworthy novel Workhorse. Drawing from her years inside the high gloss world of fashion publishing, Caroline takes us beyond the cliches of The Devil Wears Prada to reveal a more complicated and sometimes darker story about ambition, identity, and the quiet trade-offs women make to get ahead. We also talk about the mythology of glamorous careers versus the reality behind the scenes. The difference between workhorses and showhorses and why Caroline set out to write a female protagonist who doesn't always make the right choices and doesn't apologize for it. On a personal level, Caroline also opens up about her career pivot during the pandemic, the moment she walked away from a high-powered job, and how writing this book helped her rebuild confidence and redefine success in midlife. Keep listening to find out what it was really like working inside Vogue during a transformative era, the financial realities of starting out in New York on a $25,000 salary, and her negotiation story that led to a major salary leap and what we can learn from it.
Take a listen.
Caroline Palmer, welcome to So Money.

**Caroline Palmer** (3:03)
Thank you. I'm so delighted to be here.

**Farnoosh Torabi** (3:06)
First, can we talk about how I'm excited for Devil Wears Prada 2?
And your book, Workhorse, Chronicles, it's fiction, but based on your experience working actually at Vogue, and I want to just start with that. And when you see these portrayals of working in the fashion industry at Vogue, whether it's Devil Wears Prada or other fictionalized things, how do you feel about it? Do you feel like it's fair? Do you feel like all this, I don't want to say hate, but all this kind of parodying of it is justified?

**Caroline Palmer** (3:43)
I think actually, I think the movies make it look like, so many parts of it make it look really glamorous, which it was. It was at that time, like I don't have a, I had a great experience. Did I have a perfect experience? Did I have experience? But all in all, in taking the good with the bad, when you're in your 20s, it's a great job if that kind of thing sort of appeals to you. So I actually think when you look at the, what are the movies like? How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, 13 Going on 30, Devil Wears Prada, like they over-simplify it for sure, but I think they have done a nice job of certain parts of it looking as exciting and as glamorous and as full of access that it really was at the time. I can't speak for now, but I'm not usually offended by them. I think they do what they're supposed to do, which is portray this fantasy world that is selling a fantasy world.

**Farnoosh Torabi** (4:33)
Yeah. Let's get into Workhorse, this book based on your work life at Vogue and your work in fashion magazines and what people might mistakenly say, oh, it's just another Devil Wears Prada.