Adorable Story #23: Nan Kempner
The quintessential New York socialite
“There are no chic women in America. The one exception is Nan Kempner.”
— Diana Vreeland
Nan Kempner was the quintessential New York socialite. With her slim figure, bold fashion sense and unabashed love of the limelight, she dominated the social scene for five decades.
Early Life
Born Nancy Field Schlesinger in 1930, Nan grew up in San Francisco as the only child of Albert Schlesinger (owner of S&C Motors auto dealership) and his wife Irma Field Schlesinger, a socialite.
Both her parents came from affluent San Franciscan families of jewish descends.
In San Francisco, Nan attended the city’s most prestigious schools — Hamlin School for Girls and Grant — and was known as a bright, if lonely, child who immersed herself in fashion and cookbooks, dreaming of the glamorous life.
Her father made sure to put his money into her life, her mother her wardrobe and advice:
“heels are your best friend”.
Nan considered her mother a model of unattainable style so she experimented with her clothes trying to imitate her. At 12 she was already stealing her clothes and she went on a diet using lettuce leaves instead of bread for her sandwiches.
Her father had told her early on that “you can’t count on your face, you better be interesting.”
And Nan did it, betting everything on her charisma.
After high school, she headed to Connecticut College for Women for a brief stint studying Art History, before transferring to study abroad at the Sorbonne in Paris for her junior year in 1950.
In 1998 she recalled:
“Believe me, getting to Paris was like getting a green pass. My great love was George Plimpton, who was studying at Cambridge in 1951. I did a lot of commuting, as did he. I loved him dearly, and he remained a great friend until his death a year ago, which I think was one of the sadder things that ever happened.”
At 20, in Paris with her mother, she cried all her tears in the Dior atelier because her substantial pocket money given by her father was not enough to buy the white satin dress with matching coat that had bewitched her.
Her clamors reached a very young Yves Saint Laurent, then assistant to the couturier, who satisfied her by lowering the price until it was finally accessible. It was the beginning of two things: a great friendship with YSL and the endless couture collection of Nan Kempner.
Meeting Tom
In the summer of 1951, during a stopover in New York on the way back from Paris, the 21-year-old Nan had a fateful encounter. She was crossing Madison Avenue at 72nd Street, and a car stopped: it was her high school friend Clarence Heller, who was with a Yale graduate named Tom Kempner.
“Tommy and I traded insults all night,” Nan recalled of their first meeting over drinks at the Monkey Bar, in New York. “Dislike at first sight grew into great, passionate, sexy love.”
Tom Kempner’s maternal grandfather, Carl M. Loeb, was a co-founder of the investment banking house that became Loeb, Rhoades & Co., and his family was part of the German-Jewish aristocracy of Manhattan.
By Thanksgiving 1951 they were engaged, and on the 1st of March of the following year they were married before a rabbi in the ballroom of the St. Francis Hotel and settled into a 16-room Park Avenue duplex apartment, where they later raised three children: Thomas Jr., Lina and James.
After graduating from Yale, Tom Kempner later pursued a successful career in finance, becoming first a partner and then the chairman of Loeb, Rhoades & Co. (which later merged with Shearson/American Express).
New York High Society
After a short stint living in London, the Kempners settled in New York City, where Nan swiftly became a prominent figure in high society.
Nan joined the Junior Council at the Museum of Modern Art and became a fixture at places like El Morocco, La Grenouille (featured extensively in the Adorable Story #1) and the Stork Club. Her slim figure — partly a product of her mother’s lifelong fixation on dieting and constant exercising — enabled Nan to wear the latest fashion-forward styles from Paris (in fact, she was able to buy at half price the same dresses previously worn by the models on the catwalk).
Judy Peabody, the notable Manhattan socialite, once recalled:
“We were in the same exercise class, at Nicholas Kounovsky’s gym… I felt like a timid little mouse next to Nan, who was this energetic, elegant, fleet-of-foot young woman. I was terrified when Kounovsky put us on a swinging trapeze, but Nan was without fear. She was pregnant, but that didn’t stop her.”
On her documents, not considering herself rich enough to call herself a philanthropist and hating the definition of socialite, she wrote “housewife.”
She organized unforgettable parties and her “Sunday spaghetti” became legendary, to which no one dreamed of saying no: you could happen to meet Betsy Bloomingdale, Pierre Bergé, or even Lady D.
As the three children left the nest as they grew older, Nan and Tom’s bedrooms became part of her wardrobe.
Dior, Ungaro, Mainbocher, Bill Blass and Yves Saint Laurent1 were among her favourites.
At Studio 54 she was a permanent presence and she was also at every YSL catwalk for 55 years straight (except 1993, the year her father died) and on the society pages.
In 1973, Andy Warhol made a portrait of her (see below).
She always went around with her blue passport in her purse, because “you never know”, and her wardrobe wasn’t organized by season since it could happen that she left for London with a stopover in the Caribbean or went to Venice for the usual three weeks at the Cipriani, with a jump to Gstaad then return via Bahamas.
Nan was also among the first to admit the use of plastic surgery that she defined as the “haute couture” of her face.
Writing Career & Other Endeavours
In addition to her whirlwind social activities, Nan also pursued a writing career.
She worked as a fashion editor at Harper’s Bazaar in the late 1960s, a design consultant for Tiffany & Co., the American editor of French Vogue and international representative for Christie's auction house.
Admittedly, her work with the auction house consisted primarily of
“persuading her old-money friends to sell things and her new-money friends to buy them.”
She had an innate sense of style, effortlessly mixing high and low — pairing an YSL jacket with jeans, or couture gowns with funky custom jewelry.
Above all, Nan believed that style was about “expressing your individuality.”
Nan was considered one of the most knowledgeable fashion authorities. Throughout her life, she curated a remarkable private couture collection, showcasing some of the most unforgettable creations of mid-20th century couture.
Laughing, she said that what her husband thought was just an extravagance, turned out to be a collection that museums kept asking her for.
Nan was never afraid to break the rules. In the 1960s, she made headlines for wearing a pantsuit to a restaurant that forbid women from wearing pants (really it was another era!).
When stopped at the door, she dramatically removed the pants and entered wearing just the tunic top. Her daring fashion sense matched her bold, outrageous personality.
The art historian John Richardson recalls the late Diana Vreeland telling him:
“There’s no such thing as a chic American woman — the look is always too contrived, it doesn’t come naturally. The one exception is Nan Kempner.”
Well into her 70s, Nan maintained a busy schedule of lunches, galas, nights at the opera, and parties. Even as she began to struggle with emphysema, her vibrant social life never slowed and she just greatly reduced the intercontinental flights and attended all the usual social events with her oxygen tank, which became for her just another accessory.
In 1995 she finally gave up smoking: according to Frances Bowes, Nan gave up cigarettes “when she almost had to have a tracheotomy—they were going to slit her throat open. It scared the hell out of her, so she stopped. And she didn't have a problem doing it.”
In 1997, she hosted an iconic black-tie dinner at her home honoring Princess Diana, where the late royal’s gowns were auctioned to support AIDS research.
She herself raised money in favor of her cancer research by publishing the 2002 book “R.S.V.P.: Menus for Entertaining From People Who Really Know How.”
Her favorite party (naturally) was her own 50th wedding anniversary (her marriage with Tom survived a separation in 1988 and various other ups and downs). The intimate evening for 476 was held at New York’s Botanical Gardens on May 17, 2002.
Tables were set with votives and ivy, a reported 40,000 lights twinkled overhead, Sammy Goz and his orchestra were flown in from Paris. Her friend Carolyne Roehm wore a gown with sleeves made of gardenias, because the invitation asked guests to wear flowers.
“In my dreams,” Nan Kempner confided, “I go to that party every night.”
Nan Kempner passed away in 2005 at age 74, due to pulmonary emphysema.
She asked to be buried naked because “there will certainly be some nice boutique in the place where I’m going.”
— Alberto @ Adorable Times
One more thing…
By January 2003, Nan’s emphysema was already worsening but she fought with her doctors to allow her to fly to Gstaad to meet her friends Patricia and William F. Buckley Jr.
Pat Buckley would later recall: “I had a party for her the night she arrived, and I called up the doctor and had her put in the hospital in Saane the next day. Four or five days later the hospital called—I was going down there twice a day— and they said, ‘We’re having a terrible problem, because we cannot get a clot out of her lung. We think she should have a helicopter to take her to the hospital in Bern.’ When I got to the hospital, Nan was choking, and the doctors were shoving this vacuum down into her throat. I said, ‘Nan, I have a helicopter waiting to take you to Bern.’ In between gulps, she said, ‘I’m not going to Bern.’ I said, ‘Nan, why are you not going to Bern?’ She said: ‘I don't know anybody in Bern.’”
Apparently she owned more than 375 pieces of the French couturier alone.
Amazing story!! A true Icon