Fashion’s changing of the guard

NEW York socialite Nan Kempner had been a Dior couture client for some 50 years when the iconic French fashion house replaced its lead designer with a splashy new talent in 1997.

That year, as she watched daring new looks parade by, she commented wryly that her stately fellow audience members French first lady Bernadette Chirac and former first lady Claude Pompidou “looked like they had been hit in the face with a cold dead fish.”