Kool kat. (notes).(Brief Article)

Because October is the most beautiful month, it's appropriate that Kat James wrote our two-part cover article. It hardly gives depth to James' personal story to say she's a holistic beauty and health advocate who's been featured in the New York Times, O and Vogue--or to quote syndicated columnist Liz Smith's tribute that "anyone exposed to her missionary zeal in matters of health, environment and safe roads to beauty will be the better for it."

No, to describe what James does for a living is not to capture who she is as a human being: a woman of extraordinary empathy for other women. As she herself suggests, James wasn't born knockout gorgeous, and so the unearned perquisites that attend a "perfect 10" (or size 1) were not available to her. Instead, she had to learn that the change from duckling to swan required a new definition of what makes a swan beautiful. Once she shed social definitions and created ...