Long before influencers and street-style galleries, New York had Nan Kempner. Vanity Fair Italia this week revisited the life of the socialite and couture collector, a woman who treated getting dressed as a craft and who believed that elegance meant making fashion look as if it were following you, not the other way round.
A lifelong love affair with couture
Born into a prominent San Francisco family, Kempner married investment banker Thomas L. Kempner in 1952 and made her home in a vast duplex on Park Avenue. She began attending the Paris couture shows at 19 and, according to Vanity Fair Italia, went back season after season for more than half a century, missing only the year her father died.
Her first great purchase is the stuff of fashion legend. As a young woman in Paris with her mother, she fell for a white satin Dior dress and matching coat that her allowance could not quite cover. The story goes that a very young Yves Saint Laurent, then working at the house, helped bring the price within reach. It marked the start of a long friendship with the designer and of a wardrobe that would grow into one of the great private couture collections.
She was candid about her passion, once telling Women’s Wear Daily that she would be foolish not to admit she was a fashion addict. She was also famously unflappable: refused entry to a New York restaurant in the 1960s for wearing a trouser suit, she simply removed the trousers and walked in wearing her Saint Laurent jacket as a dress.
A wardrobe fit for a museum
Kempner died in 2005, and the following year the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York staged Nan Kempner: American Chic, an exhibition drawn from her clothes. It was a fitting tribute to someone who knew the cut, the cloth and the person behind every piece she owned, and who went out almost every night to wear them.
Her lesson still holds: style is less about trends than about knowing what suits you and wearing it with confidence. A classic string of pearls, a pair of statement earrings or a simple pendant necklace can carry a look in exactly the way she did, with ease and a sense of fun. For an evening touch of colour, our sapphire earrings are a good place to start.
Sources: Vanity Fair Italia, “Nan Kempner, quintessenza della socialite” (11 October 2026); The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Costume Institute exhibition “Nan Kempner: American Chic” (2006–2007).
