Lynn Wyatt is the queen of the grand entrance. Because the 87-year-old philanthropist and fashion icon gracefully descends the curved staircase of her Houston house in a leopard-print shirt, brown suede pants, and leather-tasseled four-inch-high heels, it’s simple to think about her sporting a couture robe and welcoming friends to one of many many soirees and themed dinners she’s hosted over the previous six a long time. At this time, although, the event is a straightforward afternoon tea.
She leads the way in which into an inviting sitting room warmed by shades of darkish yellow and velvety inexperienced. “Tea” is usually Wyatt-speak for champagne and popcorn, one in all her favourite mixtures, however on this explicit day, tea means tea, served in delicate gold-rimmed cups accompanied by “LSW” monogrammed napkins. The S stands for her maiden identify, Sakowitz, which many Texans keep in mind because the eponym of the division retailer empire her Ukrainian grandfather and great-uncle based in Galveston in 1902 and expanded to Houston, the place it outlined luxurious looking for a long time. She acquired the W sixty years in the past, when she married oil magnate Oscar Wyatt. They’ve lived on this River Oaks house since 1999. It’s only a few blocks away from their former residence, the a lot bigger property referred to as the Wyatt Hyatt due to the numerous in a single day friends they hosted, together with Truman Capote, Mick Jagger, and Princess Margaret.
She settles into an armchair and begins leafing via printouts of articles written about her over time. She reads a couple of segments aloud, interjecting the occasional “That’s true” or “I do not forget that” and laughing softly. A point out of Grace Kelly leads her to recount the time she arrived at a celebration thrown in Monaco by her shut pal, then the nation’s princess, solely to search out that she was sporting the identical Dior outfit as her royal host. Wyatt left the dinner, modified garments, and returned. Largely, although, a sluggish “Mmm,
mmm, mmm” peppers her facet of the dialog, serving each as a pause and as a solution to connote that there’s a great story there, however she’s not going to inform it. At the least not at present.
Whereas she sips her tea, rays of the late-day solar apply a halo-like filter to her blond hair, and he or she patiently entertains questions associated to her sartorial legacy. What are a few of her all-time favourite robes? How would she outline Texas fashion? She solutions each with a variation of “Oh, I by no means give it some thought,” a refusal sweetened by her bourbon drawl—she seems like a Southern Lauren Bacall. What recommendation would she give to youthful Texans looking for their very own fashion? “Simply be your self,” she says, in a approach that makes clear this has by no means been an issue for her. She steers the dialogue as an alternative towards what she’s grateful for, from her husband, who suffered a stroke in 2008 and is now 98 (“He’s the love of my life”), to her house (“I’m completely satisfied as a clam right here”).
After their marriage ceremony, in 1963, the Wyatts spent greater than 35 years throwing glamorous events on the Wyatt Hyatt and at their villa within the South of France. The world had by no means seen anybody fairly like Lynn Wyatt earlier than: a Texan who not solely refused to tone down her accent however reveled in it, whereas sporting high fashion and hobnobbing with the wealthy and the royal as if she had been at a yard barbecue. The division retailer heiress helped put Houston on the worldwide fashion map, and silenced any doubters when she started making the Worldwide Finest-Dressed Listing in 1973 after which grew to become a Corridor of Fame inductee 4 years later. She’s at all times been good with the press, gracing the style and society pages of numerous magazines and newspapers, which have lengthy famous her impeccable fashion and her beneficiant giving, particularly to the humanities and medical analysis. (Vainness Honest as soon as declared her “the Finest Little Socialite in Texas”; this journal named her “Socialite of the Century” in 1999.)
Lately cited as a muse for the lauded up to date designer Brandon Maxwell, Wyatt nonetheless steals the highlight when she’s out in town, whether or not at a fundraiser or over dinner with the rapper Bun B. Prior to now few months, she’s been photographed celebrating the opening evening of the Mercury orchestra on the Wortham Theater Middle and hitting the dance ground on the resurrection of South Seaside, the beloved homosexual membership in Montrose. However house is the place she’s happiest lately, and it’s simple to see why.
Pictures and mementos are in every single place: photographs of Oscar, of her 4 sons and two grandchildren, of expensive buddies reminiscent of Sir Elton John, and of Lynn herself—wanting fabulous, at all times—via the years. She places down her teacup and walks via her bar space, which is adorned with signed love-themed prints that the late Yves Saint Laurent despatched her every New 12 months’s (she auctioned off a few of them in 2016 to boost cash for the renovation of the Rothko Chapel). She picks up a framed copy of lyrics she wrote for Oscar on his seventy-fifth birthday and, with out hesitation, begins sweetly singing them to the tune of Cole Porter’s “You’re the High”: “You’re the highest / You’re the birthday massive toy / You’re the highest / You’re my Texas cowboy.”
She exhibits off her famed leopard-print powder room, which is decked out in books and pictures by the German photographer Helmut Newton, together with portraits he took of Wyatt in an oil subject outdoors Houston within the mid-eighties—a part of a sequence on “Texas Powerhouses” that ran in Texas Month-to-month. She then heads into one other front room, the place the attention heads straight for 2 Andy Warhol portraits of her, hanging facet by facet. She notes that he really painted 4. “He says, ‘You don’t need the opposite two?’ And I stated, ‘No,’ and he stated, ‘Effectively, why not?’ And I stated, ‘As a result of I don’t assume I can stay with 4 Lynn Wyatts in my home.’ ” She laughs heartily at her punch line.
Though she’s accommodating and gracious when requested to mirror on her previous, she will get most animated when the tea ends and the dialog turns to the development of the $29 million Lynn Wyatt Sq. for the Performing Arts, a metropolis block’s value of inexperienced house that can join Jones Corridor, the Alley Theatre, and the Bayou Music Middle. Wyatt donated $10 million to the challenge, which can change the previous plaza, lengthy thought-about an eyesore. “I began crying once they confirmed me the plans,” she says. “I advised them, ‘Hear, I’m an previous woman—get with it.’ ” Set to open this spring, it’s billed as a gateway to the Theater District. Lynn Wyatt’s newest grand entrance, if you’ll.
This text initially appeared within the February 2023 difficulty of Texas Month-to-month with the headline “Nonetheless the Finest Little Socialite in Texas.” Subscribe at present.
