As a teenager, she fled the city to live on a sailboat with her boyfriend and studied drawing in the Tuscan hills before making her way back to New York, where she continues to find new ways to be herself. As she looks out over Fifth Avenue from the balcony of her Greenwich Village apartment, Goodman reflects on her career-making moments and continued good fortune.

Sarah Medford: You grew up on the Upper East Side, and you’ve always worked in New York. I’m sure the city’s shaped your career in many ways.

Tonne Goodman: I think that my exposure to culture and art in New York City absolutely contributed to my career. My parents were very involved with the arts. We went to the theater, we went to the New York Philharmonic; we went to the ballet. If you look at my pictures, you’ll see all of those references. I also think my mother’s taste, which was very refined and very elegant, not fussy at all, has influenced the way I style.

SM: Your work always feels just a quarter-step removed from reality, but better. Maybe that has something to do with drawing on such tangible memories, your family past.

TG: I’m sure it does. And I think that happened even more so after I had my children. That’s when you really understand what is important, and what is important to project in a photograph.

SM: Did you share clothes with your two sisters when you were growing up?

TG: No… I mean, I sometimes stole a sweater or something like that, but in general we had very different taste. I was fashion-forward as a teenager.

SM: I saw a photo in your memoir that was taken in Italy when you were about 20. You’re wearing a black tank top and white jeans, with a cigarette in your hand. That combination seems to have become a real uniform for you.

TG: I actually started with blue jeans. Back in those hippie days, you had to break them in yourself. There was no stonewashing. I had a pair of jeans that I would not give up; it took years to break them in. Then I gravitated to white ones kind of naturally. Once I realized that white jeans are so versatile that you can take them to a cocktail party or take them to the park, it was like a magic bullet.

SM: Fashion people tend to have big closets. Are you one of them?

TG: Yes and no. I have a lot of stuff—I just moved out of a duplex in a brownstone where I raised my two kids for almost 30 years. There was a lot of accumulation, which I tried to edit carefully. But there is stuff in the closet that just stays there. And I wear the same thing all the time. I really rely on a uniform.

SM: Tell me about that.

TG: When I started working for Vogue, my uniform was a pencil skirt, a black turtleneck, fishnet stockings, and kitten heels. I had a lot of kitten heels from Prada; they did great ones. And a lot of different sweaters.

SM: And at night?

TG: It’s always a tuxedo. That’s my uniform for black tie. I have the most fabulous collection of tuxedos, starting from Calvin Klein in the early ’90s—it looks like a zoot suit—to Marc Jacobs at Louis Vuitton, and also Raf Simons at Dior, with a shorter jacket. I have five of them from different designers. And if it’s an evening where I have to get a little bit spruced up, I just go with a black velvet shirt.

SM: In art school, you majored in drawing. Do you think your interest in clothes came out of that, or was it more the result of modeling?

TG: It was more modeling. In the summer of my 10th grade, I went to Leo Lerman to see if I could get a job at Mademoiselle. He was the editor and a family friend. And he said, “Well, we don’t have anything, but you could try modeling.” I was already tall. That was the start of being exposed to the fashion world, photographers and stylists, editors, and hair and makeup—that kind of glam.

SM: The word stylist is one of those spongy job descriptions. People can’t isolate the stylist’s work even though they’re looking right at a photograph. It’s easily misunderstood. How do you define a stylist’s job?

TG: You can take a dress and you can wear it 100 different ways, but when the stylist comes in, they are giving it a point of view—who wears it, what the character is, how it’s worn, its significance, the whole thing.

SM: And what excited you about it when you first began doing it?

TG: The first story I did as an editor at The New York Times Magazine was with Helmut Newton, so that was a crash course in the fascination of making an image. I was hooked after that. Carrie Donovan, my boss, was such a fabulous character. The magazine was a weekly, and I was responsible for coming up with the story idea, casting it, doing the market work, shooting it, editing it, and writing the blurb, which was terrifying. Carrie, who used to pass my desk when I would be sweating over the copy, once said, “Let’s not make War and Peace out of this.” Which I thought was perfect. Sometimes shorter is better. I mean, all they needed was three lines, and it was very hard to deliver.

SM: You’ve been very outspoken on the environment and the need for a more sustainable approach to fashion in particular. When did your commitment really crystallize?

TG: I was a hippie. Right from the start, I was always involved in sustainability; I was there for Earth Day in 1970. I did get the opportunity to take advantage of my position at Vogue by covering “Style Ethics,” and also “Then and Now,” which were such fun columns.

SM: Do you remember your first exposure to styling? Was it when you were modeling?

TG: There weren’t really stylists when I was modeling. There were editors. A stylist really wasn’t given any credit until, I think, Kezia Keeble, who co-founded what is now KCD with John Duka and Paul Cavaco; she sort of cemented the authority of a stylist. Together they really established the profession.

SM: You’ve said that you were self-conscious as a model. Were there photographers who could break through that?

TG: Oh, don’t get me started! David Bailey was fabulous. Mario Testino—who is my son’s godfather—for him, everybody on set was equal: from the guy who served lunch, to the P.A. that picked up the garbage, to me, to the star that we were shooting. And that does not apply to a lot of photographers. I mean, it creates a family. And you realize that this work is your life, so you better make it what you want.

SM: That’s powerful advice. Do you recall another piece of advice that has risen above the rest, that you still hold on to?

TG: When I worked with Mrs. [Diana] Vreeland at the Met’s Costume Institute, she used to say, “Don’t talk to anybody except for the man at the top. Go straight to the president.” That was a good lesson.

SM: Theory is a brand you’ve worked with for a while now. What do you admire about its clothes?

TG: Theory is minimal in the best way. It addresses what you need, but it carries a subtle chic that takes it out of being ordinary: It’s in the fabrics that are used. It’s in the cut. It’s in the whole sensibility.

SM: What is your collaboration like?

TG: I give them advice on a point of view. I come in and look at a way to put pieces together that represent the best of Theory. I really act as a stylist in that way, putting the pieces together. I do have the opportunity to work with the designers, and I do make some suggestions. I’m not a designer, but I do have a lot of experience. I loved working on Theory’s Fall 2025 New York Fashion Week presentation: It was not only a preview of the collection but also an experience that invited the press to encounter and explore the process that goes into the making of the designs, culminating with models on set being photographed for the lookbook.

SM: You must come across images that inspire your fashion work. Do you save them?

TG: No. Reportage inspires me—I used to love Life, and I worked for the magazine. It’s that reality factor, often black and white, like the work of Vivian Maier, who was a nanny in Chicago. She had a Rolleiflex camera, and she would take the picture looking down at the aperture so nobody knew she was taking their picture. It’s an inspiration for approach and mood rather than the way a photograph is styled.

SM: So where do your best pictures come from?

TG: The best picture is always the one that comes after the photographer puts down the camera.

SM: Why do you think that is?

TG: When models pose, they’re responding to the photographer. You’ve got them all dolled up, they’re in the situation, but they’re performing—they’re not being. The minute the photographer puts the camera down, they become themselves.

SM: What makes a fashion story successful? One thing a fashion story should always achieve?

TG: I think captivity is the thing. If you can capture the viewer right away, then you’ve got their attention. And you can do that in lots of different ways. You can do it with absolute drop-dead beauty, or remarkable situations, or ugliness, even.

SM: The delivery systems for fashion images have changed so much. Do you still believe in communicating through fashion?

TG: You know what? I like it even more now, because I think that the parameters have been released. There are no parameters anymore. I live in Greenwich Village, so you see everything. The more outrageous it is, the more I kind of think, Why not? I mean, go for it.

Hair Stylist: Jimmy Paul

Makeup Artist: Fulvia Farolfi at MA+ Group

Production: The Curated

Local Production: Here Productions

Photo Assistant: Alec Vierra

Fashion Assistant: Gabriella Georgie

Special Thanks: East Photographic and MA+ Group