Eleanor started the International Best Dressed list here in New York in 1940 at the onset of the Second World War. She took up the idea from a previous French-oriented Best Dressed List that came to an end when France fell to the Nazis. She launched it with the intention of promoting American fashion and its designers. This was both a practical and revolutionary idea, and with it Eleanor transformed the garment industry into the world-famous fashion business.

Eleanor Lambert

She was a woman who loved her business and was able to work at it right up to the last year of her life. In 2002, the year before she died, approaching her centenary, Eleanor anointed Vanity Fair and four of its editors – Mrs. Collins, Aimee Bell, Graydon Carter and Reinaldo Herrera – with the future of the List.

Their first International Best Dressed List is published in this current issue, with Ms. Fine Collins’ profile of its creator and her creation.

The point of the List since inception was to publicize fashion and promote sales. In its earliest years it was dominated by very rich women and/or socialites, members of royalty, and occasionally a movie star (Rosalind Russell was the first). Ten years later the number of movie stars had increased substantially. As times changed, so did the List. International stars of fashion who reigned for three decades died out and were replaced by younger people who had a far different sensibility and attitude toward dress.

I served on Eleanor’s committee for several years, and quite possibly will never be asked to serve again after writing this. The list is not a democratic document, although it is (sort of) democratically created. We’d meet at Eleanor’s Fifth Avenue apartment about eleven in the morning. There might be sixteen or twenty of us.

The core group was the same every year although Eleanor invited newcomers, people who had made some kind of mark on the fashion media scene. Some of the core people were members of the List from other years. Many were well-turned out, in the traditional sense.

Occasionally there would be someone whose costume was at odds with the popular concept of well-dressed. Or at least very imaginative. At times there were those of this faction who were imbued with an “all-thumbs” sense of self-importance. They could be depended on to stretch everyone else, fashion-wise. This was jarring perhaps, but good. Change is serene only in retrospect.

By the time I was participating, Eleanor who thought Gloria Guinness was the most elegant woman she ever knew, was well into her nineties, and Courtney Love had made the List. Nevertheless, when it came to New Ideas, Eleanor swung with the times – with caution but never a hint of trepidation, and with a deftness lacking in many of us thirty, even forty or more years younger.

The decision as to who becomes a member of the Best Dressed List is simple. It’s what we used to call in high school, a popularity contest. Ballots are distributed throughout the industry, media and society – people are asked to “nominate” ten or fifteen. These ballots are returned, tabulated and the preliminary list is printed out for the committee.

There were usually a large number of nominations – 30 or 40 – if memory serves in the ballots’ list. The nominees are very rarely unknown to most if not all. They are many of the same names we see in the fashion magazines or people magazines (or on NYSD).

Each name is then discussed. Some more quickly than others. You can tell immediately if someone in the group starts talking rapturously of the “nominee” (“oh they have the most beautiful house in the South of France, she entertains like a dream, her taste is impeccable, she’s another Babe Paley, her great-grandmother was the Queen of Sheba ...” You know she’s On.

Certain committee members have more aggressive personalities, and their thoughts can command the room. One year when the name of a very well known and very social New York woman came up. Someone instantly said: “no, no, no! She’s awful.” Little disagreement raised in the room.

But then, another longtimer (and member of the List) said: “She’s very well dressed, she is always well-groomed, she looks marvelous in the clothes and she spends a lot of money on them, which helps everybody all around. You just don’t like her and that’s not a reason to keep someone Off.”

“ No, no, no,” replied the other, standing firm. There was a brief and very amicable discussion and the lady’s name was dropped. Probably forever.

By about 12:30, we’d have one of the lists – the women’s or the men’s – completed, and everyone would head for the dining room where Eleanor had a delicious home-prepared buffet laid out for us. After lunch, we’d go through the second list.

I was always struck by the contrast of the image of The Best Dressed that I grew up with (conjured up for me, although unbeknownst to me, by Eleanor Lambert, and the actual process of putting it together). The fashion sensibility that I grew up with – the Cary Grants, Fred Astaires, the Babe Paleys and Gloria Guinnesses – no longer applied. And very often conflicted with my native sensibilities. I was also naively surprised to see that so many of each year’s candidates were pretty much “flavor of the month,” so to speak, whatever their provenance. The hottest star, the newest playgirl heiress. The “sophisticated” pace-setters, style-makers on the committee mainly turned out to be just as starry-eyed and goofy over the “latest” as the kids in Orange County.

I don’t think the Best Dressed List has any fashion influence these days because its members are neither astonishing nor awesome as they used to be to these (then much younger) eyes. However, they are handsome and/or sexy and/or sartorially easy on the eye, and let’s not forget rich and famous. And fashion is phenomenal, as Joseph Alsop once wrote. It is a sociological barometer, which is exactly what Eleanor Lambert thought when she told an interviewer years ago that the Best Dressed List was “a piece of social history.”

“ You cannot separate people, their yearnings, their dreams and their inborn vanity from an interest in clothes,” Eleanor is quoted by Amy Fine Collins at the end of the piece. The last word. I went back and looked over the 2004 International Best Dressed List again. Eleanor would have loved it; I think she was right.

Kim with Dougall

She decided to divest and streamline. Anything she hadn’t worn in a year – out. She knew people who either needed it or would buy it. She pared her inventory way down and redesigned her closet to half its former size. Everything is arranged according to designer. She favors Armani, Tom Ford for Gucci and Yves, Dolce & Gabbana, Valentino, Prada, Zac Posen and Versace. The boots and shoes are all Jimmy Choo “I’ve never gone over to the Manolo side,” she said, “I don’t know why that is.”

Kim, who is executive assistant to Dan Rather, is a flamenco dancer by avocation and now performs for friends and fans several times a year here in Manhattan. Her dance costumes are stored at Garde Robe because they’re so big. Otherwise in a relatively small space she keeps everything at her fingertips and with easy, non-stressful reach.

Garderobeonline.com or call 212-227-7554.

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