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Photo: courtesy of flickr.com
The 1980s club kid scene in New York had many extravagant personalities, but perhaps none quite so iconic as Susanne Bartsch and friends. Famous for her outlandish parties at the Copacabana Club in the late 80s, Bartsch emerged from the era of decadence and glam still going strong. An exhibit at Manhattan’s FIT, which opened this weekend and runs through December 5, 2015, celebrates her decades-long career of creativity and hedonism.
Bartsch, originally from Switzerland, threw her first New York party in 1986 near the Chelsea Hotel. It was a huge success and attracted a variety of celebrities, artists and tastemakers. Bartsch’s extravagant example invited them all to out-do each other, and the icon established herself immediately as a fixture in the New York art-party scene, where she made a name for herself as a cross-pollinator of fashion and other mediums. Her over-the-top outfits often evoke performance art, and this particular retrospective at the Museum at FIT focuses particularly on this link between Bartsch’s work as a party producer and her impact on the world of fashion. She was especially instrumental in importing young designers from the UK, such as Vivienne Westwood, to New York.
“Style is about expressing yourself,” Bartsch said in a statement on FIT’s website. “You can be whatever you want to be—a silver-screen star, a Marie Antoinette baroque creature, a Victorian punk. I love that about fashion and makeup.” The exhibit walks you through 30 years of Bartsch’s career, starting in the 1980s and going up to the present day.
FIT’s 15th annual fashion symposium is also gearing up for late October, a two-day lecture series entitled Fashion Underground: The World of Susanne Bartsch. At this year’s symposium 20 speakers will discuss the influence that Susanne Bartsch has had on fashion and nightlife. Speakers will include Simon Doonan (Creative Ambassador-at-Large of Barneys New York), Stephen Jones (milliner), and Peter McNeil (professor at University of Technology Sydney and at Stockholm University).
-by Rachel Veroff