The opening of the show was a video. Michael Economy, the illustrator who did all the Deee-Lite album covers, illustrated every model, it was like the opening credits of a TV show. This collection was called “Fair.” I lived between New York and Texas, and our factory was in Dallas. The Texas State Fair was on for three weeks and I would go so many times! Between the people and the incredible art deco extravaganza that it was, I just loved how charismatic it felt. The feeling of the fair is what fueled this collection, but like everything I ever did, it was really just a large collection of ideas that somehow I could get to mingle.
We had started a few years before this, and it was going very well, but it was still hard to get fabrics custom made. This was the first season I got to work with real mills that were willing to cooperate with us. We found this English tie manufacturer that had been around making school boys’ ties for a century—that’s all those silk jacquards you see in the collection. It was also the first season I started understanding the beading and embroidery possibilities. Many of our materials were unfathomable! We were using 300 year old lockrosens and 200 year old gold bullions that had oxidized. I got a whole new toolbox for this show.
Everything was so intricate. I know it looks kind of simple, but there are things like the shirt Veronica [Webb, look 17] is wearing, that were two layers of black silk organza and we had harlequin faggot-stitching done to bond the two layers, and then one layer was hand-trimmed out so that it became more transparent. The levels of insanity of manufacturing were just nuts. This was also the first season we showed panties as reasonable outside clothing. Just about every single female singer performs in underpants now [laughs], but this actually looked kind of startling at the time.
We always landed a spaceship at fashion week. We somehow managed to be proximate to trends, but we always were off on our own thing. My personal taste is very plain, so it was interesting working with design when your personal taste is narrow. I was never that daring with the form, more so than in the execution and the proportions. There’s a practicality to the shapes that allowed me to be really experimental and still have it land as an object that you could recognize. That piece on Tyra [Banks, look 29] is just a button-up shirt, but we printed the harlequin pattern on silk charmeuse, which was very popular at the time with all those executive ladies. We printed it on the backside [of the fabric], so the shiny, slinky part was against your skin. I always designed for the wearer, you never saw that unless it was yours. This is all pre-digital, a computer never touched anything I ever did.
Oh, and the models! Billy [Beyond, look 22] is still one of my dearest friends. I first became aware of Billy as a model when David LaChappelle shot him for Interview [in 1985]. When it was time to do the shows, there was never a doubt to have him. I wanted the model that mesmerized me, it just happened to be a guy, there was no political statement. He was exactly the same size as Christy [Turlington]. Here he’s walking with Diane Dewitt. During this time period, every single store you went into had a mannequin that looked just like Diane, she was a megastar all through the 1980s. We would coax models that were having quiet moments or retired, and Diane was one of them. Tyra, Christie, these girls all were complete originals.
Our music was also killer, we debuted all kinds of music. My friend Monica was the president of Tommy Boy records. Tommy Boy was Queen Latifah, Naughty By Nature, and all those people. The first time anyone heard “Supermodel” by RuPaul was on this runway.
