Forces in Fashion, Design and Culture: A Look at the Lives Lost in 2022
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While the collective mourning that followed the death of Queen Elizabeth II in September was incomparable, the realms of fashion, beauty, interior design, architecture, photography, politics, media and retail each lost some towering figures, who helped to build up their respective industries.
Leading designers who died in January included Nino Cerrutti, 91, who was credited with creating the first deconstructed jacket for men, and Manfred Thierry Mugler, a multidisciplinary talent who helped define ’80s power dressing and launched the phenomenon of celebrities-as-models, who died at age 73. Fashion also said farewell in August to Issey Miyake, a standout for his cutting-edge fabrics and bestselling perfumes, who died at the age of 84. Miyake was one of the first Japanese designers to show in Paris and helped to put Japan on the international fashion map in the ’70s. The designer was perhaps best known for his Pleats Please franchise, whose crimped fabrics have recently enjoyed growing popularity among men. Miyake once explained, “It takes seven or eight years for people to understand what I am doing,” referring to his A-POC — or A Piece of Cloth project, which was initially produced in a continuous knitted tube with cutout patterns the wearer cut herself.
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Even before Miyake, though, there were Hanae Mori and Yukiko Hanai. Mori, whose death was revealed in August, built a multimillion-dollar fashion business and was the first female Asian designer to join the ranks of haute couture in Paris. Her goal was to bring “Miyahiyaka” to the U.S., a hard-to-translate Japanese word that references beauty, graciousness, elegance, orderliness and, mainly, femininity. “As a young girl, I was brought up during the turbulence and ugliness of the war and the post-war confusion,” she told WWD in June 1965. “I have always yearned for ‘Miyahiyaka.’”
Prior to her passing in October, the Yokohama-born Hanai was known for her “Madame Hanai” and “Yukiko Hanai” labels, as well as uniforms for airline, bank and department store workers. A memorial is planned for mid-February in Tokyo.
Franca Fendi, who along with her four sisters helped to develop and expand their family’s namesake luxury business, died in October. She had held retail responsibilities over the brand’s stores in Rome until 51 percent of the business was sold in 1999 to LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton and Prada Group, with LVMH subsequently buying the entire company.
In November, the fashion world’s losses included the Italian couturier Renato Balestra and Albert Nipon, the former chairman of the Albert Nipon Design House.
Other fashion world passings included, in February, footwear and menswear designer and bon vivant Peter Barton; Irene Silvagni, former creative director at Yohji Yamamoto, in March, and the British fashion designer John Bates, who worked as Jean Varon and was a key link in London’s buzzy boutique scene in the ’60s, in June. A more contemporary London retailer and designer, Maureen Doherty, the founder of the eclectic Egg, died at the age of 70 last month.
The industry also mourned such prized photographers as Patrick Demarchelier in March, Eric Boman in August and William Klein in September. Fashion photography, street photography, painting, filmmaking, graphic design, abstract art, writing and book-making were among the mediums that Klein excelled in during a 70-year-plus career. Boundary-pushing and unconventional in his pursuits, Klein’s resounding sense for human nature and quest for the unexplored led to a body of work that crossed mediums. Asked in 2013 what he hoped people would think of when they saw his work, Klein said, “I would like people to think this man is worth a couple of million dollars more for what he has contributed and [for them] to give that to me [laughter]. You do things for yourself and you do things for other people and you hope that these things coincide.”
The French-born Demarchelier had captured legions of models and celebrities through the years, including Princess Diana, who tapped him as her personal photographer in 1989. Boman, an artist and photographer, relied on his dexterity, inventiveness and charisma for the foundation of his storied and fun career. He was remembered as a true polymath with impeccable taste, who crossed disciplines and could take up one thing after another.
In April, the controversial celebrity photographer Ron Galella passed away at 91. Nearly unstoppable in pursuit of celebrity subjects like Marlon Brando and Elvis Presley, the lensman once had his jaw broken by Brando and faced a restraining order after a six-week trial for stalking former First Lady Jackie Kennedy Onassis.
A few pioneering lenswomen also died in 2022, including Roxanne Lowit, who captured the nerve and verve of the fashion industry, in September and, just last week, Corina Lecca, a self-taught creative whose career was intrinsically linked to her fellow runway photographer, her husband Dan.
News of the passing of former President Donald Trump’s first wife Ivana Trump, a businesswoman, designer and style setter, garnered international headlines in July, as did the March passing of former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, a master of using brooches for subtle signs of diplomacy. The world of entertainment lost Australian actress and singer Olivia Newton-John in August and groundbreaking “Star Trek” actress Nichelle Nichols in July.
Eric Pfrunder, Karl Lagerfeld’s photography wingman, passed away earlier this month. Another creative who was adept at picturing a room — albeit through his interior designs — Carleton Varney died in July. For decades the gregarious and exacting decorator’s name was synonymous with the rules-breaking interior designer Dorothy Draper. His work can be seen in such sought-out destinations as the Westbury Hotel in London, the Plaza in New York, the Greenbrier in White Sulfur Sprigs, Virginia, The Breakers in Palm Beach, Florida, and the Grand Hotel on Michigan’s Mackinac Island. Not one to worry about the jobs he didn’t get, Varney once told WWD in 2008, “I only worry about the ones I have. I am not a person who covets any of this. I think the guy above has a big control on our lives. I want to know that I have lived the life where I don’t have to worry where I go after I stop breathing,”
In January, there was a major outpouring by industry insiders and non-fashion devotees after longtime fashion journalist and former Vogue editor-at-large Andre Leon Talley passed away. A trailblazer for 40-plus years in an industry that had very little diversity in its upper echelons, Talley worked at WWD, Interview, Vanity Fair, House & Garden and Vogue. Another major loss came in March with the death of Elsa Klensch, whose CNN show from 1980 to 2001, “Style With Elsa Klensch,” introduced millions to the inner world of fashion. Covering the runways in New York, London, Milan and Paris during that time, few had the reach or viewership that she built up over the years.
Other deaths in the media spectrum included royal biographer Diane Clehane in February; Details magazine cofounder Annie Flanders and former DNR editor in chief Michael Luther in March; longtime WWD associate editor Lorna Koski in May and her wife, longtime Newsweek editor Kathleen Berger, in January; the Italian writer and fashion journalist Giusi Ferre in April; Flaunt magazine cofounder Long Nguyen this past fall, and former Hearst editorial director Ellen Levine in November.
Flanders helped readers jump the velvet rope to get an insider’s view of New York City’s nightlife, fashion, club kids and culture. Such interest was cultivated decades before by the self-described “Queen of the Night” Régine Zylberberg, who died in May and was credited with creating the discotheque. Widely known simply as “Régine,” the Belgian-born French singer and nightclub creator once ran a club empire spanning from Rio de Janeiro to Kuala Lumpur. In her memoirs, she touched upon the diverse crowds that flooded Régine’s, “After a certain hour [of the night], it’s sometimes difficult to distinguish a princess from a prostitute. And one doesn’t exclude the other,” she wrote.
In July, another orchestrator of after-hours pursuits, Studio 54 set designer Richie Williamson, who dreamed up the club’s sets, dance floor and iconic “Moon and the Spoon” sign, died.
In April, the well-regarded communications director at Alberta Ferretti, Salvo Nicosia, died at age 52. In addition to Nguyen, the losses of celebrity hair stylist LaTisha Chong, 32, in July and two members of New York’s fashion scene — designers Peter Hidalgo, 53, in January and Katie Gallagher, 35, in July received a lot of attention. That same month the philanthropist and style-minded society fixture Lily Safra passed away, while the celebrity makeup artist Pablo Manzoni died in February.
The industry also said goodbye to a number of brand builders and retail pioneers, including Liz Claiborne’s former chairman and chief executive officer Jerome Chazen in February; British recruitment and licensing pioneer Vanessa Denza in April; Luxottica founder Leonardo Del Vecchio and retail pioneer Jean Rosenberg in June; the former Kenzo and Dior executive Francois Baufume in November; British high street tycoon Sir Ralph Halpern and Julius Stern, Donna Karan’s first president, in August; trusted adviser Dr. Robert Eugene Lefton in October, and, in November, Frank Mori, a former co-owner of Donna Karan International, Peerless chairman and chief executive officer Alvin Segal and footwear entrepreneur Quinto Casadei. In addition to helping to define the Fifth Avenue specialty store, Rosenberg’s lithesome figure was said to have provided the measurements for Yves Saint Laurent’s ideal size 6 for his American ready-to-wear collection.
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