"'Vogue' was a glorious illusion that I had lived in," says former French editor-in-chief Joan Juliet Buck

"I was in the theatre department and my father sent me a telegram that said you're not at college to become an actress.

So I thought, 'okay I can write.'"

Former French Vogue editor-in-chief, Joan Juliet Buck, has had a life for the books, which is why she wrote it all down in her new memoir, The Price of Illusion. Buck began writing for the school paper while at Sarah Lawrence College, but got her big break during a summer away from school when she was 19.

"It was 1968, and everyone wanted to know what the young people were doing, so they brought me in to write book reviews," referring to the summer that a maternity leave position opened up at Glamour Magazine. Buck would read and write her reviews at night, and during the day she got a second job as a fashion assistant at Glamour. "I would run around trying to iron the clothes that were going to be on the cover," she says. "I would often burn them," she says laughing.

Two months into her fall semester back at school, she dropped out to get back to work.

By 23, she was features editor at British Vogue, where she got to "see all the big films before they came out, all the best theatre, all the best concerts", she noted to me. Similarly she calls her time writing for American Vogue "a cultural thing."  She was tasked with tackling some especially difficult subjects. In the summer of 1990, the magazine asked Buck to cover the AIDS epidemic.

"I spent three months doing the most heartbreaking reporting about it," she says. "Men were dying, friends of mine were dying, there was no cure." She worked to report and engage power players to set-up life saving protocols, but says she never succeeded. "It was the darkest thing I've even done and I cried for three months reporting and writing it," she says of experience. "When I handed it in, Sadam Hussein had just invaded Kuwait, and I was told, 'We're not going to run it. It's going to depress people," she says. The story was never published. "And onto the next," she says.

Eventually, she became the first and only American to land the coveted role of Editor-in-Chief at French Vogue. But early on, she discovered the realities that went along with it. "When you're an editor-in-chief, you're wearing very uncomfortable shoes, makeup and the right clothes," she says. "You're making the right noises because you don't want to offend anyone, so your reactions are stifled." She felt most free at the office working with her staff where should could inspire creativity and send them out to produce the magazine's legendary art.

Aside from a few years she spent working for Women's Wear Daily and The London Observer, Buck had spent majority of her working life at Conde Nast's publications. Suddenly, at age 62, she had to make a shocking change she never expected.  "Ultimately, it was really time to leave home," she says of her dismissal from the magazine. "A lot of people leave much earlier than I did."

From it all, Buck learned an important lesson. "I grew up in movies, and Vogue was a glorious illusion that I had lived in," she says. "I helped create those illusions and when I ran Paris Vogue, I created the illusion of Paris Vogue, and when I was no longer part of that illusion, I was able to find out what my reality was."

After all her time in the industry, in her own mind Buck still felt she had one thing to prove: that she is a credible writer. "It was time," she says simply, about writing a book now.

Keep reading for the Life X Joan Juliet Buck rapidfire round.

Your breakfast: "Eggs, gluten-free toast, a pile of arugula and espresso with cocoa powder."

The book you're reading: "Patricia Bosworth's The Men in My Life."

Your hero: "Jerry Brown. He was governor of California when he was young, and is governor of California now that he's old, and is doing an extraordinary job in changing times."

Your best kiss: "Oh, I couldn't possibly tell you that! [laughs]. But kissing is very nice."

Your secret Internet obsession: "I go on the sites of auction houses, and I look at furniture and paintings and prints. If I find something I really like and I can't possibly bid on, I save the picture. I love doing that! It's sick; I could do it for hours."

Your biggest fear: "The end of civilization."