For fashion insiders, this week’s most essential online viewing wasn’t a virtual runway show, or a Zoom chat about costume choices for the next season of “The Crown.”
On Monday morning, many of the world’s most celebrated designers, editors, stylists and other style-world elite logged onto a virtual memorial service for Ed Filipowski, the influential public relations executive who died in January.
The 40-minute online ceremony celebrated a career that helped turn designers like Gianni Versace and Marc Jacobs into well-known names, driven by Mr. Filipowski’s conviction that, as Anna Wintour put it in a prerecorded video, “talent must always find an audience.”
The invitation-only tribute was organized by several of Mr. Filipowski’s colleagues from KCD, the agency he helped steer for three decades. There were about 800 invitees; a sizable guest list, certainly, but still smaller than some of the epic runway shows that Mr. Filipowski oversaw. A RSVP wasn’t needed to watch; neither was a fear of being assigned anything other than a front-row seat.
The memorial began with a short film about Mr. Filipowski’s professional trajectory, from a precocious article he wrote about style for his high school newspaper, to an early advertising job where clients included Tonka Toys and Long John Silver’s, the fast food chain.
The film’s main focus, however, was on his 30 years at KCD, running the logistically-complex runways shows and dispensing air kisses, with cameos from many of the designers that he promoted, like Tom Ford, Michael Kors, Helmut Lang, Alexander McQueen and Sarah Burton.
“Before all these influencers, there was Ed Filipowski,’ said Elizabeth Saltzman, a stylist and editor in London, in one of the video’s many voice-over testimonials.
Designers spoke about how Mr. Filipowski was much more than a hired gun. “He always had an opinion,” said Olivier Rousteing, the creative director of Balmain, who reminisced about how Mr. Filipowski encouraged him to be “never satisfied” and to “just push yourself and be more ambitious.”
“He taught me so much about how to question: to always question, question, question to make it better,” Mr. Rousteing added.
Ms. Wintour, who wore a black-and-white puff-sleeved top, used the occasion to talk about Mr. Filipowski’s Zelig-like role at major fashion events like the Met Gala, her annual fund-raiser for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute. “He had the most marvelous way of understanding and responding to whatever we needed,” Ms Wintour said. “His advice was always to the point and perfect.”
John Galliano, the designer whose career Mr. Filipowski helped resuscitate after a well-documented fall from grace, also spoke. “He understood my frame of mind in a time when understanding meant the world,” he said. “He was compassionate and understood an important lesson: that true empathy transcends perception and that the biggest rewards in life come from impacting the lives of others.”
Mr. Galliano wore what was arguably the most striking fashion statement of the virtual memorial. With a black notch-collared coat draped over his shoulders, hair pulled back with a shiny black hair band, and a thin cream-colored scarf tied insouciantly around his neck, the designer, who stood in front of glass-fronted bookshelves, looked like an ersatz host from an old episode of “Masterpiece Theater,” cast by Tim Burton.
The tribute was originally intended to be an in-person event, to be held in May, a few days before this year’s Met Gala. The pandemic put an end to that plan. By the summer, discussions were underway for an online version, timed near Thanksgiving, Mr. Filipowski’s favorite holiday.
While the film made references to Mr. Filipowski’s love of theater and watching “American Idol,” the memorial shied away from his personal life. None of his family spoke, for example, including his ex-husband, Mark Lee. At one point, Mr. Filipowski’s beagles (Sam, Charlie and Dudley) were described by Ms. Saltzman as “his truest loves.”
The focus on his professional life seemed appropriate, given Mr. Filipowski’s propensity to deflect the spotlight onto his clients.
“Ed’s enormous success at organizing any event, in fact his whole career, has been down to the way he never courted the limelight for himself,” Ms. Wintour said. “There was always a part of Ed that cherished his privacy, keeping a small part of himself back from us. It gave him some respite from a world where he was needed and relied upon, a world where he is now missed so very much.”
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Designers Pay Tribute to a Fashion P.R. Giant - The New York Times
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