Luc Sante on Basquiat's Beginnings
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FEBRUARY 8 – FEBRUARY 14, 2017 VOL. LXII | NO. 6 VILLAGEVOICE.COM | FREE LUC SANTE ON BASQUIAT'S BEGINNINGS INDIE-ROCK RESISTANCE A WORKOUT SASHA LANE AT THE MET AMERICAN HONEY’S MUSLIM ANTI-SWEETHEART COMEDY IN THE AGE SPRING OF TRUMP FASHION HARLEY WEIR’S ROVING EYE A BALLET BLITZ WITH OPENING CEREMONY SUPREME x LOUIS VUITTON THE ROCKIN’ ROCKAWAYS A GUIDE TO NYC’S SECRET STORES THE NEW POWER DRESSING PLUS: WHERE TO GO, WHAT TO DO, AND WHO TO KNOW IN THE CITY RIGHT NOW 15 February8 – SPRING FASHION February201714, VILLAGE VOICE VILLAGE .com The Bag You Can’t Have (Probably) ILLUSTRATION BY SPIROS HALARIS n fashion, as in life, scarcity often breeds desire. It’s a truism that the to be a watershed in the annals of covetousness. Unveiled at the Vuitton quintessential New York City skate- and streetwear brand, Supreme, fall/winter men’s show in Paris in January, the line encompasses an ar- I has adopted as an operating philosophy, with its insanely sought- ray of clothes, bags, and accessories; when images of the collection were after controlled-quantity sneaker collaborations and limited-edition, released on Instagram immediately after, it caused an insta-furor. The artist-designed decks. But it’s also a notion that fuels the world of high pieces — among them, a Supreme-ified rendition of the iconic Vuitton fashion, as the French house Louis Vuitton knows well. That’s why “Speedy” bag (illustrated here) — will all be produced in extraordinarily Supreme’s new collaboration with Louis Vuitton is already shaping up small numbers and available only at select Louis Vuitton stores in July. 16 SPRING FASHION February201714, – February8 .com VILLAGE VOICE VILLAGE Internal Affairs Remembering the Village Voice‘s fashion insert Vue, which brought together some of New York’s top photographers and designers for six issues of glorious anarchy BY DANNY KING his is the Village Voice’s second full issue dedicated to fash- ion — but the paper’s history of fashion coverage runs far T deeper than that. From 1985 to ’86, the Voice published Vue, a style magazine that ran six times within the paper, featur- ing an array of photographers better known for their gallery work than for fashion pictures, among them Nan Goldin, Larry Fink, William Wegman, Gilles Peress, and Philip-Lorca diCorcia. The visual side of Vue was spearheaded by Yolanda Cuomo, a graphic designer whose work would go on to encompass collaborations with Twyla Tharp as well as projects with the Richard Avedon and Diane Arbus estates. Cuomo was hand- picked to art-direct the magazine by the Voice’s fashion editor, Mary Peacock, who oversaw Vue. “My thing was, the Voice was about great writers,” recalls Cuomo. “And so I wanted [Vue] to be about great photography.” The magazine was shaped by Peacock’s playful, avant-garde approach to style. Peacock edited and sometimes wrote for the Voice’s weekly style section, “V.” In a column on jumpsuits, she referenced the front-zipping uniforms of George Orwell’s 1984, noting, “[When] it comes to sex, there’s nothing you can get out of faster than an outfit held together by only one zipper.” Her sensibil- Clockwise from top: Vue covers from April, August, May, and September 1986 ity shone through in Vue’s imagery, which mixed the aesthetic edge prioritized faces and featured a minimum of of Soho galleries with the anarchic whimsy of Pee-wee’s Playhouse. text. Art director Yolanda Cuomo says of her The preview issue, which ran 32 pages in the Voice’s November collaborators: “We were all part of a family.” 5, 1985, edition, was called View and combined one-off features COURTESY OF YOLANDA CUOMOYOLANDACOURTESYOF SPRING FASHION 17 February8 “We called people we love,” Cuomo remembers. For Goldin’s Russian-bathhouse shoot (immediate left), she says, “I was like, ‘Hi, Nan, do you want to do fashion?’ I – was scared shitless.” Richard Corman, who February201714, shot the dog series (at middle right), says of Vue, “It was trying to look at fashion from a diferent point of view. It kind of took it out of its ordinary element. Whether Wegman or Plachy or [whoever] was shooting, I was always surprised.” VILLAGE VOICE VILLAGE .com (like Fink’s black-and-white series covering a stylish evening at the Palladium nightclub) with what would become recurring ele- ments: “Storefront Couture,” profiles of new designers in the city; “Shop Till You Drop,” a shopping-guide primer on “NYC’s favorite sport”; and “Ask Sister Soignee,” a spin-off of Cynthia Heimel’s Problem Lady column, in which the author of books like Sex Tips for Girls fed dryly humorous advice to fashion-curious readers. (“Lurking beneath your correct prose I can sense a man quaking with anxiety,” Heimel wrote in response to a husband worried about a “strange device [he] found in [his] wife’s lingerie drawer.”) But much of the writing in Vue applied the Voice’s strength in cul- tural criticism to fashion. In “Why Clothes Are ‘Silly,’ ” Jeff Wein- stein — then the Voice’s art editor and restaurant critic — concluded: “Clothing is dangerous to treat seriously, because sex and pleasure have frightened the history of ideas for centuries.” Vue was born in part as a publishing mandate, Peacock says, to help bring in ad dollars. Nevertheless, she and Cuomo were left with complete editorial control. “Total freedom” is how Cuomo sums it up; adds Peacock, “It was very ambitious and arty, but it wasn’t ad-bait. Yolanda and I just went off the rails in terms of what [publishing] wanted.” Perhaps because of this independence, many who worked on Vue look back on the experience with fondness. Sylvia Plachy, the longtime Voice staff photographer, joyfully describes photo shoots she conducted with a near-total lack of oversight. “They left it up to me,” she recalls of “POOF! Your Skirt Is Full,” for which she photographed beskirted models in Brooklyn’s Cypress Hills Cemetery. “It was a very unusual way of doing fashion; the whole thing was quite freeing,” she says. “I could have made a whole style out of photographing fashion in cemeteries.” For “The Dish on Hats,” Plachy captured celebrated French actress Isabelle Huppert wearing a variety of toppers in a friend’s home on Central Park West. “No publicity people, no nothing,” Plachy COURTESY OF YOLANDA CUOMOYOLANDACOURTESYOF 18 SPRING FASHION “Working for Yolanda means working for yourself,” says Larry Fink, who shot the “Post- Turbanism” series (top right). “She lassoed us all and put us in this crazy fucking corral. We February201714, – got paid ten cents and a hot dog, [but] it wasn’t a question of money. It was absolutely up to my own creative expression.” William Wegman says of the dog-and-dot series (middle right), “It was pretty much a direct rip-of of my own work.” Wegman’s famed dog, Man Ray (seen on the February8 right page of “The Dot”), also appeared on the cover of the Voice’s January 4, 1983, issue. .com VILLAGE VOICE VILLAGE remembers. “With each hat, she became a different person. An actress is the best model, because they can become people.” For Richard Corman — famous for his portraits of Madonna, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and many others — the joy of Vue was Cuo- mo’s willingness to break barriers. “None of us were necessarily fashion photographers,” he says. “It just brought a different sensi- bility.” Given the directive to “do a story on shoes,” he got inven- tive. For “Investigations of a Dog,” he shot at sidewalk level and brought warmth and surprise to high-end footwear by including expressive canines in the frame. “I wanted this to be a piece that said something about New York, which was such a cre- ative carnival,” he says. A remarkable boldness can be found, too, in “Mas- culine/Feminine,” a series for which Goldin photo- graphed women, some preg- nant, wearing lingerie in the Russian and Turkish Baths on East 10th Street. “The publisher was like, ‘This is really controversial. I don’t know if we can run the Nan shoot,’ ” Cuomo recalls. “And I said, ‘Look, if the Voice can’t do controversy, who can?’ ” It ended up being a thrill, she says: “Even Howard Stern went on the radio and said how the portfolio was disgusting.” The risks taken with the striking photography and off-center design have given Vue a reputation that has outlasted its abbre- viated lifespan. “I don’t really care about fashion,” Cuomo ad- mits. “For me, it’s just a theater for the imagination. And that was what Vue was like.” “I was surprised that it stopped after just six issues,” Corman says, “but it makes those issues even more iconic and memora- ble.” And, he notes, nothing like other fashion magazines of the time. “There was nothing traditional about it, and I think that’s what was kind of great. In terms of the styling and the sensibil- ity, it feels 21st-century. I think, in some ways, today it’s more relevant than it ever was.” COURTESY OF YOLANDA CUOMOYOLANDACOURTESYOF 20 SPRING FASHION Shake Some Action February201714, – February8 .com VILLAGE VOICE VILLAGE Paul Kolnik/Courtesy NYCB Opening Ceremony sule, emblazoned with words like “Defy,” Beyond the capsule collection, Opening “Protest,” “Shout,” “Unite,” and “Fight.” Ceremony’s spring line, which is currently and Justin Peck team The dancers were also adorned with jeans, on sale via the see-now-buy-now-wear- overalls, and graphic hoodies that drew in- now model that the designers adopted last up for a Trump-era spiration from nineteenth-century photo- season, also featured collaborations with ballet of resistance graphs of immigrants arriving on Ellis Alpha, Ben Davis, Gitman Bros, Rains, and Island.