2008 Woodie Awards
Distinguished Alumna visits Plattsburgh State
Joanna Knight
Issue date: 10/5/07 Section: News
Originally published: 10/4/07 at 4:43 PM EST
Last update: 10/4/07 at 4:54 PM EST
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Diamond came to PSUC because of its radio station. She came from Staten Island to Plattsburgh alone, and found herself on a group tour of the campus which she felt catered more to the parents than the students. She wandered off the tour and into the radio station, where she walked in to find a boy wearing a denim jacket with a Jam album cover painted on the back of it. Diamond decided to come to PSUC instantly.
Though there was a high demand for jobs at WPLT, Diamond began working for the station - which was then based in Macdonough Hall where she lived - as a freshman filling in for seniors who couldn't make their shift. She remembers "literally running downstairs in my pajamas." At the time, Diamond aspired to be a music journalist. She worked as a DJ every semester she spent at PSUC, playing "lots of alternative music. The Cure, the Pixies, the Jesus and Mary Chain."
Diamond also spent a semester in Paris, where she now spends much of the year for Lancôme. She was in Europe when the Berlin Wall fell and took the train to Berlin, which she describes as being like "a giant, international party for three days." Diamond still has pieces of the wall that she chipped off herself.
Her interest in music led her to internships with The Village Voice and Spin, where she worked for "Please Kill Me" author and editor Legs McNeil. Ultimately, the same passion for music pushed her in a different direction. "I loved music so much that the insider look at the industry was ruining it for me," she said. She accepted a job at her "hometown paper," the Staten Island Advance, and then a job for a travel trade magazine, which afforded her plentiful opportunities to travel.
Diamond has written a book about the late makeup artist and activist Kevyn Aucoin. Aucoin was known not only for his prodigious knack at transformation (his book "Making Faces" features Gwyneth Paltrow as James Dean and Martha Stewart as Veronica Lake), but also for what Diamond calls "an amazing understanding of the politics of gender and identity." She added that Aucoin was "not afraid to be a fan," eschewing pretension when working with his famous clients. If someone's work had touched him - Barbara Streisand's, for example - he wasn't afraid to let him or her know.
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