There is a fairytale aspect to fashion as every fresh Fashion Week spotlights bevies of new, young designers hoping, as is proper, for fortune and fame in return for their genius and hard work. This year, the charming proliferation of long, comfy, hand-made looking sweaters over dresses and tights reminded me of the “rags to riches’ story of an old friend who pioneered similar styles thirty years ago and died last month on January 9th.

It was the late Seventies. I was, perhaps, 20, just out of Bryn Mawr and the surreal experience of living in Katherine Hepburn’s old suite in Pembroke East on the second floor next to the dining room. Nothing had prepared me for my first job in the New York fashion office of Neiman Marcus, or life in the Big Apple at that time of Studio 54 and Halston, Bianca and Liza defining American ... Read More