The Asylum by Simon Doonan Read Free Book Online Page B

early nineties. I remember it well. It was a where-were-you-when moment. I was there. I witnessed the deluge and lived to tell the tale.
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    THE STORY I am about to relate takes place long ago, before the arrival of the Bryant Park tents. Fashion designers were still showing their collections in their hot, stuffy, carpeted showrooms. Another option: if you didn’t have a large enough showroom then you went off-site. On this particular occasion, Michael Kors went off-site, off-Broadway and quite, for him and for the time, Euro avant-garde. He chose to show his collection in a crumbling industrial space.
    From my seat I can see Suzy and her sausage. They are seated next to Anna Wintour and her bob. I am parked in the second row on the retail side of the runway. As fate would have it, this second-row
placement
turned out to be a lifesaver . . . but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
    I am excited to see Michael’s collection. He had shared little tidbits of inspiration over the previous summer. Michael and I are beach neighbors in Fire Island Pines. He rents an oceanfront glam palace with loungers and tinkling glasses filled with Pimm’s. In keeping with his branding commitment to jet-set glamour, there are ramparts of thirsty white towels, heaps of squishy floor pillows, aerosol sunblockers and lashings of international fashion magazines.
    I am in an adjacent house, or rather I am under an adjacent house. My pal Steven Johanknecht—aka Chiclet—and I have snagged what might just be the deal of the century. For a negligible rent, we are beachfront and Kors adjacent. The only downside: We are in a single, stiflingly hot, windowless room in the basement. The décor? Ours looks like the kind of place where a serial killer would keep his victims before murdering and flaying them. A black vinyl foldout couch and a wall of gold-veined mirror tiles provide the only decorative flourishes. Ike Turner meets Sid Vicious. In no time we learn to unpeel each other from the couch. This action is accompanied by a comforting coming-unstuck sound. While Michael is rocking jet-set glamour, we are within shrieking distance and living in a sub-trailer-park hovel. I would call it “grunge” except grunge has not yet been invented. So I will just go with “gnarly.”
    For obvious reasons, we spend a great deal of time chez Kors, lolling on the massive architectural deck and gossiping with the always entertaining MK. Like Chiclet and me, Michael loves to dissect the sociology and anthropology of the strange time warp that is Fire Island Pines. In many regards, nothing has changed since the disco seventies. One feels as if one is about to be photographed for a cheesy spread in
After Dark
magazine. Old-school queens in caftans waft down the teensy boardwalk clutching a cocktail in one hand and a poodle in the other. The music at the Pavilion’s tea dance is a decade old and straight out of the cliché end of the Studio 54 disco canon. We find this to be pathos drenched but also rather delightful.
    Among Michael’s disco faves is a classic titled “Use It Up and Wear It Out” by Odyssey. The chorus may well be familiar to readers
d’un certain âge.
    â€œOne two three . . . shake your body down.”
    So enamored is Michael of this smokin’ hot dance ditty of yesteryear that he elected to incorporate it into the soundtrack of his upcoming show.
    Which brings us back to the gritty space and Suzy’s
saucisson
.
    So there I am, perched in my second-row seat, jonesing, not just for the clothes but also for the soundtrack. The show begins and, sure enough, in no time at all we hit the opening bars of “Use It Up and Wear It Out.” It is undeniably catchy. The throbbing music gets Suzy’s toe tapping. I swear I can see her luscious hair-roll pulsing in time to the music.
    Out walks Gauguin-esque beauty Anna Bayle. At