Remembering the Fashion Figures We Lost in 2015
With the New Year just around the corner, we’re pausing to look back at the larger-than-life figures we lost in 2015.
Photo: Dave Hogan / Hulton Archive / Getty Images1/12Steve Strange, February 12
Pop iconoclast and architect of the lush, heady New Romantic movement of the ’80s, Strange’s impact on the world of fashion is hard to overstate. A fixture of the London club scene, his “Bowie nights” at Billy’s club were the stuff of nightlife legend.
Photographed by Irving Penn, Vogue, April 19972/12John Fairchild, February 27
Fairchild was a tenor-setting figure in fashion journalism and, indeed, journalism on the whole, and when he shuffled off this mortal coil, he left behind a legacy of razor wit and often unsparing reporting. In his time at Women’s Wear Daily and W, he elevated both titles to must-read status—and society and industry gossip to an art form.
Photo: Getty Images3/12Albert Maysles, March 5
One half of a powerhouse filmmaking duo alongside his late brother, David, Maysles was behind iconic documentaries from Gimme Shelter (a damning look at the Rolling Stones’s infamous show at Altamont Speedway) to Grey Gardens, which has proven fodder for such designers as Marc Jacobs and John Galliano. Just before his death, Maysles gave the fashion world another considerable gift: Iris, an appreciation of the rare bird herself, Mrs. Apfel.
Photo: Tommy Ton4/12Manuela Pavesi, March 13
Stylist, photographer, and right hand to Miuccia Prada, Pavesi’s prolific career dates back to beginnings alongside a starry host of lensman like Guy Bourdin, Helmut Newton, and Irving Penn. But despite a boldface array of colleagues, she boasted a keen eye for finding and fostering new talents—among them a young Jonathan Anderson, whom she urged to strike out on his own. Anderson dubbed Pavesi “the only reason I started in fashion.”
Photo: Corbis5/12Carlos Falchi, March 27
Falchi worked in snakeskin, croc, and lizard like some artists work in watercolors, whipping up the slouchy, patchworked bags that would come to be synonymous with his name.
