Take a look at the lives that were lost in 2022
The collective grief that followed the death Queen Elizabeth II September’s fashion, beauty and architecture events were unrivalled. photographyEach industry, including media, retail, politics and media, has lost significant figures who contributed to the growth of 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 said goodbye in August. Issey MiyakeHe was known for his groundbreaking fabrics and bestselling perfumes. He passed away at the age of just 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. Perhaps his most well-known design was his Pleats Please brand, whose crimped fabrics are enjoying increasing 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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Hanae and Yukiko Hanai were both there long before Miyake. Mori, who died in August, was a multimillionaire in fashion and the first Asian woman to enter the ranks of Paris haute couture. 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. Tokyo plans to hold a memorial for her in February.
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. Maureen Doherty (founder of the eclectic Egg), was a more modern London designer and retailer. She died last month at 70.
These photographers were also lost to the industry. Patrick Demarchelier In March, Eric Boman in august and William Klein September Fashion photographyStreet Address photographyKlein was a master of many mediums over his 70-year career. These included filmmaking, painting, graphic design and abstract art. 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 it to me [laughter]. You do things for yourself and you do things for other people and you hope that these things coincide.”
Demarchelier, a French-born photographer, had captured legions celebrities and models throughout the years. Princess Diana tapped him to be her personal photog in 1989. Boman was an artist and photographer. His charisma, dexterity and inventiveness were key to his long-lasting and entertaining career. Boman is remembered as a true polymath, with impeccable taste and the ability to take on multiple disciplines.
Ron Galella, a controversial celebrity photographer, died in April at the age of 91. The lensman was almost unstoppable in his pursuit of celeb subjects like Marlon Brando or Elvis Presley. He once had his jaw broken off by Brando, and was given a restraining orders after a six week trial for stalking Jackie Kennedy Onassis.
In 2022, several pioneering lenswomen died, including Roxanne Lowit who captured the verve and nerve of the fashion industry in September. And Corina Lecca last week, a self-taught creative, whose career was inextricably linked to Dan, her husband, and fellow runway photographer.
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 don’t envy any of these things. I believe the man above has a great control over 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,”
After the death of Andre Leon Talley, longtime fashion journalist and former editor-at-large at Vogue, there was a huge outpouring from industry insiders as well as non-fashion devotees. 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. Few had the reach and viewership she achieved over the years, covering the runways of Paris, London, Milan, Milan, and New York.
Other media deaths included the death of Diane Clehane, royal biographer; details magazine cofounder Annie Flanders, former DNR editor-in-chief Michael Luther in March; Lorna Koski, longtime WWD associate editor, in May; Kathleen Berger, longtime Newsweek editors in January; Giusi Ferre, fashion journalist and writer from Italy, in April; Long Nguyen, Flaunt magazine founder, this fall; and Ellen Levine, former Hearst editor, 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.
Salvo Nicosia was 52 years old when he died. He was a well-respected communications manager at Alberta Ferretti. 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. In February, Pablo Manzoni, a celebrity makeup artist and philanthropist, died.
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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