Lynn Eleanor Kohlman (1946-2008)/Obituaries


 * Her obituary appeared in the The East Hampton Star: Lynn Kohlman, a former fashion model and photographer who kept a part-time residence in Springs for the past 25 years, died of brain cancer at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan on Sept. 14. She was 62. Her five years with breast and brain cancer were part of the inspiration for Donna Karan to establish the Urban Zen Foundation. Ms. Karen was a close friend and former business associate of Ms. Kohlman's. In a pictorial autobiography, "Lynn Front to Back," published in 2005, Colleen Saidman and Rodney Yee, co-owners of Yoga Shanti in Sag Harbor, were featured prominently, along with Ms. Karan, who this year opened a store in Sag Harbor to support her foundation. According to Ms. Kohlman's husband, Mark Obenhaus, Ms. Kohlman was also close to Marion Roaman Weil, who owns Zone Hampton, a workout studio in East Hampton. Last year, Ms. Kohlman had photography exhibits at East End Books in East Hampton and at the Fireplace Project in Springs. Mr. Obenhaus said that his wife was "avidly appreciative of Accabonac Harbor . . . it's just her body of water. We just spent the better parts of all of these summers either kayaking, swimming, or clamming" there. The couple were designing their "dream house" in Springs, where she "hoped to spend the rest of her life." Although Ms. Kohlman was born in Teaneck N.J., her father, who had attended summer camp in Springs as a youth, also had fond memories of the area. When he died, his ashes were spread over Accabonac Harbor. It was Ms. Kohlman's wish to have her ashes spread there as well, and her family and friends plan to do so in a private ceremony at a later date. Although Ms. Kohlman had photographed many celebrities, including Keith Richards and Calvin Klein, it didn't stop her from being a "groupie," her husband said, of Neil Young's. When she was approaching 60, she met the singer backstage at a Madison Square Garden concert shortly after she was diagnosed with cancer, and he told her, "Lynn, have a wonderful journey." Her husband said "she was terribly moved by it," and despite a grim prognosis that suggested she would survive only a few months longer, "she lived five years. She survived way longer than anyone expected her to." Shortly after graduating summa cum laude from Oberlin College, where she was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, with a bachelor's degree in art history, Ms. Kohlman moved to Florence, Italy, to restore paintings. Despite the fact that she never wore makeup, Ms. Kohlman happened into modeling — she had done some in college — and after being squarely rejected by Eileen Ford for looking too "eccentric," she was quickly picked up by Wilhelmina, another top modeling agency. Over the next decade her image graced the covers of Elle, Italian Vogue, and Harper's magazine. Living in London in the 1970s, she developed a chic, boyish, and edgy personal style. She became known as the muse to Perry Ellis, who gave her a job as assistant designer, despite the fact that she didn't know how to sketch or sew. He once created an entire collection based on Ms. Kohlman's own oversized pantsuit and white jacket. In the 1980s, she turned to photography, and found that she enjoyed shooting male subjects. When Donna Karan struck out on her own in 1988, she appointed Ms. Kohlman fashion director, and much of the line's androgynous, urban "attitude" has been attributed to Ms. Kohlman's influence.In 2001, Ms. Kohlman left Donna Karan to help Tommy Hilfiger start his first women's fashion line. Shortly afterward, she was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a double mastectomy, only to find out a few months later, while on a yoga retreat, that she had brain cancer. After that, Ms. Kohlman became outspoken about her cancer. In her book, she published a post-operation topless photo of herself, complete with a fresh line of staples in her half-shorn head, next to a nude photograph from her modeling days. Ms. Kohlman was born on Aug. 12, 1946, to Clement Kohlman and the former Eleanor Lerner. She grew up in Teaneck and met her current husband at college. A first marriage ended in divorce. She married Mr. Obenhaus on Feb. 5, 1985. The couple had one son together, Sam Obenhaus of New York City. She is also survived by a brother, Jeffrey Kohlman of Atlanta. Memorial contributions were suggested to Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Neuro-Oncology Research Fund, 1275 York Ave., New York 10021.


 * New York Times: Lynn Kohlman, 62, Model and Muse, Dies. The cause was brain cancer, said her husband, Mark Obenhaus. Ms. Kohlman also worked as a design executive for Mr. Ellis and other fashion houses and later as a photographer. Her personal style was tough and creative. She wore her hair short and her suits oversize, often paired with motorcycle boots. It was her offbeat style that attracted the attention of Mr. Ellis in the 1970s, and he often described her as a muse. Mr. Ellis once designed an entire collection based on an oversize white linen jacket Ms. Kohlman had worn and, as usual, she was the first model sent out onto the runway at that show. He gave her a position as an assistant designer at his company, even though she said she could not sketch or sew. Ms. Kohlman also appeared on the covers of Vogue and Elle and in advertisements for Yves Saint Laurent and Anne Klein, where Ms. Karan became the designer after Ms. Klein’s death in 1974. Ms. Karan, after starting her own company, hired Ms. Kohlman as the fashion director of DKNY, when her less expensive collection was started in 1988, to give the clothes a fresh sense of urban toughness and a masculine/feminine blend. Ms. Kohlman also later helped Tommy Hilfiger start his first women’s collection. “All of those iconic things about DKNY were because of her look,” Ms. Karan said. “She was the Patti Smith of fashion.” Ms. Kohlman wrote about her experience with breast cancer and brain cancer in a 2005 autobiography called “Lynn Front to Back.” The title referred to her career transition from being a model in front of the cameras to the person taking the pictures, but also to her acceptance of her post-surgery body, as she had always been proud of her figure. The book opened with two arresting images of Ms. Kohlman, shown before and after a mastectomy and a separate operation to remove a walnut-size brain tumor that left 39 visible titanium staples in her scalp, which she said she had chosen to show that her body was more beautiful than ever. Lynn Eleanor Kohlman was born on Aug. 12, 1946, in Teaneck, N.J. After studying art history at Oberlin College, she moved to Florence, Italy, to help restore artworks damaged in the Arno River flood of 1966. But Ms. Kohlman, who had modeled during college, was soon discovered by Wilhelmina Models and got her first assignment, for The New York Times Magazine, around 1970. She also loved photography, and her casual portraits of Calvin Klein, Keith Richards and Stephan Weiss, Ms. Karan’s husband, were published in magazines including Interview, Vogue and GQ. In addition to her husband, Mr. Obenhaus, a producer and director of documentaries, Ms. Kohlman is survived by a son, Sam, who also modeled in advertisements for DKNY, and a brother, Jeff Kohlman, a federal judge in Atlanta. After her breast cancer was discovered in 2002 and then an aggressive form of brain cancer was found the following year, Ms. Kohlman said she was determined not to hide behind her scars. On “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” she described walking in the East Village and receiving compliments from a body piercing fan because her staples were “really nicely spaced and even.” She gave him the name of her doctor.


 * The Guardian, Wednesday 24 September 2008. Lynn Kohlman. American model who defied convention by displaying the ravages of cancer. By Veronica Horwell. The American fashion director and former model Lynn Kohlman, who has died of cancer aged 62, presented herself as the beautiful public body of cancer. She posed for the camera unclothed with both breasts gone, with titanium staples encircling her scalp after a brain operation, with hair frazzled away by radiation. In a radical gesture consistent with her life, she published proximate portraits of her youthful perfection and post-op, scarred self, defiantly lovely, in her autobiography, Lynn Front to Back, published in 2005. Kohlman had modelled in her student years after the photographer Clive Arrowsmith spotted her on a London street. Then, as a graduate in art history, she moved from her native New Jersey to Italy to do restoration work after the Florence floods of 1966. She thought modelling was "inane", but it paid, and her looks were liked in Europe in the 1970s - her short, dark hair so different from the prevaling taste for curly girlies, her long, lean face harking back to a pre-60s sophistication, though not clarted with makeup. She was a cover girl for Elle, Harpers & Queen, and French Vogue, and she twirled on Paris and London catwalks, lanky enough to carry off the acres of fabric in a Zandra Rhodes ensemble. She travelled to Africa and India, and learned how the photographers Barry Lategan, Irving Penn and Richard Avedon worked. Photography became Kohlman's back-up career after she returned to New York in the early 1980s. The model agency boss Eileen Ford told her she would need a nose job before she was acceptable for modelling assignments in the US. And the crew cut, motorbike boots and Patti Smith style would have to go. She did have American fans, notably the designer Perry Ellis, who produced a collection based on the oversized man's linen suit she wore. Kohlman wrote that she thought of herself "as his muse, but he gave me the title assistant designer", and she led the parade at his shows. She shot ads for, and portraits of, him and Calvin Klein. Andy Warhol rated her portfolio highly enough to offer her space in Interview magazine, and Vogue commissioned her behind the camera. Besides fashion and portraits, she photographed landscapes. Donna Karan employed her in 1988, first as fashion director, then as creative director, and always as inspiration. Kohlman's edginess and "masculine-feminine street feeling" became a basis of Karan's urban DKNY look. Then, after 11 years with Karan, she was recruited by Tommy Hilfiger as creative director, but was swiftly dismissed. Despite an initial encounter with breast cancer in the 1990s, which required a lumpectomy, she remained fit until 2002. Then, that September, Kohlman asked a friend to practise spiritual healing on her son, Sam, and the friend warned Kohlman to check her breasts, as she was sure something was wrong. It was. Kohlman had cancer widespread enough to demand an immediate double mastectomy - as her mother had 30 years earlier. Kohlman enjoyed telling the story of her operations and their aftermath as outrageous comedy. She had expected to qualify for a new technology that created replacement "breasts" from her own body fat, only she lacked enough fat for one breast, let alone two. "I was very baffled that I could be too fit or too thin." A reconstructive surgeon inserted "expanders" in her chest to stretch skin and muscles slowly so implants could be fitted. But after an infection, she had them extracted. At the end of a yoga class five months later, as she wrote in Vogue: "It was as if hot snakes were wriggling through me ... my mouth tasted like metal." The class master claimed this was the joyful release of "kundalini rising", but she knew it was brain cancer. The precise diagnosis turned out to be stage four glioblastoma. "Stage four out of 10, I asked? No, the doctor shook her head. Stage four out of four." Kohlman had to stay awake during the surgery to answer questions so the surgeons could be sure they were within the correct zone of the brain. Then they sealed her skull incision with 39 titanium staples. The tumour regrew in weeks; more chemotherapy, but no hiding. She was proud that she was shameless in what others thought of as her physical ruin. Karan considered the staples elegant and edgy, and so did Kohlman. As she told the Oprah Winfrey show in 2005, she had sauntered out onto the streets of New York with her scalp shaved and staples visible. A passing pierced punk admired them, so "nicely spaced and even. That's cool. Where'd you have that done?" Kohlman's first marriage ended in divorce. She is survived by her second husband, the documentary director Mark Obenhaus, and their son. Lynn Eleanor Kohlman, model and fashion director, born August 12 1946; died September 14 2008

[[Category:Lynn Eleanor Kohlman (1946-2008)