Kate Spade’s death by suicide at 55 is as shocking as any sudden celebrity death—the designer, mother, and fashion industry innovator is gone abruptly, unexpectedly, and entirely too soon. But the context and circumstances underscore its tragedy: For over two decades, the fashion designer’s commercial and personal…
Author Elizabeth Gilbert confirmed on Thursday that her partner Rayya Elias died with posts on Twitter and Instagram. Elias was 57.
Nancy Friday, author of My Secret Garden: Women’s Sexual Fantasies—i.e., my all-time greatest adolescent Friends of the Library Book Sale find—has died at 84.
Hugh Hefner, who founded the legendary Playboy in 1953, a magazine whose at times scintillating writing has been eclipsed by its photoshoots, died of natural causes at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles on Wednesday. He was 91.
Barbara Cook, who originated the role of Marian the Librarian in The Music Man on Broadway and after a tumultuous career eventually became one of America’s best-known and most beloved cabaret singers, has died at 89. Her catalog is incredible.
Sheila Michaels, the woman who campaigned for “Ms.” as “a title for a woman who did not ‘belong’ to a man,” died of cancer on June 22, the New York Times reports.
Robert Osborne—longtime Turner Classic Movies host, having been with the channel from its 1994 beginning, and a beloved mainstay who singlehandedly made cable worthwhile—has died at 84.
Robert Leo Hulseman, the man who made all your beer pong marathons possible through his invention of the red Solo cup, died this week at the age of 84. This is a sad day for American culture.
After George Michael’s death at 53 on Christmas Day, stories began pouring in about the ways the pop icon privately supported fans and charities. Like Prince, Michael was largely uninterested in recognition but focused on doing good in the world, wielding his immense financial privilege in small ways that would change…
This is some fucking bullshit. Carrie Fisher—life idol to millions of women across generations for her strong portrayal of Princess Leia in a genre once thought to be dominated by men, as well as a brilliant, brilliantly funny writer who helped to normalize women talking about mental health struggles—has died aged 60…
NewsHour co-host and legendary political journalist Gwen Ifill died Monday at the age of 61, PBS has revealed, reportedly from cancer.
Natalie Babbitt, whose young adult classic Tuck Everlasting explored the concept of immortality, leading many young readers to reflect (perhaps for the first time) on the nature of death and their place in a cyclical universe, died on Monday at the age of 84 at her home in Hamden, Connecticut.
Novelist Gloria Naylor, known best for her first novel The Women of Brewster Place, which is comprised of stories about women living in the same housing project that explore racism, poverty, and homophobia, died of a heart attack on September 28. Naylor died in the Virgin Islands, where she was writing and working,…
Famed non-feminist Phyllis Schlafly died Monday at the age of 92. Eunie Smith, the first Vice President of the “pro-family” conservative organization Schlafly founded, the Eagle Forum, said her death came at the end of “a long illness,” with Schlafly’s daughter confirming that said illness was cancer.
There’s a scene in the beginning of Young Frankenstein where a young medical student stops Gene Wilder’s Dr. Frederick Frankenstein (that’s Franken-steen) mid-lecture to question him about the work of his grandfather, the Modern Prometheus himself, Victor Frankenstein.
Youree Dell Harris, known to many as Miss Cleo, died Tuesday morning at age 53 in Palm Beach County, FL. TMZ reports she was “originally diagnosed with colon cancer,” but that it spread to her liver and lungs. She was with friends and family when she died.
Singer Marni Nixon has died at the age of 86. She didn’t get the marquee credit, but the singing in some of the most famous musicals of the twentieth century was actually her work.
Prince, the musician who helped define the latter half of the 20th century with his eclectic blend of funk and transgressive sexuality, died Thursday at Paisley Park, his Minnesota property. He was 57.
Cara Delevingne’s Modeling Career, which flourished in the mid-2010s and took the British actor Cara Delevnigne to runways and ad campaigns from Milan to Morocco, died Sunday in the Times of London. It was 6.
Clothing designer Arnold Scaasi, who dressed Barbra Streisand and Barbara Bush, Mary Tyler Moore and Joan Crawford, has died at 85. “I am definitely not a minimalist!” he explained of his approach. “Clothes with some adornment are more interesting to look at and more fun to wear.”
