The Best Closet in New York
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

Nan Kempner had the luxury of closet space.
In her Park Avenue duplex, she had an ample wardrobe and dressing area of her own. As her three children grew up and moved out, she annexed their closets too — allowing her to house an ever growing, rarely edited assortment of haute couture.
By the time the legendary clotheshorse, society hostess, philanthropist, and wit died last year at the age of 74, she had amassed one of the world’s largest couture collections. Those designs are the subject of “Nan Kempner: American Chic,” an exhibit that opens next week at the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
While the show will introduce Kempner’s inimitable style to many museum visitors, the late style icon is already well known to those in New York’s charitable nightlife scene, and its faithful observers. Kempner was renowned for her ability to appear simultaneously showy and tasteful — and for the sheer volume of her fashion collection.
She was not ambivalent about fashion, a New York society figure, Blaine Trump, said. “A lot of women say, ‘Do I look good in this? Should I wear that?'” she said. “Not Nan. She had great confidence in her own eye and her own taste. She never questioned what was appropriate, or what others were going to be wearing. She set the standard.”
The Costume Institute show comprises five galleries, each devoted to a different aspect of Kempner’s strategy — its seasonlessness, its tailoring, its breadth, its most prevalent color scheme (black-and-white), and its white-tie glamour.
Among the 90 stand-out ensembles in “Nan Kempner: American Chic,” the most striking include a candy-apple red chiffon gown with an asymmetrical neckline by Valentino; a black silk and velvet dress, paired with a draped, floorlength silk mustard-yellow jacket by Yves Saint Laurent, and a beaded and embroidered gold Saint Laurent twill sweater, paired with black trousers and a maroon camisole. The exhibit also includes nearly 2,500 haute couture and ready-to-wear creations, which fill a type- and color-coordinated replica of Kempner’s primary closet and dressing area. She wore those ensembles to the events in her very busy New York schedule, including the galas and dinner parties she regularly hosted and attended.
Kempner’s husband of 52 years, Thomas Kempner, donated about 200 pieces to the Costume Institute this year.
Nan Kempner saw haute couture as a fine art, and collected it as such — holding onto to fine pieces from decades past, the curator of the Costume Institute, Harold Koda, said.”Other women in that same social world edit their collection seasonally, so they never accrue this kind of quantity,” he said.
At 5 feet 9 inches and 110 pounds, Kempner had the body of a fashion sketch with long legs, a tiny waist, and square shoulders. Though the San Francisco native maintained a mannequin-like physique throughout her adult life, she wasn’t “conventionally pretty,” Mr. Koda said.”That allowed her to be even more glamorous,”he said.”When you’re traditionally pretty, the eye gets inured to it.”
He compared Kempner’s “slightly more elusive beauty” to that of earlier tastemakers such as Babe Paley, Millicent Rogers, and Pauline de Rothschild.
Though Kempner organized her closets by garment type, not by color, Mr. Koda said he decided to arrange the wardrobe mock-up chromatically to make it more “lucid” to visitors.”Otherwise, it looks like someone’s closet,” he said. “This way, it looks like a collection.”
He predicted some exhibit-goers will see Kempner’s wardrobe as emblematic of high society’s most obvious excesses. “I have no doubt that some people will come and say, ‘It is just materialism,'” Mr. Koda said.”We basically live in a puritanical nation, and most people don’t see themselves as a canvas for aesthetic expression, as Nan did.”
Kempner, a globe-trotter and a staple in the front row of Paris fashion shows, purchased many designs by Saint Laurent, Valentino, and Oscar de la Renta, among other couturiers. Saint Laurent, who was Kempner’s favorite designer — she traveled to Paris annually to attend his show — once called her “la plus chic du monde.”
“She really loved fashion, as well as looking fantastic in it,” a contributing editor of Vogue who knew Kempner for 12 years, Marina Rust, said. “It was a perfect storm.”
Ms. Rust and other friends stressed Kempner’s ability to balance a stunning piece of couture with an otherwise simple, elegant ensemble.
“It’s certainly a gift to be able to pull yourself together in such an understated, yet overstated, way,” Ms. Trump said.”Nan would pair a simple dress with beautiful lines with this wonderful couture jacket. She always had a sense of drama, but she also knew how to rein it in.”
Even after becoming seriously ill with emphysema, Kempner remained a decidedly stylish dresser. “The last time I had lunch with her, about a month before she died, she wore beautiful black leather pants, a chiffon shirt in cream, and wonderful chain jewelry,” Ms. Trump said. “I remember thinking, ‘God, she looks great.'”
Gail Glasser, who was married for 22 years to Kempner’s father, Albert “Speed” Schlesinger, teared up when she spoke about her stepdaughter, whom she said was a close friend and style mentor. “Nan wanted everyone to look good,” Ms. Glasser, who is 14 years Kempner’s junior, said. “She wanted to surround herself by people who looked well, and was more than willing to say, ‘Have you tried that skirt two inches shorter? Or have you tried that with the plain sweater instead?'”
Ms. Glasser, who will attend the exhibit’s opening gala next Tuesday, said she relished helping Kempner unpack her Louis Vuitton luggage when she visited San Francisco. “If she thought one Tshirt was good, she thought 12 would be better,” Ms. Glasser said. She said she was always struck by the quality of the clothing, as evidenced by their weight and detailing.
Her clothes were magnificent, and her limbs long and lean, but Kempner had a presence that transcended fashion and physique, Ms. Glasser said. “She entered a room in this wonderful way,” she said. “You couldn’t help but turn around, and say, ‘Look who’s coming in.'”
December 12 to April 29 at the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Ave. at 82nd Street, 212-535-7710.