Nan Kempner, New York socialite and hostess who always had a chair at the Paris couture shows, died Sunday of emphysema at home in Manhattan. She was 74. A permanent fixture in the society pages, Kempner was addicted to fashion, with a predilection for Yves Saint Laurent. In the ’60s she was a special editor of Harper’s Bazaar, in the ’70s a design consultant for Tiffany+dde, and in the ’80s a correspondent for French Vogue. In 1952, she married investment banker Thomas Kempner, and they lived in an art- and fashion-filled duplex on Park Avenue. When their three children left home, Kempner had their rooms turned into walk-in closets, bless her. (AP via SignOnSanDiego)

Born Nan Field Schlesinger in San Francisco in 1930, she attended Connecticut College for Women but did not graduate. She studied at the Sorbonne during a junior year abroad and took art lessons from 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 recalled.