The 40th anniversary of Flair is an occasion that Jean Lowrie-Chin, its very first editor and conceptualiser, eagerly anticipated, especially as the publication relaunches its new digital format for women worldwide to access.
Speaking with Flair, Lowrie-Chin, who in 1984 had a young public relations business called PRO Communications Limited located inside the offices of The Jamaica Pegasus hotel at the time, recalled when she first saw a print advertisement in The Gleaner some 40 years ago. It stated that the newspaper was seeking to create a female-centred magazine at a time when the women’s movement was at its height in Jamaica.
The now four-decades-old advertisement asked for persons or companies to create a pitch for this new and exciting women-based magazine, and is one Lowrie-Chin will never forget.
Lowrie-Chin, author of the book Souldance, knew within her soul that this magazine was something she and her public relations team at PROComm could conceptualise well, especially given that “writing” was her “first love”. She and her team also decided on the name suggestion of Flair Magazine for their pitch.
“You can imagine the excitement of our company PROComm when we were awarded the contract that we had tendered for, and it started an exciting phase for women’s stories, because Flair at that time was devoted to the women of Jamaica, and we were taking our place, because the maternity leave law was now in effect, and there were companies who would give employment agreements to women that included them tendering their resignation when they became pregnant,” Lowrie-Chin told Flair.
“And, with the maternity leave law, that was no longer acceptable or legal. It was a new phase of life for women and I remember starting a column called Women at Work, where I shared [women’s] experiences and I spoke [about] some of the challenges we were still facing and how we could overcome them,” she said.
Lowrie-Chin also recalled conceptualising a fun section of the magazine called Big Date, where a woman and a man would be interviewed on a date. Her most memorable occasion for that was with Sir Florizel Glasspole, who was the third and longest-serving governor-general of Jamaica, and his wife, Lady Ina Glasspole.
“And I asked them how they met, and they became like teenagers because they said they were on a train and Sir Florizel and his friend were on the train with them, and they gave the eye to her, they started to talk and then, because he became serious, they had to go and meet her parents. During all that time, there was a lot of laughter and I learnt so much about this wonderful couple,” Lowrie-Chin told Flair.
“As you can see from our first issue, we had a Pulse fashion model. We had an interview with Cindy Breakspeare and we had a column called My Flair Lady. Now, in those days, we couldn’t just prepare the magazine and email it as we email it now. We had to use floppy discs and those floppy discs would sometimes get corrupted. So, by the time the floppy discs arrived at The Gleaner, they would say, ‘We can’t read anything’, and then we had to hustle again and put everything together again on a floppy disc and take it back down. We were sort of in-between the new digital age,” she said.
The Gleaner would then compose and print the content on newspaper pages. Now, Flair, which went fully digital on April 20, 2020, is going into another era and will be more pronounced in the digital space, for which Lowrie-Chin believes the time is right.
Lowrie-Chin said, over the decades, thousands of Jamaican women have been inspired by the articles in Flair, and called her ‘My Flair Lady’ as a result, a title she does not believe she wholly epitomises.
“My Flair Lady, I picture as someone very tall and elegant. I can hardly ascribe to that description but I’m quite honoured to be called that,” Lowrie-Chin, who is short in stature, told Flair.
One main aim of establishing the Flair, then styled Flair Magazine, was to tackle issues affecting women nationally, especially in the workforce, where men were the dominant leaders. Asked about the single most important issue affecting women today, Lowrie-Chin did not hesitate, stating that Jamaicans needed to become more sensitive to the needs of our women, especially those experiencing domestic violence.
“I believe the single most important issue is domestic violence. Domestic violence is affecting women [at] all income levels. It is not just the lower income level or the middle income level, it goes even to the upper income level, and I think too many women have lost their lives or have been seriously injured because of domestic violence. It not only affects them, it affects their families, it affects their children. It affects their co-workers and it affects their fellow women who hear these stories and listen in fear,” Lowrie-Chin said.
“We cannot just sit and be fearful. We have to get to the root causes of domestic violence. We have to understand that it could come from the way children are parented. It could come from the way mental health is not being addressed, so counselling should be involved. We have to go to early detection of these issues, because there may be someone right there in our midst now who has domestic violence issues but because we’re not engaging with them, because we’re not sitting with them. If we notice something happening with their behaviour or with their appearance, we should take the time to take our co-workers to lunch, take our co-workers to tea, sit with them and say listen, ‘You’re not how you used to be. You seem to be depressed and your appearance is changing. Can I help you or can I get someone to help you?’ We need to be more sensitive to what is happening around us, because our observation, our sensitivity, our action could literally save a life,” she said.
ADVICE TO WOMEN
When asked what advice she would give to women, Lowrie-Chin, a woman who has made it in business, public relations, writing and real estate investment, shared that women should “invest in shares or real estate, no matter how small”.
“And, even if you start small, start … and then you step up from there,” she said.
As a feminist, Lowrie-Chin says she credits her success to her deceased mother, Maisie Lowrie, given that it was her mother who loaned her $3,200 to start PROComm and helped with the renovation of her first property in Kingsway, where she eventually moved her offices.
“We are so lucky to have good mothers in Jamaica. My mother was my first investor, and then when it was time to buy the building, and the building was in a terrible condition, again it was my mother who assembled the workmen and [took] them to that premises and [got] the roof fixed, [got] the floor fixed,” she recounting, noting the building was made of “something called concrete nut”. “It’s not even brick and steel, but it [had] gone through Gilbert and just lost [a] piece of zinc and it [was] standing still, and a good investment which [gave] me some passive income,” Lowrie-Chin said.
