Early in his career, Michael Gross wrote about rock music for magazines. From 1973, his work appeared primarily in Crawdaddy!, the New Musical Express, Zoo World, Rock, Club, Circus and Swank. In addition to writing features for Circus magazine's sister publication, Circus Raves, during the mid 1970s, he served as editor-in-chief of Rock in 1976 and 1977. Gross was the editor of the Fire Island News, a weekly newspaper in a New Yorksummer colony, in 1978. He then began covering fashion photography for Photo District News and subsequently wrote the column "Fashion Statements" for Manhattan, Inc., a short-lived business magazine. In 1985, he went to work for The New York Times, writing about fashion in feature stories and a weekly column, "Notes on Fashion". In 1988, he became a contributing editor of New York magazine, covering fashion and the world of the rich and famous. In 2000, he was briefly a senior editor of George, a political magazine. In 2002, he wrote a gossip column, "The Word", for the New York Daily News. From 2002 until 2010, he edited the written content of Bergdorf Goodman Magazine. He worked for Crain's New York Business as a columnist from 2010 to 2012. Gross was also the real estate editor and a monthly columnist for Avenue magazine, its editor-in-chief from October 2016 until March 2019, and a contributing editor of Travel and Leisure magazine from 1997 until 2014. In 2015, he was named a contributing editor of Departures. In addition to The New York Times and New York, he has written for Esquire, GQ, Vanity Fair, and Town & Country. Gross is married. His sister is Jane Gross, formerly a reporter and bureau chief at The New York Times. Their father, Milton Gross, was also a journalist, a syndicated sports columnist for the New York Post and an author. Gross is the author of the bestsellers Model: The Ugly Business of Beautiful Women and 740 Park: The Story of the World's Richest Apartment Building. He has also written books on the Baby Boom, the fashion designerRalph Lauren, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and estates in Los Angeles. In 2014, Gross published a book on the luxury condominium building 15 Central Park West, with the title House ofOutrageous Fortune. It reached number 20 on the New York Times Non-Fiction Best Seller list. In July 2016, Gross published Focus: The Secret, Sexy, Sometimes Sordid World of Fashion Photographers'' through Simon & Schuster.
