This reign of aesthetic terror, this sense of absolute rule by a single, driven person, also stems, I think, from two fundamental causes arising from a peculiar milieu:
1) The relative size of the fashion magazines, with their hundreds of monthly editorial pages needed to abut and sustain the advertising, results in a concomitant frenzy to make last-minute order out of chaos. This requires the editor on top to be ruthless, peremptory and supremely organized in order to meet deadlines. Precisely because the decisions in fashion are relatively whimsical and arbitrary -- the gray skirt, not the blue one; the teardrop earrings, not the studs -- the dictatorial element is much more profound and necessary.
2) The staff at such magazines is largely made up of fashionable, leggy, well-bred, socially adept young women who might not otherwise be gainfully employed, most with a taste for ribald fun and mischief, like private-school girls itching to cause mayhem. Many of them are somewhat dissolute.