the imagist has been becoming too much of a formula for me recently so I decided to look for a new challenge in writing. The only thing I can think of that is grueling but rewarding was long form prose. So here's the first excerpt from a burgeoning attempt to "fictionalize" some of my adventures in fashion. The following is an introduction to a seminal figure I met very early on when I first ventured into the business.
My maecenas, The Maven - to put it in her odd and reverse diction - was offering me this very old Stephen Sprouse coat.
“Vintage, ” she insisted “ From the S line which was downstairs in the 99 Wooster Street Store. The better things in the hundreds you'd find on the second floor and for that you got the double S ... and the gorgeous white blazers with the "God Save New York" graffiti and those brilliant safety pin jackets were all on the couture third floor. Full name! This, I think is SS . Yes it is , " she says, consulting the label at my nape.
Except this here particular Sprouse coat was made of a nubbly black fake fur better suited to an oversize teddy bear in FAO Schwartz
"I look like a pimp." I whined
"But a pimp with provenance. I got that from Slyvia Miles who bought it for Richard Gere."
"Funny how it ain't in Richard Gere's possession right now," I frowned
"Trust me, a vintage Sprouse is a good find. You'll thank me one day."
One far away day, I thought looking at my own self with complete suspicion. Shudder to think what the brothers on Nostrand were to do with me if I were to cross their path on some fateful night in this thing .Well I'll just have to not take shortcuts. Or the subway.
Her kindness was calculated to lessen the degree of embarrassment my lingering dedication to the grunge aesthetic may have brought her. And so she's given me in the past three years, everything from piles of beautifully cut double breasted coats that she made me wear over incredible plush Marc Jacobs cashmere sweaters. Then there were the suits custom made for her ex-husband, 20 pounds heavier than me but still...who was I to argue with a Huntsman and Row castoff. And it's true, in the years later I came to understand the true value of what she was giving me.
I called her "The Maven" , but her real name is Louisa Schiano, English born with Italian lineage, which she often times like to hint “went back ” though that's always a very easy thing to say, if not prove. Her time spent consorting with a melange of Latin drag queens in Escuelita and her minor key aristopals at Cipriani had corrupted her good middle class English diction into something schizophrenic. It was all the more entertaining for it. Its not so much that she had melded a myriad of linguistic styles into one, it's that she hop-scotched from one idiom to another, tangling slangs and tones and accents in a haphazard conversational spray. It was like listening to Anita Pallenberg in one of her drug addled free association drifts in "Performance" (Louisa's all time favorite film)
The same thing held for her styling,which could be just as addled as her speech. Showrooms might have admonished her upon penalty of blacklisting that she was not to mix designers but head to toe was anathema to her. In fact quite often the clothes would go out the window. We had met when she was styling a gig for Ike Ude's then fledgling magazine, aRUDE and I was the talent . She was very much Ike's friend long before she took me up. (Of course after she took up with me, the friendship with Ike quickly devolved into behind-the-back sniping and scurrulous rumors on his part, all of which only made me more interesting to her. Paulo was the photographer in question, and the next thing I knew Maven and Ike decided the clothes could not work and I was to do the shoot nude except for his body paint and some ready mades on her part.
"How Haring," I thought and said as much which led Ike to give me this long and stern lecture as to why body painting much more belonged to a Nigerian artist than it could ever to Kieth Haring via Bill T Jones. So I shut my mouth and turned my face to the seamless like a dunce in his punishment corner while they painted and snapped and stroked and tickled my then barely post-adolescent body. The Maven concocted a necklace made of gold safety pins and empty thread spools, chicken bones and rusty old keys that brought thoughts of tetanus to mind. Paulo sat back laughing at the silent duel as Ike applied yet more gold paint to and The Maven adjusted the thin cord around my waist, all to the endless loop of "Slave To The Rhythm" in the background.
8 hours later The Maven and I were pals particularly because I didn't bother to dress but slouched around comfortably naked while they changed film and ate lunch and discussed looks and consulted storyboards. After all that champagne my shyness about my thin build had ended and my long long career as an exhibitionist was off to a roaring start.
The best thing about The Maven in those early days was that she knew everything about everybody. How she could hold such a vast body of knowledge always led me to speculate about her age, which could be mid 40's though there were those who were pushing her chronological all the way up to 60. I told her about my travails with Claudia and of course she had information to impart.
“We love Claudia so but she's like the original automatic model. No matter what, there was nothing they could do to get the fraulein out of her at Chanel. Clomp Clomp Clomp. But its not her fault that she's never had any life experiences”
“I would say months of group hugs with the Wu Tang and love scenes with Allen Houston might give a fraulein some life experience.”
"Perhaps but I'm sure it was all an out of body for her. Did you ever hear about the showdown between her and Amanada Lear?"
"Amanda Lear?"
"Sex change 70's scene queen. Anyway we're at a very nice book party at Claridge's... Claudia to Amanda “I just read your book. Its wonderful. Who wrote it for you? Amanda to Claudia “ You bought my book! How wonderful darling. Who read it for you?”
"Was there hair pulling?"
"Not really . Just a lot of turning on the heels and tossing of blonde extensions"
"Wow..".was all I could muster picturing the showdown between mannequin and manque
"Yes I know. They did keep the entertainment going."
And that may have been Maven's crucible. I would see her at New York Fashion Week slumped front row after front row in her battered old Chanel motorcycle boots and massive black wraparounds in a style later to be made popular by U2's Bono, sulking without reservation at the beige parade marching past her.)
The new corporate order than ruled fashion bewildered her and very visibly so. This was not what she had signed on for. But how she loved a salon de refuse, especially when it was more refuse than salon . Anywhere she ought not to be was where she was front and center. She was there in a dusty East Village Legion Hall, when the last model came striding out for Miguel Androver in Quinten Crisps dusty mattress ticking redone as a coat. Via her tour of duty in Androver's showroom, she came back with the first reports of the epicene beauty of the Dominican androgyne Omahyra Mota and when British Vogue wouldn't touch the proposition, our Maven high tailed the concept over to Helmut Newton who of course got it at first glance for German Vogue.
She was the first to abandon Helmut Lang in lieu of Nicholas Ghesquiere even when his oevure for Balenciaga consisted mainly of those dubious oversize sweaters with kitsch prints of German shephards on the front. But she saw the future in them which makes her a genius in the eyes of her contemporaries.
She liked nothing appropriate. The only Prada she ever approved of was the bat cape collection with the short lived Spanish sensation Elenora in first exit and her favorite Gucci campaign ever was the coffin series lensed by Inez and Vinoodh and cast with a slightly plump Kate.
“I much prefer Kate plump , " she would growl, when the English icon tottered past in black jeans and ballet flats through the lobby of The Mercer. I believe The Maven still has that Pyrex breastplate from the Betty Catroux tribute debut Tom Ford YSL collection on a sideboard in her living room. She was a troubled woman and that was stirring to me
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