Christopher Pendleton

CHRISTOPHER PENDLETON  

April 19, 1955  -- December 25, 2019

If you could ask Chris Pendleton his idea of heaven, he might say sitting in a leather chair in the mahogany bar of the Connaught Hotel, sipping their finest cognac and celebrating a hole-in-one at Sunningdale Golf Club near London.

Chris was a true Anglophile, and there were few English customs and traditions he embraced more enthusiastically than golf.   He travelled extensively playing some of the world’s most renown and challenging courses  -- adventures that included numerous rounds of golf over two decades with Sean Connery at his club in Lyford Cay, Bahamas.

He was a man with remarkably fine tastes in fashion and wine, a truly urbane man but with humble roots that kept him grounded.   Chris was born in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1955 to Mary and John Pendleton and raised in Winona and in Richmond, Virginia.   Both his parents were teachers, so the family would spend their summer vacations on the Chesapeake Bay, where Chris learned his love of the outdoors.

But from his earliest days Chris was a truly cosmopolitan soul.  According to his mother, when Chris was just six years old he would write postcards to his grandmother with his return address as One Park Avenue, New York City. 

Somehow the child knew his destiny.  Chris would rise to become a men’s clothing  executive in New York and London for some of the world’s most influential retailers including Burberry, Bloomingdale’s, Dior, Aquascutum and Thomas Pink.   Chris understood the business and always looked the part. 

But for his love of all things English, there was nothing Chris loved more than his family – his wife of 40 years Grace and his devoted daughter, Kate. 

It was in his small gestures and not his global travels that truly defined him.  

Chris was a uniquely generous spirit.  He shared willingly and without notice.  He would give money to anyone who asked, and many did.   And he expected nothing in return.  For more than a decade when Chris lived on Manhattan’s West Side, he would give a local homeless man who waited for him outside his garage two cigarettes and two dollars every day.  

And when he was travelling, Chris would ask Grace to go down to the garage every morning to make sure he at least had the money for his coffee.

 A celebration of Chris's life will occur in spring

Family requests no flowers be sent. 

Donations in his memory may be made to the American Cancer Society

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