The Fashion Figures We Lost in 2024

Mary McFadden, “High Priestess of Fashion,” Onetime Vogue Editor, and CFDA President

Mary McFadden had a signature style: ink-black bob, pleated gowns, fantastic jewelry. She also wore many proverbial hats, being a member of the jet set, an adventuress, a noted entertainer and collector, a one-time Vogue editor, and president of the Council of Fashion Designers of America. As a designer, McFadden was a world-builder before the marketing term existed; she also built a brand around herself. It’s not just that her clothes reflected her own styles and interests; they were an extension of how she existed. “The idea was to combine textures, graphic design, art of many cultures,” she told Vogue in relation to the decor of her house; she used the same approach when designing clothes.

Read Mary McFadden’s obituary.

Betty Halbreich in Moschino.

Photographed by Ethan James Green, Vogue, September 2020

Betty Halbreich, Personal Shopper Extraordinaire

Before there were Bergdorf Blondes, there was Betty Halbreich, the industry’s most famous personal shopper. The trim, white-haired, and always well accessorized Halbreich, who Vogue one described as “a clear-eyed fashion pro,” was something of a New York institution, especially after she published her memoir I’ll Drink to That. For more than four decades Halbreich was the head of Bergdorf’s Solutions, a department she started in 1976.