A
beautiful summer weekend in the City, mostly overcast;
humid, sometimes sunshine, waiting for the rains that never
came until the late hours – and then torrentially,
cooling off the night.
Today is the 100th birthday of Eleanor Lambert,
the woman who created fashion publicity transforming the American
garment industry into the fashion business. Eleanor is the quintessential
New Yorker. She was a little girl from Indiana, fresh out of college,
who came to New York in the middle of the Great Depression to seek
her fortune.
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Eleanor
Lambert
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Happy Birthday
Eleanor Lambert. In need of work, she had the bright idea of
garnering publicity for art galleries, charging her clients
$25. a week. Then she paid a call on Herbert Bayard
Swope, editor of Joseph Pulitzer’s New
York World, famous as “Swope of the World.”
“In those days,” she recalled more than fifty years later, “ Mr.
Swope’s desk was at the center and the rear of the newsroom. So I walked
down the long corridor of desks to his and introduced myself. In those days,
you could do something like that.”
She persuaded the great editor that the World needed to
cover the art world. He was persuaded, and so it began. In 1940
with the Nazis invasion of Paris and the closing down of the French
fashion industry, Eleanor created the Best Dressed List to promote
the garment industry here. The List was a powerful tool in creating
an aura of glamour around American design. The last Best-Dressed
List came out in 2001, sixty years later.
She also had a had in creating the CFDA, again, a venue for promoting
the fashion industry. Scores of famous American designers were
introduced to the American woman through the auspices of Eleanor
Lambert’s public relations.
It goes without saying that Mrs. Lambert was a very powerful force
in the American and especially the New York cultural world. She
also was acknowledged for such and was celebrated by the Europeans,
and was without peer in this country. She was married twice although
the love of her life was a newspaperman named Seymour Berkson who
worked for Hearst (she told me once she couldn’t remember
the name of her first husband). The Berksons had one son, Bill,
who also has a son, Moses. Moses has been making
a documentary about his grandmother for the past two years during
which time he has also been her escort for many social occasions
all over New York.
I met her about fifteen years ago when I requested an interview
about a writing project I was working on. Despite her then heavy
schedule, she was easily accessible and accommodating, and very
helpful with her recollections and insight.
Fifteen years later and having worked with her and her clients
many times since then, I’ve always been amazed at the way
she does business, particularly in comparison to many others in
her business. She was always pushing an idea, something that she’d
tailored for her client and for the writer she was pitching the
idea to. Her manner was always low key but always forthright. And
she has stick-to-it-tiveness. In my experience, she has conducted
her business this way right up until last year when she closed
her office.
Up until a little more than a year ago, she went to work everyday.
She was on the phone, pitching ideas, making lunch and dinner dates,
arranging introductions, and traveling to Europe. For years she
made an annual visit to Switzerland and the famous Dr.
Niehans for special anti-aging treatments. People attributed
her great stamina to those visits. Now in retrospect, we can only
attribute it to Eleanor herself. She just never lost interest in
what she’s doing, day to day.
Tonight, a number of friends, of all ages, will be visiting her
at her Fifth Avenue apartment overlooking the Park where she’s
entertained and wined and dined the greats, the near-great and
even at times the notorious of world of fashion and society, as
well as clients and friends and business associates. Everyone I
am certain will just be happy to be there with this amazing force
of a woman whose creative determination has graced so many lives
for three quarters of a century.
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