The Asylum (18 page)

I am happy to say that I was barraged with sarcasm during my formative years. My teachers specialized in subtle-but-withering verbal assaults. Many incidents spring to mind. After jackhammering my way through an entire page of
Ulysses
in a robotic monotone—how was I supposed to know that James Joyce expected the reader to insert the lilts, pauses and commas intuitively?—my English teacher announced that he was overcome by the “sensitivity” of my reading and would need to “nip out for a fag” in order to compose himself. While the entire class roared with laughter, I flinched and cringed. But I eventually recovered. Better to be verbally humiliated than whacked upside the head, an outcome which was also on offer.

My home life was equally sarco enriched and sincerity free. I was raised by two members of what Tom Brokaw called the “Greatest Generation” and what I call the “Greatest Sarcastic Generation.” When I began to embrace the satins and velvets of glam rock, my parents began pointedly tracking the movements of local traveling circuses and keeping me posted on their whereabouts.

Pops and Mamma saved their best sarcasm for each other, often after drinking vats of homemade sloe gin. Like many dudes of his generation, my dad had a tendency to treat his kids, the fruit of his loins, like some random encumbrance which fate had dumped upon him. My mum was quick to nip this line of thinking in the bud with a little liquor-fueled faux gratitude. “It really was so good of you to take me in off the street, especially with these two children in tow. Have I ever thanked you formally?”

If you were raised amid sarcasm, as opposed to sincerity, you have no choice but to seek out kindred spirits. It's a tribal thing. If you attempt to consort with sincere types, it can only end in mayhem and bloodshed, metaphorically, of course. I knew my Jonny was the one for me when I met his lovely old dad. When I announced my intention to take Jonny white-water rafting, Dad-in-law responded by deadpanning, “Where do you both wish to be buried?”

Sustaining a healthy sarcasm-based relationship is no easy matter and requires effort and creativity. I am fortunate to be married to somebody who is always prepared to go the distance. A couple of months back my Jonny presented me with a greeting card. Naturally, I smelled a rat. He had never given me a card before. Why now? And why was he watching me with such sincere anticipation?

My suspicions were confirmed when I opened the envelope. The inscription, emblazoned across a mumsy floral vista à la Thomas Kinkade, began as follows:

I know how trapped you must feel

In that traitor of a body of yours . . .

I don't recall the rest of the verse. I know that it contained sympathetic commiserations regarding the imprisoning effects of the aforementioned body. I had to admire his ingenuity: repurposing a sincere sympathy card into a lacerating insult—without changing a thing—is an impressive feat of sarcasm.

Delivered via e-mail, Jonny's assault would have lost much of its lethal malevolence. Maybe that's why Karl got so much shit for his remark about Adele. If it had been delivered in person, he could have added a little sarcastic je ne sais quoi
.

Bonjour
, Adele! Your smartest move would have been to respond to Karl with a bitchy bon mot or two. Given that Karl's comment was fairly straightforward and sarcasm free, you could easily have upstaged him with something really wicked. Just to get your juices going, here is an inspirational example of a Karl slag-off, penned by Barry Humphries—yes, coincidentally, Dame Edna again!—in a recent issue of the
Spectator
:

“It is hard not to pick up a periodical without seeing a picture of Karl Lagerfeld, surely one of the most absurd-looking people on the planet, rivaled only by Colonel Gaddafi and Donald Trump. Herr Lagerfeld is probably a very good dress designer, especially compared with Colonel Gaddafi . . .”

I have no idea if Herr Lagerfeld ever clocked this little gem of a comment. Were he to have read it, I suspect he would have had a good laugh behind his fan, metaphorically of course, since he no longer carries one.

In order to hit the spot and rise above the level of mere insult, sarcasm needs this kind of Wildean panache. Here, for your delectation and inspiration, is one final example of haute couture dissing: Once upon a time, the great Harold Pinter left his
très
chic
actress wife, Vivien Merchant, for the aristocratic authoress and grande dame of British letters, Lady Antonia Fraser. His action caused a scandal of epic proportions. One fine day the press knocked on Viv's door and asked her for a comment about Harold's hasty departure sans
wardrobe. La Merchant's sarcastic response gave us Brits a good chuckle.

“Harold didn't need to take a change of shoes,” declared the petite thespian, adding, “He can always wear Antonia's. She has very big feet, you know.”

Cue the sound of rending flesh.

MY ENTIRE BODY
was convulsed with racking sobs. There I was, in a public place, a middle-aged dude, openly bawling my eyes out in front of a complete stranger. I was beyond the valley of the
fashion verklempt
.

Not long ago and out of the blue, a CNN journalist invited me out to lunch. She wanted to pick my brain and see if I could help her figure out some pithy way of covering Fashion Week. Her goal was to add a little gravitas to their style-oriented programming. In no time at all, we realized that this was an absurd notion and abandoned it.

During the course of our subsequent meandering conversation, it emerged that we had both lived in Los Angeles for extended periods. She had gone to college there in the early 2000s and I had lived there during the late seventies and early eighties when, as I explained to the young lady, life was freaky, funky and fun. The live-music scene was insane: for ten bucks you could hit the Whisky or the Roxy any night of the week and enjoy the delights of Joy Division, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Nina Hagen or the Cramps or the Psychedelic Furs. You could snag a beat-up car with fins for $500 and an apartment off Hollywood Boulevard for $100 a month.

“Wow. That must have been fabulous.”

“Yes, it was totally
amazing
 . . . and then it wasn't.”

“What happened?”

“All my friends died.”

Suddenly, I became overwhelmed with sadness.

That tends to be the way it works. I go for years thinking I have come to terms with that dark and horrible period, and then all of a sudden I access the trauma of the AIDS holocaust, and the tears start to fall.

•   •   •

IN 1982 I TOOK
my boyfriend to the doctor.

“It's just an ingrown hair,” I said, pointing to the purple mark on his neck.

The doctor had a different diagnosis.

“You have AIDS,” he said.

“Can you give my friend a referral to a specialist?” I asked.

“There are no specialists. There is no referral. Are you guys religious?”

Within two years, my pal was dead, and so were many of my other friends, ex-boyfriends and colleagues. To date, more than 600,000 people have died of AIDS in the United States alone.

Thirty years ago, when AIDS arrived, it hit the fashion industry—my people—like a sledgehammer. Readers
d'un certain âge
will recall how bleak and ghastly it was. Like me, you can only remember those dark days with a mixture of horror and sadness.

To those of you who were not around, I can only say this: You have no idea how lucky you are.

One after another, the brightest and boldest succumbed to this horrifying disease. Our creative pals—some famous, some infamous, most unknown and just starting to hit their stride—perished after being unwittingly infected by the disease of the century. Many died agonizing deaths in the hallways of hospitals without hope or familial support. Back then, in the early days, AIDS really was just like a medieval plague. “Who is next?” was the question on all our lips.

Patrick Kelly, Angel Estrada, Isaia, Adrian Cartmell, Clovis Ruffin, Halston and so many more. AIDS decimated a broad spectrum of the fashion universe. Antonio Lopez and Juan Ramos, Tina Chow, Robert Rose, Peter Lester, Tim Hawkins, Sergio Galeotti, Robert Hayes and Laughlin Barker.

Photographers too: David Seidner, Barry McKinley, Tony Viramontes, Herb Ritts, Bill King, Steven Arnold, Stevie Hughes, Kenneth McGowan and Doug Coder.

And so many of my window-dresser pals: Bob Currie, Michael Cipriano, Cliff Murphy, Colin Burch, Bob Benzio, Stephen Di Petrie, Talmadge the one-namer, and so many more.

These names are just the tip of the iceberg. I cannot list everyone. This book would turn into
War and Peace
.

At the height of this dark and horrible period, I recall visiting a sick friend named Jeffrey Herman. He was a model turned photographer who had just begun to receive some recognition for his pictures. When he fell ill, his life, his hopes, his creativity and his dreams all screeched to a halt.

During Jeffrey's agonizing last days, he expressed a very pessimistic conviction.

“This is the end. We were all headed toward oblivion. Nobody will remember us. We will evaporate. We are dust. We are the lost generation.”

I often think about what Jeffrey said and sometimes I wonder if he might not have been correct. Fashion is ephemeral by nature. Today's peacock is tomorrow's feather duster. Fashion is about what's next. What's next? What's next? What's next?

And now that the fashion industry has become this massive, ever-expanding juggernaut, now that we have the twenty-four-hour madness and fabulousness of Internet bloggings and tweetings, now that we have all this distracting meshugaas, it is conceivable that we might forget all the great and talented people who kicked the bucket.

When AIDS struck, the fashion world rallied as never before: Kenneth Cole, Anna Wintour, Donna Karan and Ralph Lauren all did their bit, as did Barneys. I am proud to say we hosted the first retail AIDS fund-raiser at our Seventeenth Street store in the mid-eighties. The philanthropic effort was unprecedented. And the effort continues.

But fund-raising is one thing, and remembrance is another.

When I saw how beautifully the victims of 9/11 were memorialized, I could not help but think also of my fallen heroes. I thought of the bright lights of fashion who were cruelly snuffed out in the 1980s.

And I thought about how important it is for us to keep the flame burning for our friends who slipped away from us over a quarter of a century ago, not just for ourselves, but also for the upcoming generation, many of whom were not even born in 1981.

Upcoming generations need to know that Perry Ellis was a real person, not just a brand name, a beautiful, generous man with long hair and a uniquely poetic vision.

They should know that Moschino is not just a made-up name on a label in the neck of a random frock. Franco Moschino was a true innovator, an Italian surrealist with a wicked wit.

We need to share our memories of talented and inspirational eccentrics like Klaus Nomi, Tommy Rubnitz, Leigh Bowery, Way Bandy and Ricky Wilson of the B-52s. And we need to share the magic and the bravado and the positivity of great fashion designers like Willi Smith.

So let's prove Jeffrey wrong.

Let's know our fashion history and always speak their names and pass on their passion and their legacy.

•   •   •

ENOUGH SOMBER THOUGHTS.
Fashion is supposed to be a place of transformation, creativity and joy. Let's end on a positive note.

When it came time to scatter Jeffrey's ashes, I took a portion of them to a windy hilltop near Santa Fe. Like so many fashion people, Jeffrey had a woo-woo side and this was one of his favorite meditation spots. When I reached the summit, I tore open the large FedEx envelope and up-ended it. The ashes all blew back in my direction, frosting my carefully chosen ensemble. This would have amused Jeffrey to no end.

Meanwhile in Rome . . .

Actress Kelly Lynch, a pal of Jeffrey's since her modeling days, took her designated envelope of ashes to the Eternal City. Did she dump them in the Trevi Fountain? Did she sprinkle them from the top of the Colosseum? Did she snort them à la Keith Richards? Hell no.

At the dénouement of the Valentino fashion show, Kelly leapt from her front-row seat and tossed her ash stash onto the runway. Adjacent fashionistas were perplexed. Kelly continued scattering regardless. She knew that this is exactly what Jeffrey would have wanted.

Or was it?

Remembering Jeffrey, with his wicked sense of humor, I think he might well have relished the spectacle of Kelly, the antiheroine of
Drugstore Cowboy
, disposing of his ashes à la Richards.

WITH TREMENDOUS RELUCTANCE,
I dragged myself out of bed, inserted my eighteenth-century wooden dentures, powdered and deloused my Louis wig, hoisted my lorgnettes in the general direction of my puffy and rheumy eyes and clicked on the TV to watch Kate and Wills tie the knot.

Why the resentful grumpiness and general lack of rejoicing?

Okay, I admit it, I was irate, but with good reason.

Despite being eminently qualified—overqualified, some might say—I had failed to score a lucrative network TV wedding-commentator gig. I saw myself as a shoo-in for a weeklong babble fest of piercing insights and romantic royal speculations. If not me, then who? After all, I am both a Brit
and
a queen. Hello!

Yes, I know it sounds tragic, but I actually wanted to be a Royal Watcher. Just for a week. Is that too much to ask?

I have always had a sneaking admiration for those Royal Watchers—Andrew Morton, Jessica Jayne et al—and their ability to generate endless, speculative, hagiographical poop about the Brit monarchy.

And they make so much money! All the Royal Watchers seem to live in foncy houses, leading me to believe that there is untold wealth to be made in this profession. All you have to do is be smug and effusive and not worry about the fact that, while the Royals are waving to the unwashed masses, you, the Royal Watcher, are waving good-bye to any professional or writerly cred.

When the marriage of Wills and Kate was announced, I braced myself for a deluge of offers. I sat by the phone for days, wearing more tan-fastic maquillage than Bill O'Reilly.

But the phone never rang.

It all seemed so unfair. I was born the year of the coronation. I have watched every royal wedding since the fifties. I sat on the living-room couch staring at the TV while my crazy grandmother stood at attention and waved her hankie at the screen. Don't mock. It's called respect.

And I have a unique perspective on the Royals. I had been accumulating “little-known facts” for years. Did you know, for example, that when Sparky the corgi died, the queen grabbed a shovel and buried him herself on a dark, rain-lashed night? Did you also know that the Queen Mum used to empty her colostomy bag off the balcony at Clarence House and that, as a result, the roses grew abundantly and enthusiastically in this particular location?

I could have peppered my TV coverage with all these texture-adding anecdotes. But no . . .

As the wedding procession began, my mood began to lighten. My wrath dissipated and I got lost in the exquisite pageantry of it all. As I watched Kate Middleton in her Sarah-Burton-for-the-house-of-Alexander-McQueen frock, I found myself moving from rage to melancholia, and not because of the frock, Au contraire! I thought Sarah did a fabulous job. The Elizabethan silhouette—flat and narrow and then exploding majestically from the waist—perfectly suited Kate's tall, skinny body. (This particular style is not for everyone. It would, for example, have turned a shorter bride into a hideous Velázquez dwarf infanta, but on Kate it was pure poetry.)

Yes, the frock was a ten. It was hard to imagine Mr. McQueen doing a better job. As the ceremony progressed, I found myself thinking more and more about the talented and brilliant bloke whose name was on the label. As the music soared, a montage of McQueen memories began to cascade.

Attending an Alexander McQueen fashion show was like taking a stroll through a fashion Fallujah. There was always this magnificent sense of impending catastrophe. Would the gals get electrocuted as they sloshed through all that water? How will the models, in their
Blade Runner
–inspired, condom-tight dresses, navigate those treacherous glass stairs? Answer: They won't. Oops! There goes another one.

I remember one show in particular. The location was a functioning Parisian abattoir. Upon arrival at this house of death, the nostrils of the international fashionrati were assaulted by the unmistakable odor of decaying flesh and animal feces. I noticed some futile last-minute attempts to contend with this problem: PR gals ran back and forth squirting fragrance atomizers. However, no amount of perfume or Diptyque candles could have made a dent in that all-pervading stench.

The scary-but-fabulous Béatrice Dalle—remember her from the eighties culty movie
Betty Blue
?—sat uncomplainingly in the front row wearing a McQueen bondage dress and an insane thatched wig. It looked as if an English country cottage had landed on her head—in a good way.

The show began. Wearing skintight bondage and leopard-print dresses and sporting wigs like Mademoiselle Dalle's (clearly she was the season's muse and nipped backstage before the show for a little avant-garde coiffure), the gals careened and staggered across the shit-glazed cobblestones.

Many fell. Some clung to the ancient columns of the abattoir for support. Many heels snapped off. Shoes were discarded. It was the perfect McQueen moment: blood, poo, mayhem, carnage and glamour.

Misogynist?

Models can totally handle the McQueen treatment. They are sixteen and fearless and full of champagne. They are having a blast. Besides, Mr. McQueen's short life was more about torturing himself than inflicting pain on highly paid runway chippies.

Alexander McQueen's oeuvre was always informed by the discipline and structure of his early Savile Row tailoring apprenticeship. In the mid-nineties he famously tailored a fantastic coat for David Bowie's
Earthling
tour. The particular design said so much about Alexander. It was a historical garment—sort of like an old footman's coat—cut from a sacred symbol, the flag of the British Empire. Upon completion, Mr. McQueen assaulted it, flung lighter fluid at it and set fire to large chunks of it.

After his tour had finished, Mr. Bowie kindly loaned me this distressed coat-of-many-slashes for a Brit-themed Barneys window. The year was 1997—the zenith of that whole Cool Britannia moment—and this particular display was packed with eccentric tchotchkes evoking the land of my birth.

The back wall of the window consisted of a portrait gallery titled “The Great Queens of England.” Victoria and Elizabeths I and II all rubbed shoulders with Boy George, Quentin Crisp, Oscar Wilde, John Galliano and Alexander McQueen.

I felt strongly that Alexander deserved to be part of this group, especially since his Bowie coat was dominating the display. Even though Alexander was the new kid on the block, he had already established himself as an influential provocateur in the tradition of Vivienne Westwood. He had invented, among other things, the “bumster” pant, which ultimately spawned the ubiquitous buttcrack jean. I had never met him but assumed he was as bold and ballsy as his creativity would suggest.

Alexander happened to make a trip to New York at the time the window was installed. He was not yet thirty. I ran into him at an event, which he attended with his beloved mum, Joyce, on his arm. (Her death, three days before his, is viewed by many as the main trigger for his suicide. Other writers suggested that he always wrestled with suicidal thoughts, but that he had waited till Mum went first.)

I introduced myself and asked him if he had seen the window. Knowing that he was an East End working-class lad, the son of a taxi driver, I expected a little cheeky badinage, a cocky Cockney riposte. Alexander surprised me by quietly voicing genuine concern that, as happy as he was to see his coat on display, he had recently lost some weight and the portrait I had used made him look fatter than he was. He looked genuinely hurt.

Instead of a bold, gay, punk-rock provocateur, I saw the vulnerable kid, the self-described “pink sheep” of his family, the lad who had been bullied at school and called McQueer.

A few years after the tubby portrait, a slimmed-down Alexander was scheduled to travel once more to New York to relaunch his menswear collection. McQueen menswear had, up to this point, always been a bit of problem. Initial attempts were bold, flamboyant and a tad too costumey for American dudes. Other than Bowie, it's hard to imagine who would need a floor-length glen-plaid Edwardian coat with a chrysanthemum embroidered on the back. It was also hard to imagine Alexander himself wearing it. He always seemed to dress like a London wide boy, with his shaved head, trainers, Fred Perry, etc.

At Barneys we were excited about the newly revamped men's collection and anxious to have Alexander host a launch event at the store. In preparation for the party, we had a meeting with a McQueen PR operative. This is when the famous phrase was spoken which was to reverberate through the halls of Barneys corporate office for many years.

“Alexander will need a room . . . a room where he can do his drugs.”

Sounding a bit like Lady Bracknell—“Drugs?” “A room?”—we expressed our discomfort with this request and pointed out the illegality thereof. Sorry, but we simply could not oblige. PS: Are you people out of your minds?

The party date arrived and Alexander was a no-show. This ended up being less of a catastrophe than one would imagine. If any guest asked me where he was, I just kept saying, “Oh! He's here somewhere. Maybe he nipped to the loo . . .”

While Alexander was MIA, his clothing was not. The new men's collection, though still edgy, was much more wearable. Alexander got better at everything he did, except looking after his own mental health. Clearly that was beyond his control. There is no doubt that, had he lived, he would have gone on to become a titan of twenty-first-century design.

His suicide leaves us all, his adoring fans, clutching at straws and theorizing and burbling and speculating like a bunch of frenzied Royal Watchers. We want to know why. With international success, a groovy pad in Mayfair and an assured place in the eternal fashion pantheon, why did he kill himself?

People kill themselves for lots of different reasons. My uncle Dave was driven to suicide by fear. He swallowed a handful of my auntie's pills to escape a bunch of gangsters—coincidentally, these were blokes from Alexander's area of London—who were coming to collect their debts. Uncle Dave knew they would chop his nuts off when they found out he was flat broke. So he did the job for them.

My grandfather—not the toothless Irish one, the other one—also killed himself. His circumstances might have been more akin to Alexander's. An astrologer by trade, he was a sensitive bloke who suffered from unrelenting depression. One day he got his hands on a gun and ended it all. He felt he had no alternative.

I'm not sure why Alexander never showed up at Barneys. Let's cut him a little retroactive slack and assume it was a scheduling conflict as opposed to a disinclination to attend an event where there was no designated room to toot.

I have a theory about Mr. McQueen. Growing up gay in working-class Britain, regardless of how loving your immediate family might be, is no bloody picnic. I was fortunate to escape to a land where it's okay to go to a psychotherapist and attempt to unravel your early traumas. Introspection and psychotherapy are not part of British culture. Alexander used his work to exorcize his demons and for a while it worked. Then it wasn't enough.

The fact that Alexander became so successful did nothing to diminish his torments. It merely increased them. The more successful he got, the bigger the dissonance between who he was—rich, creative, living up West and creating chiffon magic for rich women—and who his butch, gritty East End, Fred Perry–wearing roots said that he should be. No amount of drugs or booze could ease the conflict and the pain.

In addition to all the gay stuff, Alexander's psyche was further tormented by the British class system. He was drawn to the pageantry and the toffs (aristo Isabella Blow, who also committed suicide, was his muse), but he was repelled and enraged by their assumed superiority. While finishing up a bespoke jacket for Prince Charles, he allegedly stitched a label that read
I'M A CUNT
into the lining.

Et voilà! A young bloke compelled to leave the macho of the East End for the safety and magic of the effete fashion milieu, living it, loving it, ashamed of it and loathing it all at the same time. The creative rage, soaring imagination and intense curiosity that Mr. McQueen exhibited throughout his career were functions of all these painful contradictions.

Drugs. Drugs. Drugs. The fashion world has no shortage of booze and dope. Drugs were part of the picture. But they were not the cause of his suicide. He used them to escape his feelings of guilt, shame and despair. To my amateur Freudian gaze, his suicide by hanging reads like an act of self-administered capital punishment, a punishment for crimes that the complex, sensitive, lovely lad never committed in the first place.

Watching fashion shows today, I always find myself thinking about Alexander McQueen. I miss his explosive creativity. Where are the torment and the drama today? They are simply not there. The comfy self-acceptance currently enjoyed by today's emerging designers does not produce that kind of fabulous madness. Designers today are too happy and too well adjusted to produce great art. I am happy that they are happy, but I cannot help missing the blood and the mayhem and the rage and the broken heels.