The World at Her Fingertips (Published 2013) (2024)

When Natalie Massenet ascended the stairs of the Carnegie Hall stage a month ago to accept a Woman of the Year trophy from Glamour magazine, she outdid Jennifer Lawrence at the 2013 Oscars ceremony, nearly tripping on her Alessandra Rich white lace gown (soon available for upward of $3,000 at Net-a-Porter, the online luxury retailer she founded)before impaling the hem with her high-heeled sandals.

Time froze. The honoree swayed. Gasps filled the audience, already suffering emotional whiplash from a just-ended tribute to Melinda Gates’s philanthropy, as presenters struggled to disentangle Ms. Massenet from her dress.

“Death by stiletto,” she joked limply after at last reaching the podium.

It was a rare awkward moment for a woman who has evolved from scrappy Internet pioneer, peddling designer clothes over pokey modems out of a small apartment in London’s Chelsea neighborhood, to consolidating a power of unusual breadth over the fashion industry.

In 2010, Ms. Massenet sold a majority stake in Net-a-Porter to the Swiss holding company Richemont, remaining executive chairman; her brand extensions include the Outnet, a discount site, and Mr. Porter (pronounced the American way) for men, all winging their wares to customers within days, sometimes hours, via branded black vans (surely before long there will be a Jet-a-Porter).

A year ago, she was appointed chairwoman of the British Fashion Council, a role she described with crisp authority in an interview as “thinking big picture, gross domestic product, exports and jobs.”

And while publications like Glamour, Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar turn cartwheels trying to figure out new media, in January the hyper-wired Ms. Massenet, 48, is expected to oversee the counterintuitive introduction of Porter (also pronounced the American way): a magazine to be sold on newsstands. “It’s a big beast,” said its editor, Lucy Yeomans, formerly of Harper’s Bazaar UK, promising “lots of journalism” and 40 to 50 pages of features.