The fashion industry is mainly populated by a series of obnoxious characters covered in expensive outfits and begging for attention. Yet this weird, colourful and superficial universe also contains very different creatures, real fashion icons who seem to be able to effortlessly create extravagant fluid identities that constantly mutate from one night to the next. Susanne Bartsch is part of this category.
For almost thirty years Bartsch has been considered the unofficial queen of New York City nightlife: since the '80s she has launched spectacular events loved by a wide variety of creative people from all sorts of backgrounds who have transformed dressing up into a proper performance show.
Curated by Valerie Steele and Susanne Bartsch and designed by Kim Ackert after a concept by Thierry Loriot, "Fashion Underground: The World of Susanne Bartsch", an exhibition currently on at the FIT Museum in New York (until today), celebrates this unique fashion impresario and muse for many fashion designers and makeup artists.
The idea for the event came over a dinner with FIT Museum curator Valerie Steele that ended up at Susanne's apartment at the Chelsea Hotel where the two started looking through Bartsch's archive.
Born in Switzerland, Bartsch moved to London as a teenager. In the British capital she turned into a key figure among the New Romantics and, in 1981, she went to New York where she opened a boutique in Soho. Bartsch started importing British labels such as Vivienne Westwood, while organising fashion shows that promoted highly creative designers à la Leigh Bowery, Body Map, and Stephen Jones. In 1986, a show in Japan produced by Bartsch turned into the climax of a fashion business that ended a year later, when she gave the first party at Savage in New York's SoHo. Bill Cunningham, the New York Times photographer who has been recording street style in a unique way for decades, had already dubbed her by then the "Swiss Miss".
Devastated by the loss of too many friends during the AIDS epidemic in the '80s, Bartsch became a fundraiser and organisers of benefit nights, including The Love Ball, that led her to raise a total of $2.5 million for AIDS research and advocacy.
The FIT Museum exhibition celebrating this creature of the night is filled with colours, glamour and fun. A small graffitied gallery of images and videos introduces visitors to Bartschland, an extravagant place, suspended between high fashion, underground club, street style, drag and pure madness.
The first section focuses on the 1980s English fashions that Bartsch introduced to New York; the second and largest section features a variety of the creations that Bartsch and her friends have worn at her famous club nights at Savage, Copacabana, and Le Bains, with a special part devoted to the AIDS balls. The final room of the museum evokes her apartment at the Chelsea Hotel, where she has lived for many years.
The event includes designs by Rachel Auburn, The Blonds, Leigh Bowery, John Galliano, Jean Paul Gaultier, Mr. Pearl, Pam Hogg, Stephen Jones, Alexander McQueen, Thierry Mugler (check out his nude, leather body suit with articulated nipples and a structured mesh egg-shape veil donned by Bartsch when she married David Barton), Rick Owens, Vivienne Westwood, and Zaldy. But, in between one designer garment and the other, there is a lot of invention and passion for uniquely crafted pieces, costumes and styles.
The most annoying thing about the street style images we are constantly fed via the Internet and Instagram in particular is that they actually focus on what could be dubbed as "fossilised corporate styles". This term refers to the fact that most high profile Instagrammers provide us with neatly packaged outfits assembled with designer clothes and accessories at times borrowed from PR officers, and very rarely they feature DIY pieces and ideas you want to copy.
Bartsch's outfits subvert fashion and, while the event features designer clothes, its main message is to get inspired, break all rules and be free: Bartsch's outlandish costumes prompt visitors to realise you don't need to be a professional to turn yourself into whatever you want to be. Transforming oneself is indeed an art that is probably better developed by people low on resources but high on resourcefulness, than by people with too much money and very few ideas.
According to Bartsch, the innovator and pioneer, fashion is a proper form of art and our bodies can be seen as white canvases on which everything can happen. In a nutshell, if you want to be a punk renegade, a silver-screen diva or a Baroque creature, you certainly can, it all depends from your fantasy and from the materials you manage to put together to assemble your look.
There's food for thought for those careful visitors who will be keen on reading between the lines (or between the colourful sequins, spiked studs and the over the top hairstyles...): Bartsch has been an excellent networker (for example, after commissioning corsets to Mr. Pearl, she introduced him to Thierry Mugler, who then hired him) and her events proved extremely influential, showing how clubs can be laboratories of ideas.
It's rare to find disinterested networkers nowadays in the fashion scene especially when we consider that most people in the business are keen to share only when there is a tangible reward (money, clothes or a job...) for them as well. Besides, because of closing clubs and people favouring a fake digital life on the computer, there are fewer important club nights and events where people can freely express themselves and influence each other in positive ways. There are therefore many messages to discover in Susanne Bartsch's universe.
Won't be able to go to New York by today? Don't despair: you can still take a 360-degree virtual tour of the exhibition - no excuses left not to join the fun and step into Bartsch's extravagant world.
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