Melanie Ward, the influential stylist who shaped the look of a generation alongside designer Helmut Lang and photographers including Corinne Day, David Sims, and Inez and Vinoodh, has died. The news was announced on her Instagram account, which explained that the cause was cancer, yesterday afternoon, and soon the comments started filling up with tributes. “The ’90s didn’t start until Melanie went to Camber Sands with Kate Moss and Corinne Day and styled that Face cover,” Sarah Mower wrote. And “had she not brought John Lewis boy’s school uniform trousers to Helmut Lang and told him to use them as his suit cut, what would we have worn all that decade?”
The thousands of condolences highlighted not just Ward’s visionary talent, but also her sensitivity and generosity, qualities, it was often noted, that tend to go missing in the fashion industry. Here, the people who worked alongside her share their memories with Vogue.
“I’m so sad, because I didn’t know Melanie was ill—she was so young. This is life, but it is just hard to accept. She and I worked so well together, and I absolutely adored her; she was a great talent, and I’m not sure that the fashion world even knew how talented she really was. She came as part of a group of people that I started working with [in the Nineties] who were all from the UK. I brought over Dick Page for makeup and Guido Palau for hair, and of course that was the period of Kate Moss, and Melanie was right in there with them styling. She was extraordinary because she was in the true sense what a stylist should be or should have been; most are not very creative, or very conscious of what the designer is trying to say. Her eye…she was really like a designer more than a stylist. She was fantastic at putting clothes together. I mean, I worked also with [former Vogue fashion editor] Frances Stein for years, and they didn’t get any better than Frances. But Melanie fit into that category where she understood fabric, how fabric moved, how it needed to be used. She understood what we wanted to do [at Calvin Klein] and she brought something to it to make it even more exciting. People don’t know what it’s like to pull a collection together, the stress, and we’re all nervous about trying to make it as good as it can possibly be. And she was just as intense about the work as my whole team; she worked so hard. But she was always nice. Sometimes along the ride, it isn’t always so nice. People lose it. But Melanie never did. Honestly, other than Frances, I never worked with anyone as gifted as Melanie.”—Calvin Klein
“There are very few stylists of her calibre left in the world that know how to make clothes. I can’t emphasize the importance of knowing how to make clothes. She knew how to construct. It really makes a conversation happen between a designer and a stylist. It’s a conversation. She was also the kindest, sweetest, funniest. When you need someone to have a laugh with, Mel was def one of them. She involved every member of the team, from the most junior person to sitting with the designer, which is how we really worked.”—Kim Jones
“Melanie was funny and witty and naughty and giggly and all that, but she was never into the hype of it all. She just wanted to express ideas through the clothes. And her work was so much about looking. That’s the thing that always struck us when we worked with her, and it’s what she had in common with Helmut Lang, and why they were so good together; it was this approach to styling that was about really looking, and then deciding, and nothing ever being thrown together or we’ll figure it out later. That’s why there was always something unexpected about what she did—but everything had a meaning and a reason and came from something that was close and personal to her. We once worked with her on a swimsuit story for Harper’s Bazaar with the model Hannelore Knuts, and she had all these floaties you d wear on your arms, or your neck, but Melanie treated them like clothing. And she loved women. She was generous to women. One of the big qualities of a great stylist is when they want the girl to be incredible; to heighten their physicality and personality. A fashion story for her was never about brands or credits; it was really more about how you can make someone look more amazing and more beautiful and more interesting and more personal. That generosity went everywhere: to everyone and everything on the shoot. And always with this incredible sense of humor. We had lunch with her this summer, and things weren’t good, but she was still funny, and joking, and just her own lovely self. She kept everything close to her heart, so good friends, we all knew what was going on, but she didn’t want any help. She was always her own person and didn’t want to bother anyone with anything. She just went through it all herself with a few friends. She’d been so happy working with Kim Jones and Nadège Vanhee; she loved these relationships and both those designers really supported her and were incredible throughout this whole period. There was something very…no nonsense about her, in that British way of not drawing attention to yourself. Yet even then she was still her own giggle, sunshine-y self, with a special way of looking at life, and her gentle kindness. Melanie was really one of a kind.”—Inez Van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin
“I was enormously fond of Melanie. Aside from being a groundbreaker, which she absolutely was, she was the sweetest, kindest person you could ever meet. I mean, she really was just adorable. She studied politics and languages at university in London, and that was perfect, because she understood how to handle the politics of fashion, and she introduced this whole new language to fashion; she was part of the grunge movement that was coming in—she certainly understood it: she understood Kate Moss; she understood the new generation of photographers—but she elevated it with an elegance that was very, very apparent in all of her work. I always admired her, because at Harper’s Bazaar I was the one doing the straight-laced classics, and Melanie, who arrived a couple of years after me in 1995, opened the door to the likes of David Sims, to a different point of view, to Helmut [Lang] who she was working with, and who made such an enormous impact on the decade. The work she did with him was really the cornerstone of everything that we see now in terms of minimalism and in terms of this idea of elegant subversion. She was responsible for that. She really, really was.”—Tonne Goodman
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“I loved Melanie. We worked together at Harper’s Bazaar under Liz Tilberis in the ’90s. She was in her own category. I think a lot of the quirkiness of Helmut Lang, like the feathers, came from her. Her work was so inspired and influential, you couldn’t really copy it. It came from a place that was unique to her. But besides all that she was such a lovely person and so much fun and so real. I always felt like she had no ulterior motives and that’s a rarity in this business.”—Elissa Santisi
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“A little anecdote about my sweet Mel.
In the late ’80s I would wait for Melanie, for over an hour sometimes, in the Amalfi Caffé in London’s Old Compton Street. When she finally showed up, bearing carrier bags stuffed with her haul from various charity shops, she’d mouth a theatrical ‘Sorry’ at me from the doorway and stagger in for a cappuccino before we took off to traipse around her favorite shops looking for more secondhand treasure. We were leaving one day, and I was paying the bill while Mel waited outside and two teenage fashion queens had stared as she passed their table, cutting quite a figure in her beautiful Afghan coat. One turned to the other and stage-whispered: ‘Oh my God, she’s SO fierce! She looks like she was styled by Melanie Ward!’”—Dick Page
“Melanie is the person who made me want to become a stylist. I first saw her work when I was at French Glamour in the art department, and she had shot a fashion story with Corinne Day in i-D [in the January 1993 issue], and I was like, wow, oh my God—that’s something new, and that’s the direction I want to go in, even if at that point I wasn’t sure how to take it. I just knew I had to. Working with Corinne, David [Sims], Mario [Sorrenti], Nigel [Shafran], Glenn [Luchford]....she changed fashion in the early Nineties. Nobody else in the room was as strong as her; she was exceptional. Melanie always saw the woman in the clothes; showed their character, their attitude, and that s something really important to me. When she worked with Helmut [Lang] it was the same thing; you saw that same strength, and his shows for me were the coolest ever. She maybe didn’t get the attention she deserved because she was such a discreet person, though when Ezra [Petronio] and I started Self Service in 1994, the fashion was all inspired by the idea of her and what she was doing. I can honestly say Melanie was a role model for me.”—Suzanne Koller
“Melanie’s strength was in her silence. I loved her thoughtfulness. She never said yes to something just to make me happy. She would consider, take her time, look at you with those amazing blue eyes and think. So you knew when you got her yes…she meant it. She made me think differently and in the end I would end up saying yes to her. We suited each other because we were opposites. I am impulsive, quick fire and decisive. She was quiet, considered and brilliant. A perfect match. I love her and will really miss her.”—Donatella Versace
