Life at the top of the masthead at a New York-based magazine has been nothing if not frenetic of late for former Lake Forest resident Michael Caruso.
Since June, when Caruso took over as editor in chief at Details magazine, he has found himself jetting to Los Angeles and Milan in the name of business.
He has had prime seats at Italian fashion shows and played host to 500 guests at a party at a rented Beverly Hills mansion in honor of the Details-anointed most beautiful women in television.
During the festivities, synchronized swimmers performed in one of the manse’s swimming pools and guests swilled chocolate martinis, while assorted “Baywatch”-type babes danced in a three-story disco.
Before former classmates of Caruso’s in the Lake Forest High School Class of 1979 find themselves overcome with jealousy, they should realize that life at a glossy magazine isn’t always quite that over the top.
“Unfortunately, it’s not a party like that every night,” Caruso, 36, said during a telephone interview after his return to his New York office.
Supervising a retooling of the Conde Nast men’s publication, in addition to celebrity interviews, has been grueling. The magazine, which has a circulation of about 500,000, features a mix of reviews and articles on such topics as relationships, money and grooming.
Caruso’s workdays routinely stretched from 8 a.m. to 3 a.m. before the debut of the September issue, the first with his stamp all over it.
The schedule precluded looking for a new home, and the unmarried Caruso has been living in a hotel since his arrival in New York from Los Angeles, where he was editor in chief of Los Angeles magazine.
In Caruso’s opinion, Details has the potential to be the best men’s magazine in the country, cooler than such possible competition as GQ and Esquire. But staying ahead of the curve on popular culture is crucial to success in the competitive magazine world.
“We want to be first in many ways: first on bands, first on actors and actresses,” Caruso said. “Being first is really key.”
He described the publication as “one-stop shopping for any guy between 20 and 35 to tell you about your world.”
Caruso’s world has been dominated by the magazine business since he graduated from Columbia University in New York with a degree in English literature.
With the exception of his last job, Caruso has spent his professional life working in the epicenter of publishing in New York City. He began his career with a couple of dues-paying years at The New Yorker, where he worked as a messenger while absorbing how that publication’s stories were crafted.
“My parents, I think, were pulling their hair out” over those years when their son lived in a series of shoe-box-sized apartments and subsisted in New York on messenger wages, Caruso recalled with an easy laugh.
But his parents, Marie and Jerome, who still live in Lake Forest, said they’ve always respected their eldest son’s independent streak.
According to his parents, it seems that Caruso’s career path was set in motion years ago.
Even before he could read, at an age when most youngsters were still absorbed by rattles and squeaky toys, young Michael was fascinated by the look of magazines, carefully absorbing the pictures in the glossies without wrinkling the pages, his mother remembers.
“He was so interested in them, he would turn them page by page from the time he could sit up in his crib,” she said.
As he grew older, any printed material was fodder for Caruso’s voracious reading appetites.
“I ransacked the Lake Forest High School library just out of interest,” he recalled.
Always precocious, Caruso decided at about age 10 that working in the magazine business was for him.
“He was always very passionate about reading and writing, and he always wanted to get to New York and that industry,” according to his childhood pal, Scott Graham, an international banker who now lives in Arlington Heights.
Caruso, who was born in Copenhagen and lived until he was 6 in Belgium, arrived in Lake Forest as a 6th grader after the family moved from Arlington Heights.
From 7th through 9th grades, he attended Lake Forest Country Day School, where he stood out to Bob Bullard, the school’s assistant to the headmaster and director of admissions.
“He was always a very keen observer,” Bullard said. “I’ve rarely seen kids that age who were so up on current events.”
Indeed, his parent say, Caruso manages to know a lot about a range of subjects, especially sports.
As a youngster, “he knew all the statistics and he knew all the background of all the players,” his mother said. At one time, he even aspired to be a sportscaster, she said.
Marie Caruso warns that this is not a man to challenge to a game of Trivial Pursuit, where he’s known to be a fierce competitor.
“He’s always been up for new adventures: traveling, trying different things,” Graham said.
His agile, inquisitive mind makes him a good choice for the top job at a major monthly that prizes what’s hot at the moment, say those who know him best.
“He probably relates to the young culture, the pop culture, better than anyone his age,” Jerome Caruso said.
The Carusos value artistic achievement. Jerome is a respected furniture designer who operated his studio out of the family home when Michael and his younger brother, Steven, a design engineer, were growing up.
The family’s house, which Jerome Caruso worked with an architect to create on land bordering a bird sanctuary, caused quite a stir among neighbors. It wasn’t the typical faux-Tudor design that is the stereotype for homes in the affluent suburb. Instead, the earth-toned brick Caruso home with pyramid-shaped rooms and lots of angles “seemed to grow right out of the ground,” Marie Caruso said.
“The outside was extremely dramatic and perhaps one of the best examples of how his parents have an artistic bent,” Graham said. “He came from a very creative family, and that rubbed off on him.”
The house, where the family no longer resides, shaped his brain, Caruso said.
“It really taught me to think unconventionally,” he said. “It made me feel really special growing up there, especially in a town like Lake Forest that celebrates convention.”
That early dose of attention may come in handy as Caruso finds himself the interviewed rather than the interviewer as a result of the publicity surrounding his new job at Details.
The September issue required intensive work on every aspect of the magazine, Caruso said of the redesigned effort. October’s issue featured a gaggle of beautiful female television actresses in black lingerie on the cover and, not surprisingly, has gotten a lot of attention for the publication.
A fresh approach is just what Details needs, in the view of one Northwestern University professor.
“It sort of went from being hot and hip, the Esquire of the MTV generation, to being self-consciously obnoxious,” said Charles Whitaker, describing the magazine before Caruso’s tenure began.
Whitaker, who teaches magazine editing at the university’s Medill School of Journalism, has some suggestions as Caruso tries to sharpen the focus of the publication.
“I think he will have to regain the franchise that it lost by appealing to young men with the sort of core issues that are important to them, like music, maybe a hint of sports . . . politics and current events, but from their perspective,” Whitaker said, cautioning that there is a fine line between engaging and alienating readers.
Caruso’s years in the field should provide solid preparation for his newest challenge.
After The New Yorker, Caruso arrived at The Village Voice, where he served as sports editor, features editor and finally executive editor over about a five-year period. The Voice was a raucous place, where passions ran so high regarding stories that an occasional fistfight was not unusual, said Caruso, who insists that he never had to step outside for the sake of syntax.
His next stop was at Vanity Fair, where he worked for four years as a senior articles editor, shepherding stories by such prominent authors as sportswriter Frank Deford.
Caruso was held in high regard by writers at Vanity Fair, recalled Deford, an author, commentator and columnist for Newsweek.
“A lot of being an editor is having a knack not just for words but for dealing with people,” Deford said in a telephone interview. “It’s very much like being a coach: You don’t treat everybody the same; you do what’s best to get the best out of them.”
Caruso is always full of ideas for stories and apparently has found a job that suits his talents, Deford continued. “He probably is one of those people who is best running the show.”
