Funeral services were held Tuesday for Carolyn Pfeifer Horchow, a Dallas philanthropist and co-founder of the Horchow Collection catalogue with her husband, Roger.
She died of lymphoma Monday at her Dallas home, Roger Horchow said. She was 75.
With her refined taste, Carolyn Horchow was instrumental in selecting fashion and jewelry in the early years of the Horchow Collection.
“She made sure we had the Diane von Furstenberg wrap dress and Halston Ultrasuede, and we were the first catalogue to have any of those things,” her husband recalled.
She also was an active civic volunteer and philanthropist, from delivering Meals on Wheels to serving on committees at UT Southwestern Medical School and making significant contributions to Zale Lipshy Hospital, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Meyerson Symphony Center and many other organizations.
Born in Little Rock, Ark., Carolyn Horchow earned a bachelor’s degree from Connecticut College for Women, which is now Connecticut College. She worked as a fashion coordinator for Bloomingdale’s from 1956 to 1960, when she met and married Roger Horchow.
The couple started the catalogue business in 1971 with the then-maverick idea of selling luxury goods by mail. They pitched the idea to Kenton Corp., which owned Cartier, Valentino, Mark Cross and Kenneth Jay Lane, and ran the Kenton Collection as a division of the company.
The Horchows bought the catalogue from Kenton in 1972 for $1 million and renamed it Horchow Collection. By the time they sold it to Neiman Marcus in 1989, it had reached annual sales of $150 million, Roger Horchow said.{via WWD.com}
She died of lymphoma Monday at her Dallas home, Roger Horchow said. She was 75.
With her refined taste, Carolyn Horchow was instrumental in selecting fashion and jewelry in the early years of the Horchow Collection.
“She made sure we had the Diane von Furstenberg wrap dress and Halston Ultrasuede, and we were the first catalogue to have any of those things,” her husband recalled.
She also was an active civic volunteer and philanthropist, from delivering Meals on Wheels to serving on committees at UT Southwestern Medical School and making significant contributions to Zale Lipshy Hospital, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Meyerson Symphony Center and many other organizations.
Born in Little Rock, Ark., Carolyn Horchow earned a bachelor’s degree from Connecticut College for Women, which is now Connecticut College. She worked as a fashion coordinator for Bloomingdale’s from 1956 to 1960, when she met and married Roger Horchow.
The couple started the catalogue business in 1971 with the then-maverick idea of selling luxury goods by mail. They pitched the idea to Kenton Corp., which owned Cartier, Valentino, Mark Cross and Kenneth Jay Lane, and ran the Kenton Collection as a division of the company.
The Horchows bought the catalogue from Kenton in 1972 for $1 million and renamed it Horchow Collection. By the time they sold it to Neiman Marcus in 1989, it had reached annual sales of $150 million, Roger Horchow said.{via WWD.com}
1 comment:
I had the great fortune to meet Carolyn when I volunteered at UT-SWN while an employee of Zale-Lipshy University Hospital in 1997. She was an amazing lady and very compassionate. There are few left like her; she will be missed.
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