Meggie Kempner was only 10 years old when she realized her grandmother — fashion icon and Upper East Side royalty, Nan Kempner — was the most stylish senior citizen in town.
“I remember being on vacation and watching her unpack all her clothes, and I had only ever seen ordinary jeans, and she pulled out this pair of fully beaded-and-leather Gucci by Tom Ford jeans, and from that moment on, I was obsessed with fashion,” says the now 27-year-old.
That obsession turned into a career.
In February, Meggie and her brother, Chris, 29, launched their line, Kempner, an homage to their famously fashionable family matriarch who passed away at age 74 in 2005.
Last week, for the first time ever, the comely siblings presented at Fashion Week.
Their spring 2015 collection is a mix of sporty and tightly tailored pieces that range from $250 to $900 (available at ModaOperandi.com as well as select boutiques), and can take a pedigreed 20-something straight from the Colony Club to the Jane.
Many pieces, like Kempner’s mini sleeveless vest-dress, are a nod to Nan, who, famously, upon being denied entry to La Côte Basque because she was wearing an Yves Saint Laurent pantsuit, simply removed the pants, and strode right in.
“My grandmother loved little flashes of fun in her clothes,” says Meggie, a University of Pennsylvania and Ralph Lauren alum.
And in her life.
Chris and Meggie Kempner’s grandmother may have been famous for her arsenal of couture frocks, but the dirty joke-telling social doyenne, who feted everyone from Princess Diana to Yves Saint Laurent at her 16-room Park Avenue apartment, quite frankly preferred being nude.
“I think she was unique in that she was able to style pieces that were not meant to show skin at all, to do so,” laughs Chris, who graduated from Yale and Harvard Business School and runs the brand’s business.
“Even her average buttondown was all of a sudden cropped up in a knot above her belly button. And her swimwear was optional in most circumstances, much to the chagrin of my friends who would be visiting,” he continues, adding that Nan received multiple letters reprimanding her for walking nude on the beach at the Lyford Cay Club in the Bahamas.
She ignored them all.
It was this irreverence, both clothed and, well, less-clothed, that made Nan such a dynamic personality.
As Diana Vreeland once succinctly praised the admitted clotheshorse: “There are no chic women in America. The one exception is Nan Kempner.”
Certainly the two siblings, who live in the same Flatiron apartment building, must feel a bit of pressure following in their grandmother’s very well-heeled footsteps.
After all, this is a woman who even had her own 2006 exhibit at the Met (aptly named, “Nan Kempner: American Chic”).
“I wouldn’t say pressure as much as, it only helps,” Meggie says. “It’s a kind of affirmation that she hopefully passed along her tastes to the grandchildren and we are doing the best we can to make her proud.”