“Glamour is all year round.”
Hear, hear. Few embraced the idea of the good life quite like Kenneth Jay Lane, who passed away at the age of 85 at his Manhattan home this week.
Lane made his mark on American style by elevating costume jewelry with imagination and innovation, and giving each design the allure of fine baubles. Over the past half-century, he adorned the world’s most fashionable women with such stunners, including the Duchess of Windsor, Elizabeth Taylor, Diana Vreeland, and Audrey Hepburn, and, more recently, Lady Gaga, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Madonna.
Diane von Furstenberg first met Lane at Prince Rupert Loewenstein’s ball in 1960s London. They immediately became friends and he attended her wedding to Egon von Furstenberg in 1969.
“Kenneth Lane was one of the people who helped me the most when I came to New York,” the CFDA Chairwoman recalled. “He took me under his wing. He was very successful then, and he introduced me to buyers and the fashion press. He was a godfather to me.
“We were extremely close,” she added. “He was so good-looking. He had so much style, and his houses were beautiful. When I wanted to buy a house in the country, he took my mother and me, and we went to Cloudwalk for the first time. I bought it, and he lived in one of my cottages when he was married to Nicky [Weymouth].”
A native of Detroit, Michigan, Lane studied at the University of Michigan and the Rhode Island School of Design. He then worked at Vogue, Delman Shows, and Christian Dior before launching his own costume jewelry in 1963.
“Kenny Lane is much more than just the greatest costume jewelry designer in the world,” Carolina Herrera said. “He was a great American personality. He lived his dream because he believed it. He will be missed by all his friends around the world. I love him very much.”
Tory Burch called Lane “an icon, a true eccentric with a meticulous eye and brilliant sense of humor” and “a loyal friend and truly one-of-a-kind.”
“I loved his honesty, irreverence and his take on just about everything,” Burch said. “We often spoke about manners; how hand written notes should not be obsolete and glasses should never touch during a toast, Kenny had an opinion on many things but I always found him to be modern and on point.”
Throughout his life, Lane exuded elegance with a side of naughty wit. My partner Whitney and I spent a weekend with Kenny, Lynn Wyatt and Tory in Southampton. He smoked, drank and opined on people, places and things. The gossip was as delicious as the cocktails, and when we drove him back to Manhattan, we couldn’t resist the invitation to join him for a G and T in his duplex apartment within a landmark Stanford White mansion on Park Avenue. The space was as inspiring as his jewelry—a quintessential bachelor pad full of rich colors and artifacts that provided the perfect backdrop to Lane’s persona — snobbish but endearingly so.
“Elegance, luxury and good taste,” he once said, “never go out of style.”
