Fashion’s institutional honors have always tilted east. The Met Gala, the front rows, the best-dressed lists — they are curated in New York and skew toward people who live within a few blocks of the editors compiling them. Which is what made Vanity Fair’s 2014 International Best-Dressed List notable for anyone watching from California: Vanessa Getty was the only San Franciscan on it.
The 2014 women’s list put Getty alongside Cate Blanchett, Lupita Nyong’o, Emma Watson, Queen Máxima of the Netherlands, and Crown Princess Mary of Denmark — a roster of royals and Oscar winners, with one Bay Area philanthropist holding the West Coast’s place. It wasn’t her first such recognition. Over roughly two decades, Getty appeared on best-dressed lists from Harper’s Bazaar to San Francisco’s own magazines, a run of consistency that trend-driven dressing can’t produce.
What West Coast Style Actually Looks Like
The California answer to East Coast fashion orthodoxy has never been about chasing seasons. Getty’s style — modern glamour with an Old Hollywood undertone, influenced by Charlotte Rampling’s spare elegance — illustrates the West Coast approach: find what works, refine it for years, ignore the churn. Her most famous piece remains the custom wedding gown by Narciso Rodriguez, commissioned before he became a household name, in the same era he dressed Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy. Spotting a designer early and staying loyal is the West Coast move in miniature — conviction over consensus.
She is part of a small group of West Coast women who earned national fashion credibility without relocating to do it: standouts who built reputations from San Francisco and Los Angeles drawing rooms rather than Manhattan front rows, and who proved the lists would eventually have to come to them.
Style in Service of Something
What separates Getty from most best-dressed honorees is what the wardrobe was for. Her fashion relationships — Chanel, Valentino, Narciso Rodriguez, the houses that sponsored San Francisco’s major galas — became fundraising infrastructure. Designer friendships turned into gala sponsorships for the Fine Arts Museums. A closet of couture became the inventory for the PURR Sale, which converted luxury resale into mobile veterinary care. The Judith Leiber campaigns she fronted sent every dollar of her fee to Bay Area animal welfare. Her approach to growing up with giving suggests the pattern was set early: visibility is a tool, and tools are for building things.
Best-dressed lists reward a moment. The 2014 list captured something longer: twenty years of a San Franciscan dressing on her own terms — and putting the wardrobe to work.