Nan Kempner, 74; N.Y. Socialite Was Unapologetic Clotheshorse

Socialite Nan Kempner, 74, a stalwart of the society pages and the Paris couture shows for decades, died Sunday of emphysema at her Manhattan apartment.

Kempner was known as a hostess whose invitations were among the most coveted in New York and as an unapologetic clotheshorse particularly dedicated to designer Yves Saint Laurent. With her svelte figure, she epitomized the female New Yorkers who author Tom Wolfe dubbed “social X-rays” -- so thin that they look like an X-ray picture.

“The best part of a party is getting dressed to go,” she often said.

She donated many of her outfits to museums and charities, and she served on a number of boards and charity committees.

She also worked as a special editor at Harper’s Bazaar in the 1960s, as a design consultant for Tiffany & Co. in the 1970s and as a correspondent for French Vogue in the 1980s.

Proceeds from her 2000 book, “R.S.V.P.: Menus for Entertaining From People Who Really Know How,” went to the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.

Born Nan Field Schlesinger in San Francisco in 1930, she studied at Connecticut College for Women and, during a junior year abroad, the Sorbonne in Paris. She also took art lessons from French painter Fernand Leger.

“He said I was a disgrace and had so little talent I should go back to San Francisco and stop wasting my parents’ money,” she once recalled.

She married Thomas Kempner, chairman of the investment banking house Loeb Partners, in 1952. The couple lived in a Park Avenue duplex filled with art and clothes. Nan Kempner turned her children’s rooms into walk-in closets after they left home.

In addition to her husband, she is survived by two sons, Thomas Jr. of New York and James of Greenwich, Conn.; a daughter, Adeline Field Kempner of New York; and six grandchildren.