Former AP fashion editor Anderson dies at 91

[January 09, 2013]  AUSTIN, Texas (AP) -- Former Associated Press fashion editor and foreign correspondent Nadeane Walker Anderson, who interviewed legendary designers including Coco Chanel and Christian Dior while working in Paris, has died in Texas. She was 91.

Anderson, who used her maiden name Nadeane Walker as her byline, died of natural causes Monday in Austin, her daughter Jane Fredrick said late Tuesday.

Born in Canton, Texas, Anderson first entered journalism as a staff writer for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram after graduating from North Texas Teacher's College in 1942.

"Since they had so many reporters drafted, you know, I got an opportunity to do bigger stories, and I covered murder cases and all sorts of things and did very well in it," Anderson said in the 2009 interview. "They sent me to do a story on the Women's Army Corps, and of course I decided I wanted to join."

She enlisted in the Women's Army Corps and became a reporter with The Stars and Stripes newspaper's Paris Edition in 1945, according to an oral history she provided to the AP.

In 1946 she married AP correspondent Godfrey Anderson in Paris and joined the AP as the European fashion editor. She interviewed some of the biggest names in fashion at the time, including Chanel, Dior and Yves Lanvin -- who even named a dress after her.

"You had to come back and file your stories (after) we were served champagne ... off silver trays by waiters with white gloves, all day long, and I developed a great tolerance for champagne, I guess, because I never got too drunk to write my stories," she said.

She later became the London correspondent for the International Herald Tribune and worked as a freelance writer for a number of publications.

In 1970, she returned to Texas and joined the staff of the Dallas Times-Herald as a reporter. In 1978 she cooperated with a U.S. Department of Labor investigation into age and gender discrimination at the paper and was fired in 1979. In 1981, she joined a labor department lawsuit that led the paper to change its employment practices.

She continued to write for various publications until she retired and moved to Austin with her daughter. Her husband, a World War II correspondent for the AP who was taken prisoner in North Africa during his career, died in 1999.

Along with her daughter, Anderson is survived by her son, David.

[Associated Press; By CHRIS TOMLINSON]

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