When Laura Brown and Kristina O'Neill were fired from their jobs, they took this photo. It went viral.

This is an edited extract from All The Cool Girls Get Fired by Laura Brown and Kristina O'Neill.

The two women met as ambitious, 20-something, fashion editors at a Marc Jacobs runway show in New York City. Together, they would climb the ranks at Harper's Bazaar for more than a decade. Both women made it to the very top: Brown became editor-in-chief of InStyle and O'Neill, the EIC of WSJ Magazine.

This is what happened next….

And Then We Got Canned.

Laura

Cut to February 2022 and… womp womp. I got fired first.

In late 2021, InStyle and its parent company, Meredith, was sold to Dotdash, a digital media company (and the magazine's third owner in five years). The Dotdash dudes settled in for three months, quoted Wu-Tang a lot, and, on one sunny day in early February, closed the print version of InStyle and laid off myself and our editorial staff over Zoom.

While I'd read the industry room (for months), it was still a shock. I went full Winston Churchill ('Fear is a reaction, courage is a decision' lite) with the team and spent the rest of the day lying on my bed with my sneakers still on, receiving hundreds of texts and DMs (unlike Churchill). I was so busy being a human auto-reply to concerned friends and colleagues that I didn't even start drinking. (Don't worry, I got to it.)

Watch Em Vernem on getting started with a career pivot. Post continues below.

The official terminology in the Dotdash Meredith press release and following news pickup was "Laura Brown was terminated." (Sadly, I missed the new word du jour that refers to media firings: "defenestrated." It means being thrown out of a window. I originally thought it meant "disemboweled." Never too old to learn!)

For my termination, there were no killer robots, just a robotic HR representative telling me she was sending over some paperwork to sign — and when my health insurance would end (fuuuck). I remember making some dumb, self-preserving jokes and wondering if I needed a lawyer. But who? I'd never needed a lawyer for anything!

Publicly, I said nothing apart from posting an Instagram Story of my hand holding a Sausage McMuffin (this was not my salmon and spinach era) and saying I'd get back to people when I could. I went to that drawer and pulled out my LB Media folder. I knew I had a valuable currency in the industry as myself — not as InStyle. Most importantly, I knew I had enough LB juice to not just be myself, but work for myself, too. I'd been captive to the fickleness and self-made drama of publishing for almost three damn decades, and I never wanted a boss to be able to control my mood, my day, or my life ever again.

Kristina

Over a year later, in April 2023, I had a spidey sense that something was not right at the WSJ mothership when I couldn't get an introductory meeting on the books with my new boss… for three months.

The meeting was finally confirmed, set to take place in her office, but five minutes before, it was moved to the HR department. My fate was sealed: "I'm sorry we have to meet under these circumstances," she said.

My ten-year run as editor-in-chief of WSJ Magazine was over in ten minutes.

The boss said she'd follow my lead on the narrative around my leaving.

"The narrative?" I replied, my voice sharp with disbelief. I wasn't embezzling money, for Christ's sake.

I had zero desire to spin some half-baked, PR-friendly version of events to save face. I'd given a decade of my life to this place, and I wasn't about to obscure the fact that this was their decision, not mine. (Why would I leave my dream job?)

"You can tell everyone you fired me," I said with as much composure as I could muster. And so, the next day, she did.

Despite not having regained my wits, I still had the foresight to demand the company pay for a tequila-soaked bye-bye bash. Laura had jokes, but I had… vision.

Laura

Kristina texted me, "Getting the boot. Call me when you're up."

Now, Kristina is pragmatic to a fault, but she was in shock. I just tried to be helpful: I was further along on Fired Road, still alive, not broke, flashlight at the ready.

I called Kristina, and after we talked a lot about employment lawyers — we were in senior roles, had never been fired before, and were being pushed a ton of brain-melting paperwork — I launched into my trusty public service announcement, which I'd been rattling away for months to friends, colleagues, and reporters: "Your equity isn't attached to your job. It's yours. It doesn't go poof when your circumstances change."

We both knew this implicitly, despite being rightly pissed that we'd lost our jobs.

Kristina

I've always been more of a "company girl." I enjoy structure, strategy, and all the grown-up things. (My favourite number is 401(k).)

I thrive in that environment, finding energy and security in well-defined roles and goals. So, frankly, thank God Laura got fired first (our friends, laughing quite hard, concurred). She emerged from the experience resilient, unfazed, and just… happier. Her journey post-InStyle and the way she metabolised it showed me that there was life beyond setbacks.

When I wasn't alternately texting Laura and my lawyer about my severance package, I was carpet-bombing every corner of my professional network, setting up meeting after meeting. Determination + slight panic = motivation! Reading the room became my new superpower. I gauged the shifting dynamics and potential opportunities and asserted occasionally wobbly control amid the chaos. Every conversation, every connection, every idea exchanged provided me with a pathway forward. I also napped in my navy sweaters — a lot.

I wasn't entirely sure what I was looking for — it wasn't as though the handful of other magazines I might have wanted to edit were suddenly going to fall into my lap (Happy forty-second anniversary at Condé Nast, Anna Wintour!). I was open to something different, but I also felt like I needed someone to tap me on the shoulder and point me in the right direction. I loved reading, I loved culture, I loved fashion, I loved telling stories — and, yes, I loved telling people what to do. But I loved the sheer craft of making magazines: it was like hand-painting frescoes in an age of Photoshop.

I've always thought of myself as an entrepreneurial person (despite only working for mega organisations). But I was always hustling and pushing to build something new. I didn't want to spend my days managing decline (i.e., traditional magazines that relied on ad revenue). I wanted to create, not maintain. So, whatever came next had to feel dynamic and full of possibility.

Later that month, Laura and Kristina met for a drink with a friend at the wildly upscale Centurion New York club (where people put down black American Express cards, not the green ones we both had to return along with our company badges). On the Uber ride there, Laura texted Kristina: "OK, here's what we're gonna do. We're going to take an Insta picture together, look really cute, and caption it, 'All the cool girls get fired.'"

We'd been up front with friends, colleagues, and the whole fashion industry that we'd been canned, so why not tell the world?

We were great at what we did, and we got fired. So what? We didn't realise, at the time, just how subversive that post would be.

All The Cool Girls Get Fired by Laura Brown and Kristina O'Neill | Penguin Books Australia | available now | $36.99

Feature image: Instagram/ @laurabrown99.