Chronicles of Nan

We'll call this chapter "The Hippo, the Friends & The Wardrobe," in which we tell of the reception on Tuesday night at the Metropolitan Museum of Art to open the exhibit "Nan Kempner: American Chic." The Hippo refers to the mascot of the museum, and certainly not to the sizes of Nan's clothes: the mannequins showed off the pencil-thin figure of the San Francisco-born New York social figure who died last year. The friends who gathered: one had to interpret the term broadly. Many at the reception had watched Nan from afar. Others knew her better. Those we saw included Deeda Blair, Bianca Jagger, Marielle Worth, Susan Fales-Hill, Amy Fine Collins, Yeohlee Teng, Patricia Cisneros, Jill Krementz, Anne Bass, Lynn Wyatt, and the playwright Charles Busch, whose new work "Our Leading Lady" about the night Abraham Lincoln is murdered opens at Manhattan Theater Club this winter. But that's a drama for another time. The star of this story is Nan's wardrobe, which the museum has presented in storylines such as fabulous show stopping gowns, black and white, and looks for the beach. "What you can see is that she picked up the best pieces of every collection," Marielle Worth, who descends from the House of Worth, said. The Costume Institute's chief curator, Harold Koda, said he was amazed how Kempner organized her wardrobe: not in ensembles, as they had been bought, but by type, a method that allowed Kempner to experiment and create her own looks. It took some work to assemble the original outfits. Does anyone come close to having Kempner's style today? Mr. Koda said her command of chic can only come with maturity, noting that Kempner herself did not start developing her signature style until the 80s. As for women today, Mr. Koda could think of only one who has a definitive style of which to be proud: director Sofia Coppola. The exhibit runs through March. Here are some photos: At the Costume Institute Tuesday night for the opening reception of an exhibit of Nan Kempner's wardrobe