<![CDATA[Jezebel: departures]]> http://tags.gawker.com/assets/base/img/thumbs140x140/jezebel.com.png <![CDATA[Jezebel: departures]]> http://jezebel.com/tag/departures http://jezebel.com/tag/departures <![CDATA[Pole Dancing, Prada, & Project Runway: A Year In The Life Of Jezebel Jen]]> It's that time: Jezebel Jennifer's last day of work. Earlier this week, when announcing her departure and upcoming arrival at the offices of Ralph Lauren, I mentioned a little of what I like about her. Now, I'd like to call attention to a little of what I liked that she wrote. For over a year, Jennifer has been writing our "Rag Trade" fashion-industry roundup, and last night when doing a search, I was shocked to find that she has done the column a staggering 300 times. (She's also done thousands of "Snap Judgments", and according to my calculations, over 50 posts on her beloved Project Runway alone.)

But beyond that — and her putting up with demanding edits, late night emails, two exhausting New York Fashion Weeks, a diagnosis of vertigo, and hundreds of hours watching Martha, The View, and Regis & Kelly — Jen has done a number of features that I think regular readers should revisit and new readers should introduce themselves to. (Readers with other suggestions are welcome to link to them in the comments!) There was her foray into foray into pole-dancing, her tryout for America's Next Top Model, her liveblog from the Project Runway finale in Bryant Park, her experience being silently judged at the Soho Prada store, the Hooters party she hit up last fall, and, my personal favorite, our Label Whores feature, for which Jen sewed designer fashion labels into cheap clothes and tried to sell them to snotty consignment stores. All of these are examples of Jennifer's singular initiative, good humor, intelligence, creativity and energy, for which I will always be grateful. Ralph Lauren is a lucky man. Godspeed, sweetie, and don't forget those polo shirts!

Earlier: You Can Take The Girl Out Of Jezebel But You Can't Take The Jezebel Out Of The Girl

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<![CDATA[You Can Take The Girl Out Of Jezebel, But You Can't Take The Jezebel Out Of The Girl]]> There's no adequately poetic way to put this, so I'll just jump right in: Jennifer Gerson is leaving us at the end of this week. Jennifer, as some of our old-timers know, has been with the site since virtually the very beginning: In early February 2007, she answered an "ad" I put up on our brother site, Gawker, looking for writers for the as-yet-untitled site I was working on, then known simply as 'Girly Gawker'. At the time she wrote me, she was toiling away as an assistant to Elle editor-in-chief Robbie Myers, and although I was intrigued by her pedigree — Elle, Sephora, NBC, the office of Senator Hillary Clinton — it was the intelligent, thoughtful yet energetic tone of her email that had me, if not at 'hello', at this: "I believed whole-heartedly then, and still, in a more idealistic place, believe now, that women's magazines just might be the site of large-scale revolution, if the people who make them ever choose them to be. Why couldn't stories on, say, universal health care run alongside a fashion news piece explaining the most recent grunge revival? As I said in my interview [with Elle], 'I have been reading Maureen Dowd religiously since the 6th grade and I really, really love my shoes.'"

Jennifer and her MoDo iChat avatar are abandoning us for the preppier, more well-financed clutches of Ralph Lauren, where she will be their new Women's Editor — designing, creating and conceptualizing original content for the women's holdings under the RalphLauren.com umbrella. (She will also, hopefully, be sending us free pairs of Madras shorts and brushed-cotton tees that we can wear on our nonexistent yachts during our nonexistent summer vacations with our nonexistent, tow-headed Aryan children.) But she will continue to be found on Jezebel occasionally — she still owes me that May Past Fashion on bridesmaid and flower-girl dresses! — and we will be running small tribute posts to her throughout the week. What I'll say now is that we simply could not have launched this blog without her, and her endless amounts of energy, devotion, and creativity are both enviable and inspiring. We're damn proud of you, Jennifer. I only hope that we've been as good to you as you have been to us.

Earlier: Meet The Editors

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