We meet in the Harper’s Bazaar suite at De L’Europe, overlooking the Amstel. The room feels elegant, carefully curated. So does Miluska van ‘t Lam. There is a quiet elegance about her, but what stands out most is the warmth. Before the coffee has even settled on the table, she’s already asking questions. She listens carefully, with a genuine curiosity that makes people open up.
Perhaps that’s no coincidence. Throughout the conversation, one thing becomes clear: she genuinely loves people. Their stories, their ambitions, the small sparks that make each person different. She speaks often about connection, and about the idea that everyone is searching for a piece of recognition in one another. It’s perhaps surprising to hear that she once described herself as painfully shy. As a child, she escaped into stories. She made magazines in her bedroom, wrote endlessly and imagined worlds of her own. Looking back, the signs were already there. Writing. Storytelling. A fascination with people. Years later, those same themes still run through everything she does.
When she joined Harper’s Bazaar Netherlands, she wasn’t interested in changing what made the magazine iconic. Instead, she wanted to bring it closer. To create space not only for beauty and fashion, but also for ambition, creativity and connection. For women who dare to dream. Over time, that vision expanded beyond the pages of the magazine. Conversations became communities. Readers became members. What started as stories evolved into the Harper’s Bazaar Business Club – a place where women from different industries and backgrounds come together, not only to network, but to grow.
Listening to her speak about it, it feels less like a strategy and more like a responsibility. She doesn’t describe herself as someone simply looking after a magazine. There is a genuine sense of care in the way she talks about the women she hopes to inspire and connect. Building the community brought her closer to them. Listening became just as important as creating. Perhaps that sense of responsibility has always been there.
As the eldest of three daughters, after losing her father at a young age, she learned early on to take care of others. To carry responsibility quietly. Asking for help didn’t come naturally. Learning to do so became one of the most important lessons in her life. Somewhere along the way, she also stopped trying to become the kind of leader others expected her to be. The warmth, optimism and curiosity that had always come naturally became part of her leadership too. There is no distance in the way she leads. People seem to matter too much for that. “If you clearly define what you’re about, you create attraction. That’s when you start building.”
Looking back, there is a quiet consistency running through her story. The magazines she made as a child may have become a little bigger. The conversations have certainly changed. But the curiosity remained much the same. And perhaps that is what people respond to most – not the titles or the world surrounding them, but the feeling that she has stayed remarkably close to the things that mattered from the beginning.