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Fashion designer Oscar de la Renta died Monday at the age of 82. As Washington Post fashion critic Robin Givhan tells NPR's Steve Inskeep, the designer understood something very fundamental about women, no matter their age or background.

The Two-Way

Fashion Icon Oscar De La Renta Dies At 82

"They want to look pretty," Givhan says. "And his clothes were not these sort of experimental garments where, you know, sleeves or armholes were optional. And he wasn't sort of this guy who made fashion all about him. You could really tell that the work was there to make women look and feel their best."

Givhan joins Inskeep to reflect on de la Renta's legacy.

Interview Highlights

On de la Renta's personal story

He was born in the Dominican Republic. ... He had six sisters and his mother encouraged his interest in fine arts. And that sort of got him off on a journey to Europe, where he was planning to study art, but he ended up getting involved in sketching for design houses, and that was kind of his entry point into the world of fashion.

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Baroness Aino Bodisco (far right) looks on as Beatrice Lodge is fitted in a debutante dress by fashion designer Oscar de la Renta in 1956. Nina Leen/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty hide caption

itoggle caption Nina Leen/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty

Baroness Aino Bodisco (far right) looks on as Beatrice Lodge is fitted in a debutante dress by fashion designer Oscar de la Renta in 1956.

Nina Leen/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty

On his personality

I think one of the magical things about him was that he had a certain charm and charisma, and in many ways it's something that you don't really see anymore. I mean, the last time I interviewed him I recall that he apologized because he had taken off his tie. I mean, who does that? I don't think I've ever seen him in anything other than a suit. So there was a sense of propriety about him, but at the same time he had a wicked sense of humor. He loved a good, dishy story. ... He would absolutely gossip in a wonderful, funny, sort of naughty way. And, you know, I think that sort of endeared him to women, because he was good fun to be around.

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President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama, wearing a dress designed by Oscar de la Renta, welcome Chinese President Hu Jintao to the White House in 2011. Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama, wearing a dress designed by Oscar de la Renta, welcome Chinese President Hu Jintao to the White House in 2011.

Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

On the women who have worn de la Renta designs

Laura Bush and first lady Michelle Obama, who recently wore one of his dresses. ... A string of first ladies, but you can expand that and you can include Sarah Jessica Parker and Nicki Minaj and Rihanna. And that's what I think is sort of extraordinary about his work, that it was able to reach across these generations. I mean, he dressed Laura Bush but he also dressed Jenna Bush Hager. So that's a pretty wide range.

On de la Renta's legacy

I think a lot of designers, and sometimes to their credit, they have an agenda, which is to say something about the culture or to show that they have this sort of higher-minded intellectual pursuit. But I think sometimes we miss those designers — or don't give them as many kudos — who really are about just making women look pretty. ...

He does leave a legacy, and that is that there is a place in our culture for a kind of fashion that is still rooted in beauty and propriety and decorum, and that none of that means that it's old-fashioned — that it can be just as modern as anything else and that it appeals to women from ages 80 to 20.

A century-old teenager is the focus of a musical and an art exhibit in Washington, D.C., right now. The National Gallery of Art is showing Edgar Degas' statue Little Dancer Aged Fourteen in conjunction with the Kennedy Center's Oct. 25 opening of Little Dancer, a new show inspired by the sculpture.

Ballet students Brittany Yevoli and Ava Durant, both 14, see themselves in Degas' statue. Looking at her, they stand as she does — fourth position, weight on the left leg, right leg forward, foot turned out to the right. They recognize her tutu, her shoes and her perfect posture.

"It looks like she's standing in rehearsal," Yevoli says.

They also notice the young girl's hands, clasped firmly behind her back. "Maybe showing respect," Durant says, "but also just sort of the way that we're supposed to stand in class."

Little Dancer is charming, even entrancing, yet the French had a less flattering nickname for the Paris Opera Ballet corps. "They called the students rats," curator Alison Luchs says. "They were little; they were thin; they scampered; they came in from the streets."

Luchs sees determination in the young ballerina's face — one writer called her "Miss Bossy Pants" — but conservator Shelley Sturman sees a bit of mystery. "Her eyes are half-closed, her head is tilted," Sturman says. "She's ready to rise above that rat-of-the-opera mystique."

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Degas used a real bodice, tutu, ribbon and even real hair in his sculpture. Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon/ Courtesy of the National Gallery hide caption

itoggle caption Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon/ Courtesy of the National Gallery

Degas used a real bodice, tutu, ribbon and even real hair in his sculpture.

Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon/ Courtesy of the National Gallery

Degas' Disappearing Muse

Degas made many sculptures, but Little Dancer is the only one he ever exhibited, and he worked on it for years. He made dozens of drawings before he began to sculpt with clay and beeswax, shaping and reshaping this National Gallery original. X-rays show he stabilized the 39-inch figure with lead pipe wrapped in rope, and used wire for her arms.

"And to make them stiffer and firmer, he actually put in old paint brushes," Sturman says. To tilt her head, he put a spring coil — maybe from a chair or mattress — inside her neck. And then, he dressed her. It was totally unconventional: He gave her a real cotton bodice, waxed so it looks bronzy; a real tutu; a real silk ribbon tied around a braid made of real, blond human hair; and real linen slippers — pink and also waxed.

How did critics react in 1881? "A lot of them thought it was awful," Sturman says. "They were stunned by the realism. They were used to seeing sculptures of women in marble and bronze."

They were also used to seeing goddesses, not a flat-chested, skinny, coltish adolescent like Marie Van Goethem, the ballerina who posed for the sculpture.

"[Her name is] written on a Degas drawing," Sturman says. "[Her] parents came from Belgium. The father was a tailor; the mother was a laundress."

Marie started modeling for Degas around 1878. Curator Alison Luchs says her dance career ended four years later. "She was dismissed from the ballet. The implication is that she was missing rehearsals or getting something wrong. And she disappears. We don't know what became of her."

The new musical Little Dancer imagines Marie's life.

A Talented Street Urchin

Lynn Ahrens, who wrote the book and lyrics for the musical, says she got the idea for Little Dancer when she saw a bronze replica of the statue at the Clark Art Institute in Massachusetts. Curious about the story behind it, Ahrens did some research on Degas and Marie.

"I began to see a story emerging about an artist who was beginning to go blind, who was frightened that he was losing his power to paint," she says. "And into his life, somehow, walks a little girl who inspires him, in some way, because she is such an urchin, such a spirit and a stubborn soul, and he begins to sketch her and suddenly decides that he wants to sculpt."

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Tony Award-winning actor Boyd Gaines plays Edgar Degas opposite the New York City Ballet's Tiler Peck, as Marie Van Goethem, during a Manhattan rehearsal. Paul Kolnik/Courtesy of the Kennedy Center hide caption

itoggle caption Paul Kolnik/Courtesy of the Kennedy Center

Tony Award-winning actor Boyd Gaines plays Edgar Degas opposite the New York City Ballet's Tiler Peck, as Marie Van Goethem, during a Manhattan rehearsal.

Paul Kolnik/Courtesy of the Kennedy Center

Ahrens and her collaborator, composer Stephen Flaherty, have created a musical that's both historically informed and highly speculative. In a Manhattan rehearsal studio, many of Degas' most famous paintings and sketches are taped to the wall — ballerinas slumping in exhaustion, rich men in black hats checking out the girls, absinthe drinkers. Director and choreographer Susan Stroman has put them all onstage, but says the heart of Little Dancer is the story of a prickly artist finding his equally prickly young muse in one of those ballet rats.

"You want to believe that she had language," Stroman says, "and she, you know, was like an Artful Dodger almost. And so that's what we have created, in essence."

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Peck says she sees her character, the young Marie Van Goethem, as a survivor. Matthew Karas/Courtesy of the Kennedy Center hide caption

itoggle caption Matthew Karas/Courtesy of the Kennedy Center

Peck says she sees her character, the young Marie Van Goethem, as a survivor.

Matthew Karas/Courtesy of the Kennedy Center

New York City Ballet star Tiler Peck plays young Marie as a street urchin — a very talented street urchin, but one who has no qualms picking people's pockets, including Monsieur Degas', to get money for pointe shoes.

"What I see her as is just like a survivor," Peck says. "She does anything to make her ends meet. You know, there's no hope for her at home. She goes home and her mom's drunk all the time, her mom's asking her for her money. And I feel like the ballet is the one sort of happy hope that she has in her life."

She's caught between many things, says composer Stephen Flaherty. "She's not a child; she's not an adult. She's sort of in between, in the cracks, and that's one of the things we really wanted to capture." It's that "in between-ness" that attracts Degas.

While the musical comes up with the reason Marie is dismissed from the Paris Opera, it doesn't exactly say what happened to her afterward. There's a dream ballet, which offers a variety of possible paths, and the character of older Marie quite literally haunts the show.

"By having an adult Marie and a young Marie, we're saying that she survived," director Susan Stroman says. "And that's a good thing. And that's what we would hope for."

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The way in which he surpasses humanity has historically been very, very important. I would say it's been downplayed somewhat in some modern Muslim biographies. But that tension has always been present.

On the biographical interpretation of Muhammad's life by extremist groups, like the terrorist group that calls itself the Islamic State

They're making interpretive choices too. They are saying, "We're going to focus on a particular" — and not a particularly well-supported — "version of a political program of establishing God's rule. We're going to focus on particular norms that we want to see implemented."

But it's actually been very striking to me how little direct appeal there is to the kind of interpretive tradition that looks at translating Muhammad's life and Muhammad's example and Muhammad's precedent into rules for Muslims of later generations to follow. Because, of course, that has been a major concern of Muslim jurists for well over a thousand years.

On the significance of the Quran, as compared to a biography, when considering Muhammad

That's a hugely complicated question. "Isn't the Quran supposed to be the thing?" And the reality is that of course the Quran is the thing. But the idea that it can be separated out from the life of Muhammad makes no sense for the vast majority of Muslims.

I have a colleague who likes to say, "Muhammad wasn't just a UPS delivery guy. He didn't just bring this book and say, 'Here you go, good luck.' " And for the vast majority of Muslim history, people have really interpreted one by means of the other.

And the other thing, of course, is that most Muslims didn't have access to printed copies of the Quran or online copies that they could keyword search. You had to get this from somewhere. Just like most Christians didn't have copies of the Bible until relatively recently. And so that process of looking at the text has almost always taken place through the lens of looking at the life of the prophet.

Now, was it the historical events of the life of the prophet or was it something about his luminous character that was revealed in the things that we know about his life but also things passed down through, in some cases, a charismatic lineage of mystical teachers? There are a lot of ways in which Muhammad's life has been understood and experienced and celebrated in the past 1,400 years, and not all of them are captured by biography, to be sure.

Prophet Muhammad

Quran

The worst fate of all may be to make a terrible mistake and then learn the wrong lessons from the experience.

That's the thought I had reading a heartfelt column about the Boston Herald's unfortunate decision to publish a cartoon featuring a White House gate-crasher asking the nation's first black president if he had "tried the new watermelon flavored toothpaste."

After a two-week silence, Rachelle Cohen, the Herald's editor of editorial pages, offered a humble, thoughtful essay on the experience, calling her decision to approve the cartoon "dumb." She highlighted some of the negative reactions sparked by the cartoon — including Deval Patrick, the state's first black governor, who "snapped" at a Herald reporter asking a question involving race.

Once again, Cohen noted that neither she nor cartoonist Jerry Holbert were aware of the racial stereotypes they inadvertently invoked with the image (black people have long been stereotyped as simpletons with a fondness for watermelon; plug the terms "Obama" and "watermelon" into Google's Image Search to see a wide array of racist pictures featuring the two).

And she explained how a mistake in Herald procedure resulted in no other senior editors seeing the image until it was published.

It was an important, if belated, mea culpa.

But it also kinda missed much of the point.

Here's my list of the biggest lessons the Herald should learn from Cartoongate.

Lesson #1: Staff Diversity Brings Better Journalism

The Herald didn't participate in the most recent diversity survey implemented by the American Society of News Editors; years ago, the Knight Foundation reported 5.5 percent of the newspaper's staff was nonwhite in 2003, a time when about 20 percent of the population in its circulation area was nonwhite.

The Herald's vice president of promotion and marketing didn't respond to a phone call and emails, so I don't know what the newspaper's staff diversity levels are like now.

But if its past numbers haven't changed, the Herald still has a lot of work to do. No one knows whether a black or Latino editor might have flagged the cartoon, but this incident seems to have exposed a huge blind spot in its op-ed department.

In journalism, staff diversity isn't just about soothing hurt feelings or avoiding embarrassment; it's a journalistic value. Few quality newspapers would shrug off conditions where they published 10 factual errors a day. So its time to realize diversity is an important tool for delivering accuracy and context to all kinds of coverage.

Yes, the media economy is terrible. Yes, it's tough to diversify staff anywhere, especially in a city like Boston with such a contentious history on racial issues. And it's likely the Herald, like most other media outlets, doesn't have the staffing it had 10 or 15 years ago.

Lesson #2: In Race And Media, History Matters

A cover from April 2010. The Boston Herald hide caption

itoggle caption The Boston Herald

It's not just about knowing enough American history to catch a problematic image; media outlets build reputations with their communities through their own history of coverage and focus. If a newspaper develops a track record of covering racial issues well and thoughtfully, then an occasional mistake can be seen in the proper context. But a history of missteps can work the other way.

The Herald, for example, drew protests from national organizations representing black and Hispanic journalists in 2010 when it published a cover on immigration issues featuring "NO WELFARE" stamped on a black woman's forehead, "NO TUITION" stamped on a person who looked Latino, and "NO MEDICAID" stamped on the forehead of an Asian man. No white person was pictured on the cover.

Critics of the watermelon cartoon had a tough time believing Cohen and Holbert weren't intentionally referencing racial stereotypes. But a past record of accurate, sensitive coverage could have earned them the benefit of the doubt.

Lesson #3: Racial Miscues Are Big News

In the past, there's often been a pattern to race-related media controversies: a few days of outrage, a noncommittal apology from a news outlet, and a collective shrug as everyone moves on.

But that didn't happen in this case. Thanks to social media and growing concern about how big institutions treat people of color, stories about such lapses can become major news, dissected on Twitter feeds and plastered across Facebook pages around the globe by people who refuse to shrug and move on.

Holbert admitted that the syndicate that distributes his cartoons across the country flagged the issue and asked him to change the toothpaste flavor, which he eventually did for them. But he didn't tell the Herald about the change because he didn't think it was an issue.

Now he knows differently.

It feels similar to what we've seen in Ferguson, Mo., where the death of a young black man in a questionable police shooting sparked protests and national media coverage within days. Other media outlets seem more willing to feature such stories now — especially if they come with compelling video — and the public is more willing to challenge institutions that once got the benefit of the doubt.

One more thing: In her column, Cohen notes that the governor treated a Herald reporter harshly because of his anger over the column. Once upon a time, fury over issues like this would simply simmer in communities of color; now, people of color occupy the highest offices in the land, and there is a bigger price to pay for such mistakes.

That's how the march of diversity creates new demands on news outlets and draws new boundaries for what is important and what is not.

A spokeswoman for Boston's NAACP chapter said the group is arranging a public meeting with officials from the Herald to talk about diversity issues, likely in early November. Perhaps this incident has taught the newspaper that it needs to do more than talk.

Because, as important as heartfelt apologies are, they don't matter much if behavior doesn't change.