Alexandra Penney
Alexandra Penney is an American artist, journalist, and author.
Biography
Penney was born in Boston, Massachusetts, to Greek-American parents. She graduated from Smith College with a BA in Philosophy. As a single mother, she entered the field of journalism to be more financially stable. Her first job was as an assistant editor at Vogue, which she left to complete a Master's degree in art, also at Smith College.Penney later began her career as a painter, with several group shows in New York to her credit. She continued to paint and work as a freelancer for various magazines, and she wrote a weekly column at The New York Times Magazine. She authored the best-seller How to Make Love to a Man, which was on The New York Times Best Seller List for over a year. At Condé Nast she became the editor of the magazine Self, where she created the Pink Ribbon.
As an artist, she has had numerous solo exhibitions in New York, Germany, and Miami. As of early 2009, she now owns an artist's studio in the SoHo neighborhood of Manhattan, a cottage in West Palm Beach, Florida, and what was described as a "beach shack" in Wainscott, New York.
''Self'' and the pink ribbon
As editor of Self magazine, Penney succeeded the founder, Phyllis Starr, who died of breast cancer. Wanting to pay tribute to Starr, Penney, working with Nancy Smith, the executive editor of Self, created the first pink ribbon with the permission of SI Newhouse Jr., the owner of Condé Nast. At a meeting on the same day that the ribbon was created, she called Evelyn Lauder, a friend and breast cancer survivor, to edit the first breast cancer issue of Self and to ask for her help in getting the pink ribbon to Estée Lauder customers. Lauder, then Senior Vice President of Estée Lauder, began to take the pink ribbon through Estée Lauder sales counters.Self magazine's first annual issue for National Breast Cancer Awareness Month came after an April 1991 lunch at the 21 Club, at which Penney discussed ideas for articles about breast cancer with Evelyn Lauder. They established The Breast Cancer Research Foundation and formalized the pink ribbon as a symbol for breast cancer awareness as part of Self magazine's second annual Breast Cancer Awareness Month issue in 1992. Both Penney and Lauder were commended at the White House by President Bill Clinton and First Lady Hillary Clinton.
Having been employed by the magazine since 1989, Penney left Self in July 1994 to assume the position of director of new media development at Condé Nast Publications. Less than a week later, Penney changed her mind and announced that she would stay at Self.