Elsa Clench, Pioneer in Fashion Journalism on TV, Dies at 92 Elsa Clench, who was a pioneer in bringing fashion to the TV screen with her show "Style with Elsa Clench", has passed away.
TV fashion journalism pioneer Elsa Clensch dies at 92
Elsa Clensch, who brought fashion news to CNN's global TV audience for more than two decades, has died in New York City, according to the network.
CNN did not specify a cause of death. Clench was 92 years old.
Clash hosted the weekly series "Style with Elsa Clash" from 1980 to 2001. She traveled to major fashion hubs around the world and presented trends and designers every Saturday morning.
"Style" became one of CNN's most popular programs in its early years and emerged as one of the Clan Network's signature on-air talent, especially as the channel's reach expanded internationally.
Klensch provided in-depth reporting to devoted followers of fashion in an era before social media and bloggers, when consumer coverage of the industry was largely the province of glossy monthly print magazines. Broadcast TV network news divisions covered fashion, but it didn't have enough time to be able to provide CNN as a 24-hour news service in the 1980s.
For years, Clench was the only TV reporter on several fashion shows, elevating her status and giving her access to big names as coverage of the industry became more prevalent.
Designers such as Miuccia Prada, Marc Jacobs and Karl Lagerfeld, and supermodels such as Naomi Campbell and Christy Turlington all sat down for the Clenches interview. Journalists covering fashion today cite Clansh as inspiration.
Elsa Clensch, longtime fashion correspondent for CNN, dead:
In 1999, The New Yorker said that Klench reports on "developments in design, innovations in clothing, and mutations of the hemline as if she were covering the State Department."
Clensh herself became a style icon, being inducted into the International Best-Dressed Hall of Fame in 1990. She did not accept clothing from the companies she covered and received no clothing allowance from CNN, which was notorious in her early years.
Born Elsa Auschbacher outside Sydney, Australia, Clensch began her journalism career in London in the 1960s. She started out as a freelance business writer for Women's Wear Daily. While working in Hong Kong, she met her husband, journalist Charles Clensch, who was then ABC News's Saigon bureau chief. They were married in 1966 in Vietnam.
Clensch moved to New York in the 1970s and worked hard as a fashion editor for WWD, Vogue and Harper's Bazaar. He worked independently for New York newspapers until the end of the 84-day strike in 1978, which led him to try television.
Clash included the original cadre of special correspondents and experts hired by CNN founder Ted Turner when the network launched in 1980—a hedge against the prospect of a slow news period.
Clash left CNN in 2001 after then-parent Time Warner merged with AOL. He continued to write and lecture on fashion and wrote several mystery novels.