Eleanor Lambert who died in New York on October 7th, two months after her 100th birthday, was unquestionably the grande dame of the American fashion industry, a tireless promoter of US talent all her life.
When Paris ruled the fashion universe she, almost single-handedly, invented the idea of American fashion and brought her country international recognition and status, launching the careers of designers such as Bill Blass, Calvin Klein, Oscar de la Renta and Halston. Often referred to as the "Empress of Seventh Avenue", she worked indefatigably right up to her death.
Her promotional ideas were far-reaching. One of the first to use fashion for fundraising, she presided over the International Best Dressed List which she originated in the l940s, was instrumental in the founding of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute and pioneered the notion of twice-yearly fashion weeks in the l940s.
She can be credited with the establishment of the Council of Fashion Designers of America in l962 and the Coty Fashion Critics Awards for design excellence, which ran for more than 30 years. The Irish couturière Sybil Connolly owed her commercial and social success in the US to her personal friendship with this formidably energetic woman in whose New York apartment overlooking Central Park she showed her collections.
Eleanor Olive Lambert was born in Crawfordsville, Indiana, the fifth child of a circus "advance man" called Henry Clay Lambert into circumstances she once described as "genteel poor".
After graduating from art schools in l928, she left for New York and became a publicist for artists and art galleries; her clients included Jackson Pollock and George Bellows, and she was instrumental in founding the Whitney Museum of American Art. One of her first fashion clients was a woman called Annette Simpson who told her: "I am an artist, but I make clothes."
In 1940, while working as press director for the New York Dress Institute, she revived the dormant International Best Dressed List originally published by AP in Paris in l924, but suspended during the second World War. What was initially a modest promotional and patriotic venture for American fashion became an institution, equally reviled and revered, over which she presided for more than 60 years.
"I believe it's a record of fashion history, how it changes and who are the symbols," she once said. She did not always agree with the jury's verdict; the Duchess of Windsor should never have been included, she reckoned, because she always wanted the latest thing from top to toe.
"The real leaders," Lambert insisted, "were women who made their own statements. How fashion was worn, that's history." Irish nominations included Anne Gunning, Sybil Connolly, Miranda Iveagh and Mary Robinson.
One of the triumphs of her career was a glittering ball in Versailles in l973, which she organised with Marie Helene de Rothschild where the five US designers outshone their five French counterparts who included Yves St Laurent, Pierre Cardin and Marc Bohan. It cost $50,000 to stage and at the end of the evening had raised $282,000 for the restoration of a room in the palace. It was a masterstroke that not only brought American fashion centre-stage, but also gave the French a lesson in swashbuckling scene-stealing.
Lambert, who first came to Ireland in l952, retained a lifelong love of the country, particularly Dublin, which she preferred to Paris, and gave enormous encouragement to young Irish designers like Peter Fitzsimons and Michael Mortell. In the 1960s she tried to buy property here, but the deal fell through.
For nearly 20 years she spent Christmas in Dublin, lunching at Farmleigh with the Iveaghs on Christmas Eve before the carols in St Patrick's, and every August, usually accompanied by John Loring of Tiffany's, stayed with Sybil Connolly in Merrion Square, where her 90th birthday was celebrated.
"She had an incredible appetite for living and was so generous and full of wisdom," recalls Miranda Iveagh. "She was a good judge of character. She was the sort of person that helped you get on in life and fight setbacks. If she believed in you, she gave you her soul and her heart. She was an icon, really."
There wasn't any significant fashion figure or wealthy socialite on either side of the Atlantic whom Lambert didn't know. A journalist friend once asked her for contacts in Thailand.
"I know the queen," she said, "but it might be difficult". She remembered Coco Chanel's celebrated lunches during Paris fashion week, deliberately elongated so that important US buyers and press would miss competitors' shows.
A woman of definite opinions on fashion, her favourite designers included Pierre Cardin, Hubert de Givenchy (a lifelong friend) and Balenciaga; she considered Donna Karan a genius with a capacity, like Ralph Lauren, "to see beyond the season", and Geoffrey Beene world-class.
Married to Seymour Berkson, publisher of the Hearst Press and International News Service whom she met in Venice and who died in l959, she leaves a son, Bill Berkson, a poet, critic and professor of art history at the San Francisco Art Institute, and a grandson, the photographer Moses Berkson.