Talk about going out in style.
Socialite and fashionista Zelda Kaplan, 95, died suddenly in the front row of a fashion show Wednesday at New York Fashion Week, the New York Post reported.
Kaplan donned her signature dark sunglasses and red and black tribal garb as she posted for photos before the show started. But as the second model walked out onto the runway at the Joanna Mastroianni show, Kaplan slumped over in her front-row seat.
“She flopped over in my lap. The show was just starting. I thought she fainted,” fashion journalist Ruth Finley told the Daily Mail.
Kaplan was carried out by security and pronounced dead at Roosevelt Hospital.
She was known as much for her outrageous sartorial sense as her nightlife. Kaplan rode nightclub circuit well into her nineties. She was known to “out-party even Paris Hilton.”
In a 2010 interview with New York Magazine, Kaplan said that her bedtime was “anytime between midnight and 7 a.m.”
Kaplan traveled extensively to Africa and Asia for humanitarian work, which she said influenced style.
“Passing away in the front row was how it was meant to be. Zelda loves fashion, so she died for fashion,” designer Richie Rich told the Post. “She would have wanted to go out in style.”