Lightning in a Bottle

I took Thom to see Studio 54: Night Magic at the Brooklyn Museum for his birthday.  Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager caught "lightning in a bottle" when the doors opened in 1977.

 All the galleries featured disco fashion.

How's this Stephen Burrows motif for iconic 70s design?

This Zandra Rhodes outfit reminds me of a great Tove Lo song:  "Disco Tits."

Liz Taylor danced in these shoes.

YSL held the launch party for "Opium," a fragrance, at Studio.  Cocaine would have been more apt.

Regular Richard Gallo turned fashion into performance art by remaining motionless on the dance floor, an object to be seen and desired.

Trust me, despite what's been said ("If you can remember it, you weren't there."), standing still wasn't an option for most clubbers.

Who can forget the photo of Bianca Jagger astride a white horse on the dance floor?  But Grace Jones is actually a much better avatar of the era's anything goes zeitgeist.  Her tank top nods to "Le Jardin," a mostly gay club where I danced to "Rock the Boat" by the Hughes Corporation with friends while still in college (and the closet). 

Jones gave some "really big shews" at the former site of the Ed Sullivan Theater. 

That's a gun she's holding!

VIPs were an integral part of Studio's mystique, an aspect commemorated by Andy Warhol in a silkscreen and one of the many invitations he received.

The club even attracted politicos like Bella Abzug who celebrated her 57th birthday at the club.  Gal pals included Shirley MacLaine

. . . and Gloria Steinem.  Watch "The Glorias" on Amazon and you'll see why I think she deserves the Nobel Peace Prize.

But models like Jerry Hall got the most ink.  Hard to believe she's now married to Rupert Murdoch.

I got the biggest kick out of the celebrity ephemera, like the opening night guest list.  

Where have you ever seen a celebrity juxtaposition quite like this?

The bare-chested bartenders and busboys were BEYOND.  More than four decades later I still recall the busboys' silk gym shorts.

An odd section of the exhibit memorializes AIDS casualties who were affiliated with the club, including Steve Rubell.  He once complimented a jacket I was wearing.

Here are Steve & Andy in the Pines, in front of Calvin Klein's beachfront home.

Some Roy Cohn ephemera in the same section made me wonder if his buddy Donald ever patronized the club.  If so, he wasn't cool enough to get his picture taken or maybe the exhibit's curators decided to treat him like a Confederate statue.

Antonio Lopez: Future Funk Fashion

Antonio Lopez, a Puerto Rican illustrator whose distinctive style I recalled from Interview magazine, lured me to El Museo del Barrio for the first time.

The curators call the exhibition "Future Funk Fashion" but "Transfusion" might have been better name.  Lopez and Juan Ramos, his lover and creative partner, brought some color to the very white fashion world of the 80s. They signed their joint work "Antonio."

Pat Cleveland, one of the first successful African American models, hung with them.  I once rode a ferry with her to Super Paradise in Mykonos after graduating from Columbia.

Lopez went to FIT with Gerard Malanga, Andy Warhol's first boyfriend.  They're both pictured in the same yearbook spread, included in the exhibit.  A couple of Andy portraits in the show suggest Antonio had some ambivalence about their eventual boss at Interview. Dollar signs and crosses define Andy as much as his silkscreens, but what does that screw at the top represent?

Here, they mash up Andy with Grace Jones.

Antonio adored divas like Carmen Miranda, Josephine Baker and Miss Diana Ross.

Like Andy, they had a thing for heels.

Matisse, break dancing and Tom of Finland influenced the way Antonio depicted men.

AIDS killed Lopez in 1987, and Ramos eight years later.