 1930 - 2005 (74 years)
-
| Name |
Nan Field Schlesinger [2, 3] |
| Born |
24 Jul 1930 |
San Francisco, San Francisco, CA  [3] |
| Gender |
Female |
| Reference Number |
78 |
| Died |
3 Jul 2005 |
New York, New York (Manhattan), NY [3] |
| Person ID |
I78 |
aojd |
| Last Modified |
11 Nov 2011 |
-
| Notes |
- The London Independant, 11 July 2005
OBITUARY: NAN KEMPNER
Linda Watson
The quintessential Lady who Lunched, Nan Kempner was one of the women who inspired Tom Wolfe's description 'social X-ray'. An English size eight, incredibly elegant and a party animal par excellence, Kempner personified the particular brand of wealthy Manhattan female who eats, sleeps and breathes fashion. She could chart her life by what she wore and when.
Kempner crossed continents like other people hail taxis. Her annual jaunts to London, Paris, Gstaad, Venice, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Vail and Nassau invariably involved invitations to the inner sanctum of the socially significant and a contingent of the best couture labels " Yves Saint Laurent in Paris, Ungaro in Venice, Valentino in Gstaad.
She was born Nan Field Schlesinger in San Francisco in 1930. Her father, Albert (known as 'Speed'), owned one of California's largest Ford dealerships and her mother, Irma, whom Nan once described as 'an extraordinary fashion plate' instigated Nan's lifelong love of couture. It was her mother who first put Nan on a diet, aged 12.
After graduating from Hamlin School in San Francisco, Nan Schlesinger studied at Connecticut College for Women, but left before graduation. During a junior year abroad, in which she had studied at the Sorbonne, she decided to opt out after being told by artist Fernand Lger that she was 'a disgrace', had 'no talent' and should stop wasting her parents' money. She declared later, 'It wasn't exactly endearing, but it was true.'
After briefly working as a volunteer at the San Francisco Museum of Art, in 1952 she met and married the fabulously wealthy Thomas L. Kempner, chairman of the bankers Loeb Partners and grandson of Carl M. Loeb, the founder of the firm. Although her husband could keep Nan in the manner to which she was already accustomed (she sometimes referred to him as 'the Exchequer'), it didn't stop her working. In the 1960s she was special editor at Harper's Bazaar magazine. In the early 1970s she became a consultant for Tiffany and Company and in the 1980s she was a correspondent for French Vogue. By the late 1990s Nan Kempner had become an international representative for Christie's, the perfect position for someone with the biggest address book in the business.
In 2000 Nan Kempner published R.S.V.P.: menus for entertaining from people who really know how, with proceeds going to the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. She caused controversy during the round of promotional interviews for the book, by claiming that 'I loathe fat people' although she later said, 'It was an unfortunate remark which I regret', and claimed to 'crave hot dogs and hamburgers and peanut butter sandwiches'. A passionate supporter of cancer research, she served on a number of charitable boards and benefit committees, and gave occasional lectures in couture at the prestigious Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
In contrast to the stereotypical front-row fixture, Kempner didn't take herself too seriously. She delighted in telling everyone that the name of her favourite dish, pet-de-nonne, a fritter-like Escoffier creation, meant 'nun's fart' in French. She once described wearing a designer dalmatian coat: 'Boy, did I look like a dog.' She was painted by Andy Warhol in the Seventies, and in his diary entry for 31 October 1977 Warhol recalled a New York magazine article which slated Kempner:
In it, Stevie called Nan Kempner a 'pisser', and Joe Armstrong, the editor, told me that she's already called up the magazine to ask 'What's a pisser?'
Kempner's 16-room New York apartment on Park Avenue was an oasis where guests were encouraged to curl up and sink into the sofas. Hamish Bowles, American Vogue's European Editor at Large, was a frequent visitor. 'She had a ravishing apartment which was also incredibly convivial and cosy,' he says:
Her library, in exotic citrus colours, was absolutely the essence of chic and style. I would put her on a par with those legendary ladies " the ultimate life-enhancers like Babe Paley and C.Z. Guest.
Kempner was one of the diminishing fashion breed otherwise known as the Couture Customer. She was a devotee of Yves Saint Laurent ('I'm probably his oldest living client, When we were young, we were shaped the same: long and skinny') and attended nearly every one of his couture shows from 1962. According to Anna Harvey, the Editorial Director of Cond Nast New Markets,
She was unmistakable. So chic and slender. In fact, she was one of the very few who could fit into the samples. Ultimately, Nan Kempner managed to do what a lot of older women can't, which is to wear contemporary clothes with elegance and dignity. She never looked absurd " ever.
And groomed? 'Polished I think is the word.' Pause. 'Very polished.'
An unstoppable figure who once attended the couture shows sporting a cleverly disguised black eye and bruised knees (the Manolos had a tussle with the pavement), Kempner knew how to live. Bowles spotted her recently at Swifty's " a Truman Capote-esque eaterie on the Upper East Side:
Nan was wearing this incredible Lacroix black-and-white striped couture jacket with black pants " a kind of homage to Toulouse- Lautrec. So chic. It was only later that I realised she was trundling along with her oxygen machine.
Despite her lifelong obsession with fashion, Nan Kempner was adamant the final decision would be left to the Almighty. 'I tell people all the time I want to be buried naked,' she once told The New York Times. 'I know there will be a store where I'm going.'
Nan Field Schlesinger, fashion correspondent: born San Francisco 24 July 1930; married 1952 Thomas Kempner (two sons, one daughter); died New York 3 July 2005.
Copyright 2005 Independent Newspapers UK Limited
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.
====================================================
From: Marie Claire Magazine
http://nz.blogs.yahoo.com/marie-claire/360/nan-kempnerthe-original-it-girl/
Before Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie made careers out of being famous, It girls were society women who knew how to dress, who to marry and where to be seen. And no-one filled the brief better than this slim San Franciscan.
By Kerry McCarthy
It's 1958, at the height of the Paris couture season, and all the most exclusive fashion houses are holding their invitation-only showings. At one such session, a slim, beautifully groomed American woman sits expectantly beside her mother, savouring the excitement of the Paris shows. Watching the models glide by, she is held spellbound by a white satin sheath dress and matching mink-trimmed coat.
"How much is that? " she asks the show assistants. When she hears the exorbitant price, she loses her perfect poise and practised cool - and bursts into tears. Whether it is an orchestrated ploy or a spontaneous outburst of genuine emotion, it works a treat. For the young woman not only gets the outfit at a discount, but also the promise of an audience with its designer, who's intrigued to meet the guest who couldn't bear to leave town without his creation.
The clothes encounter that followed was to be the beginning of a beautiful friendship. The designer turned out to be up-and-coming talent Yves Saint Laurent, who was showing his first collection for the house of Dior. And the charismatic young woman was Nan Kempner, society maven and one of the world's largest collectors of haute couture.
Yves Saint Laurent would remain a particular favourite of hers and, from the time the designer opened his own house in 1961, she would miss only one of his shows in 40 years, amassing some 250 of his creations throughout her life.
The woman who claimed to have "come from a long line of clothes horses" made a habit of snapping up couture samples made for whippet-thin models at a fraction of the sales price. Her 175-centimetre frame, which never weighed more than 50 kilograms despite her avowed love of junk food, allowed Kempner to indulge her love affair with fashion - and, indeed, she was adored by designers. "Nan always looks so wonderful in my clothes, " gushed couturier Valentino, "because she has a body like a hanger. "
Dismissing the rumours of eating disorders that dogged her, Kempner insisted that her metabolism was "a miracle of nature" and boasted of starting each day with chunky peanut butter smeared on an English muffin.
It was the combination of her slender figure and society lifestyle that earned Kempner the dubious accolade of being the inspiration for the term "social X-ray", made famous by Tom Wolfe in his novel The Bonfire Of The Vanities. If she was bothered by the label - which would become synonymous with a certain type of rich and thin woman from New York's exclusive Upper East Side milieu - Kempner never let it show. Rather, she embraced the paparazzi flash with unashamed delight and never apologised for her ambition to be famous for being fabulous.
Always outspoken, she gained notoriety for such comments as "I loathe fat people" and "There is really no excuse for anyone to be ugly". But these bon mots were just as often aimed at herself and, together with a sharp sense of humour, kindness and loyalty to her friends, it was Kempner's self-deprecating nature that endeared her to many.
The first to admit her shallow side, she once joked, when talking of her attendance at former US president Ronald Reagan's funeral, "You know me - I wouldn't miss the opening of a door. " Designer Carolina Herrera remembered a conversation over lunch one day when Kempner committed a form of social suicide by admitting she'd be hurt if she didn't receive an invite to a party. "We were all saying that it doesn't matter, that it's one less party to go to, " recalls Herrera, "then Nan said, 'If you didn't invite me, I'd feel like crying. ' I thought that was very sweet of her... to tell the truth. " It was, perhaps, a more vulnerable side of the society queen.
Born Nan Field Schlesinger in San Francisco on July 24, 1930, she was the only child of prosperous Jewish parents Irma and Albert "Speed" Schlesinger. When she was little, her father, a wealthy entrepreneur who ran one of the largest Ford dealerships in the US, advised his daughter that as she'd never make it on her face, she'd better be interesting instead. The young Nan took his advice, cultivating her personality and always surrounding herself with fascinating people.
Though she enjoyed a close relationship with her father, it was from her mother that she learnt about the importance of style. Irma dressed her daughter in couture from childhood and taught her what to wear and how to wear it. "My mother always told me, 'Put it all on and then take half of it off, '" she recalled. Her grandmother was also mad about fashion, wearing "silk jackets to bed, with sheets to match". The young girl took it all in. Even when she was picked up prematurely from summer camp one time, after a brush with poison ivy, she still observed the relevant fashion details. "I was sick, but not too sick to notice my mother and grandmother had coats whose lining was the same as the dress. "
Put on her first diet by her mother when she was a chubby 12-year-old, she would later recall flicking through recipe books, ogling food denied to her, all the while eating sandwiches made with lettuce leaves instead of bread. At 14 she took up smoking, a habit that led to her trademark gravelly voice.
After attending the Connecticut College for Women, the budding socialite spent a year at the Sorbonne in Paris. Returning to the US, she moved to New York, where she met wealthy investment banker Thomas Lenox Kempner. It wasn't exactly love at first sight. "He looked at me and said, 'Your skirt's too tight, '" she later recounted. "It was Dior. I was filled with dislike for the man, but dislike grew into great, passionate, sexy love. "
After their wedding on March 1, 1952, for which she designed her own dress, Nan and "Tommy Kempner", as she always referred to her husband, left for an extended honeymoon in Europe. They spent a year in London before his family business commitments brought them back to New York.
The new Mrs Kempner fast became a Manhattan social legend, her attendance at any event guaranteeing its success. Having three children in quick succession did little to curb her ways - she managed to play the part of devoted housewife and perfect mother while remaining the outspoken, fun-loving party girl she had always been.
Kempner's large circle of friends were her biggest fans, including best pal Pat Buckley, who told Vanity Fair magazine that one of the things she liked most about Kempner was that she was "utterly, totally, deliciously politically incorrect". Diana Vreeland described her as the only chic American woman; Yves Saint Laurent called her "la plus chic du monde".
Ever the style icon, in the 1960s she famously wore a pants-suit to a posh restaurant where women were forbidden from wearing such garb. Stopped at the entrance, she calmly took off her trousers, handed them to her husband and strolled past the madame of the restaurant, saying, "I hope you like this better. " She sat down to dinner wearing the tunic top of her suit as a dress, covering her lap with lots of napkins and not daring to bend over. Even as late as a few years ago, when Kempner fell over and broke her hip, the cause was a pair of rare Galliano heels.
As well as being a professional party-goer, Kempner dabbled in work, putting her impeccable taste to good use. While her children were little, she became a special editor of Harper's Bazaar, then a design consultant for Tiffany & Co and, later, a contributor to French Vogue. In her 70s, she wrote her first and only book, RSVP: Menus For Entertaining From People Who Really Know How. All proceeds from its sales went to a cancer centre for which she and Pat Buckley raised $US75 million over 30 years.
Charity work aside, Kempner enjoyed getting out and about - and all the better if photographers were present. She found media attention "ego-boosting" and said, with typical honesty, "It's fun to be talked about. I've hardly done anything extraordinary - I haven't discovered the moon or a new drug. Never has anyone done so much with so little. "
Kempner loved to entertain, at home as much as in public. Even if the event she was hosting was informal, it was always done with great style. Invitations to her "casual" Sunday spaghetti dinners were coveted by an array of US and international guests, with everyone from Betsy Bloomingdale to Princess Diana gracing her 16-room Park Avenue apartment.
Aperipatetic life of parties and holidays around the world resulted in Kempner spending a good deal of time away from her husband, whose business generally kept him in New York. For years, stories of their marriage being a cover for separate lives rippled among the society set. The rumours came to a head in 1988, when the New York Post announced that the pair had decided on a trial separation after 37 years of marriage. Iris Sawyer, the brunette ex-wife of a political consultant, told a newspaper columnist that her seven-year affair with Tommy Kempner was the reason.
His wife had been aware of Tommy's dalliances - and had possibly even had the odd one herself - but the exposure embarrassed and enraged her. When asked about the episode, she later remarked, "[It was] the only one that really killed me... that disgusting woman. I said, 'Out of here - I don't want you if that's your taste. Yuk! ' I got him to see a shrink. He's much warmer than he used to be. "
Soon reunited, the married couple stayed together until her death. Kempner's relationship with her children remained out of the spotlight, though she did like to tell the story of how she'd turned their bedrooms into wardrobes after they left home. Both sons, Thomas Junior and James, attended Yale and married "well", while daughter Lina became an artist, living in Manhattan's East Village. "My daughter wears the same pair of jeans day in, day out, and the more paint she has on her shirt, the better she likes it, " Kempner once said.
The good life was finally to catch up with the party princess of Park Avenue when she was struck down with emphysema in her early 60s. Though she gave up smoking and cut down on travelling, Kempner still flew to big events and retained her good humour, naming her oxygen tank - "my air" - her new essential accessory for every season.
Elegant to the end, a very ill Kempner was spotted by fashion commentator Hamish Bowles lunching at one of her favourite Upper East Side haunts, wearing a stylish black and white striped Lacroix couture jacket with black pants - "A kind of homage to Toulouse-Lautrec, " recalls Bowles. "So chic. It was only later that I realised she was trundling along with her oxygen machine. "
The woman who once said she wanted to be buried naked - "There'll be a store where I'm going" - died on July 3, 2005, just three weeks before her 75th birthday. The party may be over for Nan Kempner, but it's one that everyone probably wishes they'd been invited to. [3, 4]
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| Sources |
- [S285] .
- [S4] PG. 211 MOSES III (2) (Reliability: 3).
- [S16] .
- [S17] NAN KEMPNER - THE ORIGINAL IT GIRL - FEB 01 2001:12PM (Reliability: 3).
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