Fashion consultant to LV social scene Fish dies at 82

Friday, Feb. 20, 1998 | 11:21 a.m.

Katherine Elizabeth "Kay" Fish, who as longtime manager of the local Joseph Magnin specialty shop popularized haute couture in Las Vegas and dressed the cream of local society during five decades, has died. She was 82.

Fish died Feb. 11 from complications of emergency heart surgery at Columbia Sunrise Hospital.

Services were Tuesday at St. Viator's church for the Las Vegas resident of 41 years. Interment was in Paradise Memory Gardens. Davis Paradise Valley Funeral Home handled the arrangements.

A socialite herself, Fish was ever the picture of grace and elegance in her everyday activities. She never left the house without being properly groomed and attired.

"She dressed to the nines," said Las Vegas interior decorator Semone Gell, a longtime friend and former co-worker at Bertha's Home Furnishings, where Fish came out of retirement in the late 1970s to work for 17 years as a bridal consultant.

"Appearance was very important to her. It was not uncommon for Kay to wear a $1,600 outfit to the grocery store. Her nails always were perfectly manicured and she had her hair cut every two weeks."

Fish viewed her job as not only to put women in the latest and finest fashions but also to educate them on the proper way to dress and accessorize. And, for many years, she attended all of the town's major social events to watch her work come to life.

At Joseph Magnin, an exclusive West Coast chain of fashionable shops, Fish was credited with introducing to Las Vegas the fashions of such top designers as Gucci, Halston and Channel.

Born Aug. 1, 1915, in Fitchburg, Mass., Fish began her career in the fashion industry there. She attended college in the Boston area and came to Las Vegas in 1957.

As store manager, Fish personally attended to customers who comprised the upper echelon of Las Vegas society. But she was not stuffy or snobbish by any means.

"Kay had an uncanny wit and she was just as comfortable with common people as she was with royalty," Gell said. "She taught me never to be judgmental when dealing with the public -- to treat all customers as through they are kings and queens."

Fish retired in 1978, but was urged to go to work for Bertha's because of her many social connections. She retired from the store's bridal consultant position in 1995. Bertha's ceased operations last October after 50 years in Las Vegas.

"Kay said she was saddened to see the Las Vegas of the past demolished," Gell said. "She missed places like the Dunes and the Landmark. And now, like the Las Vegas of yesterday, she also is gone. I'm really going to miss her."

Fish is survived by her husband, Larry Fish of Las Vegas; two stepsons, Lawrence Fish Jr., of Binghamton, N.Y., and Nelson Fish of Las Vegas; a stepdaughter, Sally Ann Woster of Harvard, Mass.; two sisters, Janet Greenstreet and Ann Paulette, both of Fitchburg; seven grandchildren and five great grandchildren.

DONATIONS: In Kay Fish's memory to the American Heart Association.