I skipped the much-publicized opening of “Antonio Lopez,” the retrospective at the Suzanne Geiss Company, in Manhattan this week. Skipped the party celebrating the publication of Rizzoli’s great book, Antonio Lopez: Fashion, Art, Sex and Disco, as well as an elegant dinner at La Grenouille the night Geiss opened the first major retrospective of this great virtuoso fashion genius. I was, quite frankly, preoccupied with the Democratic National Convention on TV. I finally did view the show—alone and on a day when there were no mad traffic jams in SoHo—this past Saturday, the third day of fashion week.
In her fresh, small, all-white space, which calls to mind an elegant English gallery, Geiss has crossed every decade of Antonio Lopez’s career, starting with the graphic illustrations he did for The New York Times fashion spreads, inspired by Fernand Léger. Antonio was born in Puerto Rico and started his career in the art department at WWD. When he was fired by John Fairchild, he started doing splashy, wonderful spreads for the Times. A star was born.
Antonio and I were great friends. We worked together on a Norma Kamali portfolio for Vogue, for which he drew a beautiful portrait of her wearing a printed snood. In the exhibit, there are Polaroids of Vogue’s Creative Director, Grace Coddington, wrapped up in a huge exotic leaf on a shoot on some Caribbean isle. There is one of the skinny me, fresh out of Brown, and another illustration from one of my first big interviews for Warhol’s magazine, captured in a black and white drawing filled with Antonio’s elegant lines. In it, I am having tea for the first time with Karl Lagerfeld at the Plaza Hotel in New York during the spring of 1975. Lagerfeld had come to launch the fragrance Chloé, and Andy Warhol walked me right into the suite. Antonio and Lagerfeld were already close friends at that point, and the interview was for the “April in Paris” issue, which was guest-edited by Lopez and his partner, Juan Ramos, another great dandy and the man who kept all of Antonio’s works organized, the Diaghilev to Lopez. He was the art director, business partner, agent, his Sol Hurok, and former lover. He was also a master multitasker. He directed each fashion session—which were often all-night marathons—like they were family reunions rather than labored work.
The exhibition also includes Instamatics of Lagerfeld, in the back of a limousine that spring, or somewhere, having water splashed across his bearded face as if he had been caught in the shower, wearing a black Marlon Brando T-shirt. Another great friend, the young, skinny Yves Saint Laurent, is captured in an Antonio Polaroid backstage in Paris with his partner, Pierre Bergé. You must catch his exquisite drawing of Paloma Picasso in heels, posing for a lingerie spread in a British fashion magazine like a young Anna Magnani from The Rose Tattoo. Going through the exhibit reminds me of what Lopez told the model Pat Cleveland: “Don’t waste a minute of your life dreaming what you want to be. Just be it.”
The show runs at the Suzanne Geiss Company through October 20; suzannegeiss.com
