December 14, 2006
Critic's Notebook
A Woman Who Wore Couture Like a Second Skin
By
CATHY HORYN
LIKE Harold Koda, the costume curator of the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, I once visited Nan Kempner in her closet on Park Avenue, and like Mr. Koda, I observed her in all her glory. She was having a massage and insisted on standing up.
Mrs. Kempner — can we call her Nan? — seemingly had few hang-ups where her body was concerned. It’s possible she acquired this ease of attitude while growing up in California, but my guess is that, like many elegant women, she had simply taken the measure of her physical shortcomings — the too-small breasts, the flat behind, the legs that seemed to start near her sternum — and having accepted them, said, “Who cares?”
Nan, the body of Nan, is the subject of a new exhibition, “Nan Kempner: American Chic,” which opened on Tuesday at the Met’s
Costume Institute. The frequently made observation that Nan, who died last year, was a clotheshorse is really no great observation, although Mr. Koda properly conveys the scope of her zeal, re-creating her closet (which was actually several converted bedrooms) with stacks of 362 sweaters and 354 jackets; shelves for feathered fedoras, brimmed straws and other hats; and larger displays for Saint Laurents, Valentinos, Balmains and Gaultiers, some 3,000 garments and accessories in all.
Nan was a rich woman, the wife of the banker Thomas L. Kempner. A $20,000 haute couture dress was no burden for her. She had great taste. If buying beautiful clothes accommodated her taste, the exhibition reveals a woman who was much less frivolous in her choices than her boundless socializing might suggest. Nan was supposedly the inspiration for the term “social X-ray.” At 5-foot-9, 110 pounds, her skin tanned to a leathery brown, she certainly invited the idea that fashion people were indeed freaks.
Yet, in looking at an impressive display of Saint Laurent suits and pants outfits — put together in recognition of her special connection to the couturier — it’s hard not to feel that at least some of their power derives from Nan’s understanding of her body and what looked best on her.
The Saint Laurent suits, from the 1970s and ’80s, were fitted on Nan and, like most Paris-made garments, probably required three fittings. While Saint Laurent’s tailoring — the sharp shoulder line, the slight drape in the front, the natural waist of the pants — owed much of its rightness to his sense of proportion, it helped that his favorite American client had long legs, a 26-inch waist and narrow, boyish shoulders.
And when you see the posse of Saint Laurent-clad mannequins, you realize as well that Nan played a more vital role in his career than merely wearing his clothes well. In Paris, the equally thin Betty Catroux, the designer’s friend and muse, represented rock ’n’ roll, decadent Saint Laurent. But Nan — Nan was the Americanized ideal. Casual, unencumbered, athletic. As Mr. Koda said, “She wore couture like sportswear.”
Nan’s first Paris original was her 1949 debutante dress, a Jacques Griffe confection of pink cotton lace with daubs and swirls of smoky violet tulle. She seemed to know early that a virtue of couture was not to give or confirm pedigree, but to take away the obvious and allow a woman to use nuance — the odd color combination or exaggerated detail — to express her personality.
In later years, married and well trained in the seasonal routine of couture shows and fittings, Nan pursued this ideal. There is a wonderful black Cardin evening dress, from 1964, with circles of silk organza layered, pastry style, around the skirt. But while she was adept at using feathers and embroidery to set off her face or introduce an element of playfulness (a pair of coral-beaded Carolina Herrera slacks comes to mind), Nan almost always maintained the same long, linear, essentially masculine line for day and evening. For this reason, you don’t see many ball skirts or, for that matter, much Chanel. Chanel was too sweet for Nan, somehow.
Visitors to the exhibition, transfixed by the candy-shop display of sweaters and jackets (in reality, her closets were organized according to the way she mixed colors and styles), might overlook the fact that as much as Nan was committed to a credible self-reflection, she also chose two of the most audacious designers of the 20th century: Saint Laurent and Madame Grès.
The Saint Laurent showstoppers are the tailored pieces, as well as a 1983 evening cape in saffron silk faille with a queenly collar. Of the 100 or so garments that Mr. Kempner gave to the museum’s permanent collection, five are by Madame Grès, the reclusive, turban-swathed genius known for her draping. The lightness and engineering of a black spider-back dress or a rare example in olive angora jersey are mesmerizing, and the pity is you can’t touch them. The jersey runs through your fingers like water.
Given his familiarity with Nan’s closet while she was alive, Mr. Koda must have had his eyes set on one or two prizes. He thought for a moment and smiled. “I would have to say the grail for me was a pair of après-ski pants made by Madame Grès,” he said. “They were done as chaps.” Alas, the pants have never been found.
Nan belonged to an era before stylists and buzzy expressions like “aspirational dressing.” Despite the booty of her closet and the comedy of her act, she strikes me, now, as excessively restrained. I recall going one morning to the salon at Saint Laurent. It was the day after the 2001 fall couture show, and as usual the top clients had arrived early to get first dibs. Nan was there. So were Deeda Blair and Patricia Altschul, attended by their vendeuses, or saleswomen. There were a couple of cigarettes going in the ashtrays. Nan had stripped down to her pantyhose.
But there was nothing sisterly about the scene — no giggles or “Darling, that looks absolutely marvelous!” Are you kidding? These were babes at work in one of the last great mansions of haute couture, and I’ve never seen a pair of eyes settle on a cloqué velvet dress with the quite the same practiced swiftness as did Nan’s. She knew what she liked and that was all there was to it.
Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times
TOPPED OFF Evening coats from “Nan Kempner: American Chic” at the Met Costume Institute.
Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times
WHAT TO WEAR The collection of 3,000 pieces from Nan Kempner’s wardrobe at the Costume Institute includes evening gowns, above.
Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times
A re-creation of her closets, above.
Robin Platzer/Time Life Pictures — Getty Images
Ms. Kempner with Yves Saint Laurent at a party in 1978.
