Eleanor Lambert interview, 1977 December 8, 1977 December 8

A member of Bryn Mawr College’s class of 1937, Mrs. Feldkamp studied fashion design for several years. She then spent a number of years working as a writer and journalist in other fields, eventually returning to writing about the world of fashion with great success.



Her career began with a job at the Philadelphia Record in 1942, starting first as a reporter and later moving on to an editorial assistant, writer, movie reviewer and interviewer for feature stories. After two years she went to LIFE magazine where she would continue to work until 1951, serving as a researcher/reporter, special projects reporter, and, eventually, editor of the “Letters to the Editor” section.



Between 1950 and 1951, she assisted her husband Fred Feldkamp in editing two posthumous books by the American humorist Will Cuppy. While living in Brittany, France in 1957, she became a stringer for the Paris office of LIFE magazine, served as picture editor of the UNESCO Courier, and in 1961 became the Paris correspondent for the Philadelphia Bulletin, focusing primarily on fashion but also working on interviews and news stories.



She then became the Fashion and Style Editor of the Philadelphia Bulletin in 1968, a position she would hold until 1982. During this time , she also worked as a fashion correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor covering New York and European fashion openings. In addition, she also wrote freelance articles concerning fashion for a number of publications, notably Horizon and the New York Times Magazine. With her husband she published a book, The Good Life… or What’s Left of It in 1972.



In the 1980’s, she served as a special consultant to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, lectured to students of fashion and design, and contributed stories to several national newspapers and magazines. Between 1986 and 1992 she wrote promotional and publicity material for several department stores (Wanamakers and Altmans).

Born August 10, 1903 in Crawfordsville, IN, Eleanor Lambert attended the Chicago Art Institute before moving to New York in 1925 with her first husband Willis Connor. She soon found work with publicist Franklin Spear and brought in new clients from the New York art world, representing both artists and institutions. She was involved with the founding of both the Whitney Museum of Art and MoMA in the late 1920s and early 1930s. By 1935, she was sufficiently established and branched out on her own, forming Eleanor Lambert, Inc.



The marriage to Connor was short-lived and Lambert married Hearst newspaper executive Seymour Berkson in 1936, with whom she had her only child, William in 1939. During the 1930s, her professional attentions shifted away from art and towards the American fashion industry. She helped establish the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1937 and established the New York Dress Institute in 1939, serving as director until 1962. When the International Best Dressed list was suspended during WWII, Lambert appropriated it, running it until 2002 when she turned it over to Vanity Fair. In 1941 she created the American Fashion Critics Awards (aka the COTY Awards) and launched the first New York Fashion Press Week in 1943. Long associated with the Costume Institute, Lambert established the annual Party of the Year fundraiser, the precursor to what is now the Costume Institute Ball. In 1962, Lambert was instrumental in the founding of American Art Dealers Association of America and created the Council of Fashion Designers of America. In 1964, she launched a syndicated newspaper column on fashion "She" which was renamed "Eleanor Lambert" in 1982 which would run until the time of her death. Over the next several decades, Lambert received numerous awards and recognition for her dedication to the American fashion industry, notably the CFDA Lifetime Achievement Award in 1989.



At the age of 99, Lambert shuttered the doors of Eleanor Lambert, Inc. and passed away at the age of 100 in her Park Avenue home.

Published