Eleanor Lambert
Fashion is an artistic pursuit, and no one knew this better than Eleanor Lambert. As founder of the Council of Fashion Designers of America and creator of New York Fashion Week, Lambert spent the majority of her lifetime trying to convince the world that the American garment industry was just as influential as its international counterparts. After growing up in Indiana as a student of art and design, Lambert began her career as a publicist at a New York City ad agency. She quickly established herself as an authority in the art world, representing such famed artists as Walt Kuhn, Jackson Pollack and Isamu Noguchi, before becoming the first ever press director of the Whitney Museum of American Art and helping to found the Museum of Modern Art. Always searching for ways to integrate art with fashion, Lambert used her diverse talents to establish the famed Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which is still known for its glittering, high-society balls. But of all her accomplishments, none is more significant than the creation of what she termed "Fashion Press Week," a semiannual exhibition of American fashion designers hosted in New York City. In fact, this event was so successful that Lambert was tasked by the U.S. government to travel to Russia, Japan, Germany and Italy, among other countries, to help establish America's place among the international fashion community.