Zelda Celebration

NEW YORK catwalk watchers were in mourning yesterday, after it emerged that 95-year-old socialite Zelda Kaplan had died, after collapsing in the front row. Onlookers thought that the woman once called "New York's oldest and most beloved night owl" had fainted, at the the Joanna Mastroianni show at Lincoln Centre on Wednesday, but she was later pronounced dead at Roosevelt Hospital.

"Passing away in the New York front row was how it was meant to be," her friend, designer Richie Rich, told the New York Post. "Zelda loves fashion, so she died for fashion. She would have wanted to go out in style."

As well as being a champion of humanitarian causes, Kaplan was known for her colourful and eccentric style and for her lively nightlife; attending art openings, parties and clubs -often with friends more than 70 years younger than her. She was profiled by several NY publications, including the New York Times and the Village Voice, and was the subject of a 2004 documentary film called Her Name is Zelda, which detailed her evolution from a "typical suburban housewife" to "a beloved and eccentric creature of New York nightlife."

"I'm a curious person,'' she once told the New York Times. ''I want to keep learning until it's over. And when it's over, it's over… I want to be an example for young people so they aren't afraid of growing old and a lesson to old people that you can be productive. You don't have to sit around and wait for death.''
Her husband, Gideon Lewin, was reportedly with her at the show - and accompanied her to her hospital.






LAUREN MILLIGAN 17 February 2012
http://www.vogue.co.uk/news/2012/02/17/zelda-kaplan-dies-front-row-new-york-socialite