The CHICEST Mind

DEREK C. BLASBERG talks to philanthropist and style icon DEEDA BLAIR about the emergency of our current MENTAL-HEALTH CRISIS, funding (and fighting for) SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH, and why, when it comes to making the world better and more beautiful, POWER and PURPOSE go hand in hand

- DEREK C. BLASBERG

It's easy to see why the fashion world has long been so besotted with Deeda Blair. Her style is impeccable—“quiet luxury” before it was a catchphrase—and she’s worn her hair in the same perfectly coiffed bouffant for six decades. She was a patron and close friend of Hubert de Givenchy, and she wore Balenciaga (designed by Cristóbal himself) when she wed William McCormick Blair Jr., John F. Kennedy’s ambassador to Denmark, on September 9, 1961, at Frederiksborg Castle, just northwest of Copenhagen.

Deeda’s appeal, though, runs far deeper. For most of her life, she has been a tireless champion and fundraiser for scientific research and causes. With the flick of her wrist—occasionally attached to a long, slim cigarette, a trademark vice—she speaks as knowledgeably about gene sequencing as she does Givenchy.

In the 1960s, Deeda was on the front lines of cancer research, working with her mentor, Mary Lasker, a powerhouse philanthropist who helped expand the National Institutes of Health and increase federal funding for medical research. In the 1980s, she raised money for AIDS research, serving on the board of the Harvard AIDS Initiative and funding studies at a time when few would.

In more recent years, much of Deeda’s work has focused on advancing research related to psychiatry and the brain, following the death of her only son, who had battled mental-health issues, by suicide in 2004. In 2016, she founded the Deeda Blair Research Initiative for Disorders of the Brain at the Foundation for the NIH and established a grant program to support postdoctoral researchers in neuroscience and psychiatry. Last year, she awarded three physician-scientists $200,000 grants to advance innovative approaches to understanding and treating severe mental illness. “It’s startup funds,” Deeda says in a deliberate, slow half whisper.