……………………….There wasn’t a single show that I ever did at Anne Klein that I can remember Elsa Klensch and her video crew not being there!!!! Elsa was “The Face Of Fashion on CNN”, and as far as everyone else was concerned. She was a pioneer, and the first person to broadcast Fashion every Saturday….around the world! She not only videoed every show, but she always came back stage to get “sound bites” on stories she was doing. The photos above were all clips from her video taken at one of my Fall Shows…..Her theme was “THE NEW SHORT HAIR ON MODELS”……..As it happened a few seasons before Jac was in Europe doing a Sonia Rykiel show, and Sonia wanted all of the models to have crimped hair. Jac had long-ish hair at the time so it could be crimped. To make a long story short the person using the crimper had it on too hot for Jac’s hair and burned it right off!!! Needless to say Jac was HYSTERICAL……She had many shows lined up that week in Paris and then back home in the US, and a clump of hair was missing…..The head hair designer came running over, saw what happened and took Jac to a private area and gave her a complete hair cut on the spot!!!! Thank God the burned clump was in the back so he was able to make it look like nothing happened. The top and sides were still long so he had a lot to work with. Jac loved it and kept her hair short as her signature while everyone else had long hair. When she came home and came up to the office to show us her new look we LOVED IT….Some did not…..They liked her looking like Grace Kelly or Carol Lombard…but they realized it was a new direction, and how modern it really was. They soon came around. By the time this interview was done many models got on the “short hair bandwagon” That’s Anne Bezamat in the check jacket, and the model walking off with her back to us is Linda Evangelista…..all with the “new” short hair. This video can be seen on YouTube………….I spent many an afternoon with Elsa, after an interview, sitting in my design studio over a cup of coffee gossiping about the industry…..She was so much fun to be with, and new EVERYTHING!….The woman was so CHIC…..naturally. It’s just who she was…..and that voice……it just enveloped you……When she retired it was a great loss, and an end to that kind of fashion coverage which SHE STARTED!….Others have and are trying to do what she did, but none are……..Elsa.
Good morning, Louis…..I did not know the inimitable Mrs. Klensch passed. What a style icon she was!
Every Saturday morning, I hung on every word she and the superstars of fashion, like you, spoke. Her voice had such a lyrical and lilting quality. She came along when I was a teenager in a small southern town with a fashionista mother who subscribed to Vogue, WWD and Harper’s Bazaar. She brought those pages to life for me and shaped my sense of fashion for the next twenty years. She was the epitome of noticable style mixed with confident, cool elegance.