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.
Photo: Getty Images6/12Mary Ellen Mark, May 25
Mark was socially conscious before it was in vogue (as well as a frequent contributor to Vogue). Her unflagging, visceral portraiture spanned topics from runaways and prostitution to celebrity and ’90s mall rat culture.
Photo: Getty Images7/12Marie-Louise Carven, June 8
The founder of the Paris couture label Carven died at the age of 105. When she debuted her line, it was against a harsh postwar backdrop—but Madame’s garments always boasted a certain girlish levity, down to her signature namesake minty green hue.
Photo: Giuseppe Pino / Mondadori Portfolio via Getty Images8/12Elio Fiorucci, July 20
Doyen of disco chic, Fiorucci created a bastion of full-throttle glamour with his East 59th Street flagship—earning fans including Debbie Harry, Andy Warhol, and Madonna along the way.
Photo: BFA.com9/12Ingrid Sischy, July 24
Sischy—storied writer, Interview editor in chief, and Vanity Fair contributing editor—was a lynchpin at the crux of culture and fashion, and she helped to set the tone of contemporary arts journalism.
Photo: Getty Images10/12Arnold Scaasi, August 4
As a young man, Scaasi cut his teeth under the legendary Charles James. In his own work, he would go on to outfit a coterie of women befitting James’s irreproachable brand of hauteur, from Mamie Eisenhower and Lauren Bacall to Elizabeth Taylor.
Photo: Courtesy of Farida Khelfa / @farida_khelfa11/12Edwige Belmore, September 22
In the fall, the fashion world bid farewell to the French “Queen of Punk,” the singular Belmore. With her peroxide crop and impeccable, menswear-tinged taste, she commanded an international nightlife presence, from Paris’s Le Palace to Manhattan’s Mudd Club and Studio 54.
Photo: Getty Images12/12Holly Woodlawn, December 6
Woodlawn, so famously immortalized in Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side,” accomplished more than any single verse could convey. A Warhol Superstar and transgender pioneer, she paved the way for countless individuals to come.
