Nan Kempner at the Met!

madameshawshank · Posted: Thu Dec 14, 2006 12:25 pm Post subject: Nan Kempner at the Met!

December 12 to March 4...at the Costume Institute..

I know I know...she probably rarely ate...I know I know she was Tom Wolfe's social Xray....I know I know..the almost unimaginable effort to BE that tiny soul....

still and all....how I'd love to wander those rooms....drink with my eyes the Chanels and YSLs......clothing as memory...as history...fabrics with story attached...always......buttons and full stops.

something drove those women....Capote's swans...Babe Paley etc...Kempner wanted to be buried naked because she was sure there would be a shop there..... Wink

Wit and ....obsession perhaps...

if you visit the exhibition, I'd more than love a sentence or two about the visit!

"Nan Kempner was a perfect hostess, a quick wit, and a fashion icon beyond compare. Diana Vreeland once called her the only American woman with any style at all, and her dedication to clothes was legendaryshe even broke a hip while navigating her bedroom in a pair of stiletto stockings by John Galliano. In this photograph, taken by New York in her Park Avenue apartment this April, shes in Chanel. But it was her longstanding client-créateur relationship with Yves Saint Laurent that really made fashion history. In 1968, when told by the maître d at La Côte Basque that she couldnt possibly dine in a pair of trousers (never mind that those trousers were half of YSLs first le smoking), Kempner promptly dropped them and proceeded to dine in the jacket-cum-very-short-dress, her fabulous legs exposed. As M. Saint Laurent told us last week, Nan exemplified the true spirit of a modern woman.""
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"I've never accepted the external appearance of things as the whole truth. The world is much more elaborate than the nerves of our eye can tell us." - James Gleeson

Rainey · Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2007 4:14 am Post subject:

I saw an interview with her husband on TV Sunday Morning. It was equal parts touching and obscene. Her husband really really loved her. And between them, they really really didn't seem to be aware or to care that people were starving on the planet and in this country.

I honestly didn't know how to react. Shocked

_________________
God writes a lot of comedy... the trouble is, he's stuck with so many bad actors who don't know how to play funny. -- Garrison Keillor

madameshawshank · Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2007 4:48 am Post subject:

Rainey, the odd thing is she probably starved herself most of her life...her husband might have loved her, however methinks she didn't love herself...
_________________
"I've never accepted the external appearance of things as the whole truth. The world is much more elaborate than the nerves of our eye can tell us." - James Gleeson

gingerpale · Joined: 23 Jan 2006 Posts: 1324

I have no reason to defend Nan Kempner, and knew nothing about her until Madame's post. BUT--according to Wikipedia--over 30 years she helped raise $75 million for the Memorial Sloane-Kettering Cancer Center. So some of those (oh dear sometimes ugly) dresses served to attract other richies to pahties that were charity events. So she maybe wasn't quite the Devil Wearing Yves or whoever..

I like Bill Gates' style better.

Rainey · Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2007 4:43 pm Post subject:

I'm relieved to hear that. Curious, in going on about the clothes and what she spent on them and how her life was party, party, party, they didn't see fit to highlight those efforts because it makes all the difference.
_________________
God writes a lot of comedy... the trouble is, he's stuck with so many bad actors who don't know how to play funny. -- Garrison Keillor

cigalechanta · Joined: 27 Dec 2004 Posts: 200 Location: cambridge, ma.

These rich society ladies never eat much. We sat next to a lawyer that a famous lady once worked for. This was at the Regelarde in Paris. The wife in her Chanel was in publishing. (The tables were so close in this bistro's old location) I saw how she moved her food around alot to look like she was eating. She looked anorexic.
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Sharing food with another human being is an intimate act that should not be indulged in lightly
..................................MFK Fisher

Amanda · Joined: 06 Mar 2007 Posts: 1

Rainey · Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2007 8:23 pm Post subject:

Yes. OTOH, Brooke Astor did it without parties, without glamor, face to face, not looking for recognition and with a style and class that hasn't been equalled yet.

Make no mistake. I'm not talking about the AMOUNT of money she gave. ...tho that's hard to overlook. But the personal way she gave it in an attempt to change lives. THAT deserves recognition.
_________________
God writes a lot of comedy... the trouble is, he's stuck with so many bad actors who don't know how to play funny. -- Garrison Keillor

cigalechanta · Joined: 27 Dec 2004 Posts: 200 Location: cambridge, ma.

madame, if you go to the chanel.com site, you can see Coco's apartment abovethe Chambon Boutique, Her real apartment was at the Ritz. This was usd for entertaining.
_________________
Sharing food with another human being is an intimate act that should not be indulged in lightly
..................................MFK Fisher

simona · Joined: 11 Mar 2005 Posts: 696 Location: israel

Thank you Gingerpale ,for pointing out that well-dressed- blond -thin- rich ladies should not be automatically labelled as insensitive to human miseries only because they are rich-thin-well dressed-blond ladies. I had no idea who Ms. Nan was, but I can't imagine why she should be judged on how she dresses or how she looks . Whatever she did,- and cancer fund raising is worth an appraisal- I understand she did it with her money, and nobody was hurt. It's was her life, let her rest in peace.

No more war. Life is not a black and white movie picture.

P.S. I'm sorry I won't be in NY to see the Ms Nan's dress collection at the Met ( a honorable museum, I would say..). I'm not slim, nor rich ( just blond) but I'm sure the women in me would have liked to see that. In 2001, I very much enjoyed a retrospective of Giorgio Armani's most famous dresses at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. Most of the dresses have been donated by their owners.