CUT THE RIBBON, ELEANOR LAMBERT
Posted on October 26, 2012 by admin
The very first fashion week was held in New York in 1943. Fashion publicist Eleanor Lambert organized this event that was designed to attract attention away from the disaster of World War II. French fashion Houses were suffering during those years and industry insiders were unable to travel to Paris. That was, despite the tragedy, the time to do something in New York. Lambert, from Crawfordsville Indiana, was the first Press Director of the Whitney Museum of American Art and helped with the founding of the Museum of Modern Art. She also represented important artists like Jackson Pollock, Jacob Epstein and Isamu Noguchi. The very first fashion week was called “Press Week” and turned out to be a success. Fashion magazines like Vogue, which were normally filled with French designs, increasingly featured American fashion moving the attention from global, to local again. After this experience Eleanor was involved in the promotion of American fashion all over the world and and in 1962 organized the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA). Labert attended her last fashion show in 2001 and died at the age of 100 in 2003.
Photo Mrs. Lambert by Cecil Beaton
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