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This is the second in a four-part oral history of fashion's response to the AIDS Crisis. Here, several industry leaders remember members of the fashion and beauty community who lost their lives due to HIV/AIDS related complications.
We helped a lot of men, and you had to go through the process of consoling them and getting them to the right doctors. Then you had to go through the parts where they would go into the hospital without their family knowing that they were sick. The thing about AIDS was that the fashion world kept going because we were dealing with it and nothing was at [a] halt.
I remember so many times being on the phone with men while they were on the phone with their mother. First, explaining that they were gay, and the mother usually would say, “Well, I knew you were gay.” Then the next phone call was, “Well, I’m sick.” That’s when it was really heavy.
It was very miraculous how some people reacted. But then it was really heartbreaking how others said, “Repent being gay, repent,” and it was so disgusting. Those people, I couldn’t believe that they would treat their child that way.
One of my friends from Canada started to get really sick. He came down to New York and was like, “I want to come see if you can help me find drugs for this.” I was going to school at FIT at the time. I went with him to the Gay Men’s Health Crisis. Back then, they had all experimental drugs, not approved, but expensive, and you could still buy it. I remember walking into GMHC with him and there was a blackboard up. Literally, it was like someone at a deli writing the daily specials to order, and it was all of the experimental drugs. We bought what he could afford. He still passed away a few months later. I didn’t have any money to get a ticket to go home for his funeral.
I had personal experiences of going with people to government buildings and then being refused disability or an interview because they were clearly suffering from AIDS. Those are terrifying memories to have. I also had several friends who died on their own, without funerals, without memorials. Their parents were Mormon or whatever and had disowned them, or they found out they were gay just when they were in a hospital clinging to life. So people were buried in unmarked graves.
Back in the day, the people would die and didn’t have relationships with their families, so the friends would clean out their closets, clean out their apartments and then just give the stuff to Housing Works.
I worked side by side with someone who was dying of AIDS and was a young man in his early 30s. He needed money, so my boss gave him a job and he was there to help out with office stuff for me, and he would sometimes just fall off the chair because he was so weak. We would have to lay him down, and that was devastating to see.
I worked on West 12th Street, which was right down the block from St. Vincent’s. I would go and visit people on my lunch hour at St. Vincent’s. That scene from Pose was very real—when you walk in and the nurses are overwhelmed, and it’s people on stretchers all over the place and folks needing help and not enough help to go around. That’s why I would go over on lunch, to make sure that my friends ate, you know what I mean? Or just to give them comfort.
When they passed on, it was always pneumonia [in the obituary], it was always something else that they died of, but we knew AIDS was the main culprit.
Everyone just started lying.
I worked a lot with the photographer Bill King and my husband worked a lot with Barry McKinley and Herb Ritts. Bill, even though he was sick and it dragged on, even when he passed away, his family wouldn’t talk about the idea that it could ever be AIDS.
GIORGIO DI SANT’ANGELO, DESIGNER (1933–1989)
I mean, Giorgio di Sant’Angelo! If you go back to the Veruschka photographs back in the beginning with Diana Vreeland, he was the biggest designer of the time. You know, where she's got all these multicolored kaftans on and big floating dresses out in the desert? That’s all Giorgio di Sant'Angelo. He designed with [former Vogue editor in chief Diana] Vreeland on location. He would whip up something on the spot, almost like tie the girl up in it. They would create it as they were doing the photograph with Avedon. It was all tie-dyed in all different colors.
He came to a ball once where he was a judge, and he wore a tuxedo top with a pair of underwear. Bare legs, tuxedo top. He really enjoyed it because the fashion community had never experienced a ball before. Giorgio, oh, he was a sweetheart. There wasn’t anything about him that was negative. He was always very welcoming and happy. And I just really loved being around him.
He was very sweet. He was just as skinny as a rail and he made these clothes which were flowing and fluttering and tie-dyed. He wore tons and tons of jewelry made out of beads and feathers. He was just a real free spirit.
WAY BANDY, MAKEUP ARTIST (1941–1986)
Way was a Southern gentleman. He was very effeminate, very immaculate. I remember him bringing in his equipment, back when we only carried a little case with us. His makeup went in little cases and he’d open everything up, and you would have everything tied in little, beautiful colored scarves. The lipsticks were in one little container that was a little straw basket he had gotten from some country. Then he’d wrap that with a little scarf and tie it in a bow. It would all be all perfect.
One time, we were doing a black-and-white portrait with Mary McFadden and Richard Avedon. Way did her face in the tones of white, beige, gray, and black. He painted a black and white picture on her face of her makeup—so when she went in front of the camera it was already in black and white, even though it was shot in color. I would sit there in amazement of how he would shadow. It would look like a living black and white photograph, and then when it was photographed it really was perfection.
He could take the plainest girl and transform her into a beautiful, blossoming, sexy-looking young lady. He was just so gentle and very easygoing and quiet, and he’d do your makeup and make every eyelash perfect.
I was in the high school of art design, and Way and I oddly became friends. We hung out sometimes in his place or he would ask me sometimes to just go sit with him in one of the little pagodas or sheds in Central Park, and we’d just look at the water together and hang out. He did this beautiful profile and sketch of me for Details during my last year in high school. I’ll never forget that.
He was a health freak. The last time I worked with him, he did not look so well. He said, “Oh, I’m going to do something.” You know what he did? I’d never seen him do this. He took a black pencil and drew it right across the model’s face. Like he was a mad person. I think he lost it in the end, because he didn’t know what was happening. Something was eating him up. He was all about beauty, and health, and something got a hold of him and there was no way out.
When Way died, it was huge. Maury Hopson organized it and put it together and that was beautifully done, very touching, very heartbreaking. He and Maury had done a portrait of Nancy Reagan, and the story I got was that she had her hair done again by Maury and they talked about Way’s passing. She said, “Well you know, he really never touched my face while he was making me up.” As in, he only used brushes—he never used his fingers.
HALSTON, DESIGNER (1932–1990)
Halston was the king. His trick was that his clothes were all done with one piece of fabric. In other words, there were no seams. Everything was cut on the bias and it all became one unit. Of course, Liza Minnelli wore tons of Halston for her shows.
He was handsome, he was generous, he was lovely. He took us everywhere with him in the world—me and the girls, and the boys, and we were like a gang. Sometimes he would say things like, “Oh, I’m the ugly duckling in the group.” I’d say, “No, you’re the beautiful swan.”
He had a townhouse on, I think 64th Street, that was gorgeous. The townhouse had a garage, but he didn’t drive. And so the garage became like the catchall, the storage bin. So we would be in it and he would pull out something, “Oh, this is Andy Warhol’s, he left it here. Do you want it? He’s so cheap.” But they were good friends—it was a laugh because he’s like, “Andy’s a cheapskate. He doesn’t want to store his stuff. He brings it to my garage.” We spoke once when he was sick, but I think at that point it’s possible that he was close to goodbye, and...oh, God. Halston was the kind of guy that you wanted to know forever.
I was close, of course, to Halston. In the first weeks that [AIDS] came to America, I was living at my agent’s house. The night before I left to go stay in Europe, I said to him, “Something is going on here. Why don’t we just go? I think it’s good you come with me, we go on a vacation in the south of France. Let’s get a boat or just something. Let’s get out of here.” I said, “Something’s happening. What’s going on?” And Lesley Frowick, his niece, she stayed with him the whole time. His brother’s daughter, she stood with him.
Halston was smart. He was generous. He was funny. When he passed away, I was really upset. In Sex and the City, I did a little tribute to Halston with Sarah Jessica [Parker]. I pulled a few of his old classics, and they went over big time.
The thing that was sad about Halston is that he was such a brilliant designer and he is legendary, and the thing that pisses me off—and a lot of people that knew him—is that no one resurrected his name. He was ours and no one saved him. This is a real American boy that did Jackie Kennedy, and did all these amazing moments of simplicity and I mean…cashmere capes! When you look at all his clothes, and then they never put anyone in a position to let this house rise again. I mean, he would be like Karl Lagerfeld [today].
A lot of people forgot about Willi Smith and Lee Wright and Chester Weinberg, Angel Estrada, Patrick Kelly. It really didn’t hit a high point—meaning notoriety—until Halston passed away. When Halston passed, that’s when it was forced out. It was Rock Hudson and Halston and Antonio Lopez and his lover, Juan Ramos, Robert Currie, Jeffrey Herman, and Tina Chow. I knew all these people. Keith Haring. It went on and on and on.
WILLI SMITH, DESIGNER (1948–1987)
Willi Smith was everything. Willi was the real deal. Coming along as a young kid, becoming a designer, so successful at the age of 19. Eventually he got his own company, after one place folded, with business partners that took his name. That’s why he had to do the next company that became a big success, too, which was WilliWear.
He was the father of streetwear. Not only was he a fashion designer, but he also understood how to market his brand. Branding was so new back then.
Willi Smith was one of those rare designers that I looked at as an American designer who had this spirit—it felt relevant and it felt young and so authentic and incredible.
[His clothes] were affordable. They were cool streetwear-meets-fashion, and also the fact that he was a young African-American designer in the period from the ’70s into the early ’80s when there were quite a few African-American designers who were appearing and making a name for themselves. It was a multicultural moment and it was a gay-friendly moment and all of a sudden, all these guys were appearing and having real success and getting through to finding their public. He really did that. A lot of what Willi did was assimilated into streetwear and streetwear’s impact on fashion.
I was very close to Willi. I was his muse so I worked with him personally as a model. He’s the one who pushed me to be a runway model. He discovered me on the Avenue. He used to ask people who I was for a long time. He wrote a note and he asked if I would meet him at 1407 Club. I went there to meet him for breakfast, and that was how our relationship started. He asked me if I would consider modeling for him because he needed someone, so I started doing these little appearances for Willi. He knew everyone that was interesting or had anything to do with any art. And Willi was always a magnet to interesting people. For a young guy, he was quite something. He was very, very special.
Willi went to India, one of his last trips. When he came back, he didn’t feel good, and he got influenza. By that time, I had my office on Baltimore Street, Bethann Management. Then he got better but out of nowhere, two months or a month later, he got sick again and he went down. It upset me so bad I couldn’t even go around the corner to see him.
For me as a young designer, we lost so many of, as I say, the village elders. I think we’ve lost that whole generation of creativity that we never got to see as they matured, what would have happened? What would have happened to Willi Smith? I mean, I remember having Willi at my table at the Met Ball, and the talent and the charm and the energy! Most of these people, they didn’t live past 50. They were in the prime of their lives. They were 35 to 50. It’s hard to imagine the world would have been a very different place, in general, if we hadn’t lost that entire generation.
ANTONIO LOPEZ, FASHION ILLUSTRATOR (1943–1987)
Antonio Lopez was the greatest fashion illustrator of the late 20th century. His work was so vibrant, and so compelling. Fashion illustration had pretty much died out by the 1920s, replaced by photography. But Antonio Lopez almost single-handedly brought back this revival of fashion illustration, which was fantastic and very influential on Karl Lagerfeld.
He was the illustrator, the favorite of all the designers in the world in the ’70s and ’80s, because he brought the feeling of all the different types of young people moving the clothes about. He broke the mold. He had an entourage of young people around that were his friends, and we were all just like a little family running around Europe. He made things lively because he drew the streets, he drew the people who were just coming up and full of energy.
Antonio Lopez was probably, for our generation and in generations from that time till now, the best illustrator we will see. He was just unbelievably talented, but he also had an intuitive instinct about the time we were living in, especially the ’70s into the ’80s. He documented it in illustrations and created superstars, like Jerry Hall. The attitude of the sketches in all of his work really was the spirit of the time.
He was like the band leader at a party that everybody would be drawn to. He was very humble, very unassuming, but he had so much creativity that every movement he had, every piece of clothing he wore, anything that he put together would just make people feel good. We would talk and have conversations and inspire each other and get excited, and be so cheerful and supportive of each other, and we’d get each other worked up to do creative things.
When Antonio died, I was on the runway in Paris for Thierry Mugler and I was wearing all black. The theme [for the show] was that I was mourning someone, by coincidence. I got a call from California from my friend just before I went on stage. He said, “I have to tell you, Antonio just passed away.” I had gone on the stage and I was crying on the runway, and people thought I was acting, because that was the scene. But I was really crying.
ANGEL ESTRADA, DESIGNER (1958–1989)
When you look at a woman in a very tight dress, with her décolleté exposed, Angel Estrada was the first person to bring that look back. He was a big deal. A lot of the designers coming up at the time, they weren’t fancy, they didn’t come from posh families, they didn’t go to Ivy League colleges. They were like me. They were working-class people who had worked hard to get a foothold. Angel Estrada did it. He was very noteworthy.
He did these beautiful Hollywood-glamour gowns. That time, this crop of designers, it was kind of like the melting pot of New York. It was just like, “Wow, here’s another energy” And New York had that energy. And it came from everywhere. They were polished in their own way, it was just a different way of seeing clothes.
ISAIA RANKIN, DESIGNER (1954–1989)
Isaia Rankin was a lovely, charming, fun person who would often come into Barneys bringing armfuls of clothes. He wouldn’t wait for a truck to bring it. He would just get in a cab with boxes of clothes and bring them himself. He figured out one thing: stretch. He made skirts, dresses, tops, and he did three colors: black, mustard, and green. We could not keep them in the store. It was easy, this wonderful stretch T-shirt fabric that he used that you could wear as a dress or a skirt. Everyone wore them.
I often think about him, like, sometimes designers today think the answer is to do something incredibly complicated, and he had this great idea that just, wow. It spoke to a need in the market. The fitted graphic look but for a decent price, and we sold it all day long.
FABRICE SIMON, DESIGNER (1951–1998)
Fabrice was the Bob Mackie of New York. He was a Haitian man, and he did all this crystal beading on georgette. Cornelia Guest wore a lot of his clothes and they were also photographed in Vogue in what would have been the ’80s and early ’90s. There was a great photograph that was taken of Beverly Johnson in a motorboat with a bright blue Fabrice gown on—the top was beaded and the bottom was all tulle. The boat is going really fast. I shot that with Polly Mellen. He was one of my best friends.
Fabrice was as bold as his clothes. He was a beautiful, vibrant man, full of life and vitality.
PATRICK KELLY, DESIGNER (1954–1990)
Patrick Kelly was a boy from the Deep South. He came to New York and he had lots of talent, but no opportunity. In the beginning of his career, he had this hairdresser friend who used to come to my apartment. The hairdresser told me, “Hey, there’s this young boy who works out of the closet in his little house, and he’d love to put something on you.” So I said, “Well, come on over!” And he did. He made this banana costume for me because he knew I liked to dance like Josephine Baker. So we went out that night and I did this hair show in Columbus Circle, and I sang like Josephine Baker in that outfit. And he says, “Oh, I can’t seem to get a break and I don’t know how I’m going to make it.” And I said, “Well, you’re not going to make it here. You better go to Paris because there's no room for Black boys in New York. They’re not going to give you the break you’re going to get in Paris. Listen, you got to do what I do. You got to go for it.” So I gave him a ticket to Paris. He went, and then people fell in love with him.
He made that flourish. It was like a seed, and he made it grow. All the designers loved him. He started his atelier with all Black girls from America, and he had music and he had this whole feeling that no one had ever seen, like Josephine Baker arriving in Paris for the first time. It was just all Black girls shaking your booty on the runway, moving to the music. If you can dance and keep that spirit alive, it’s called soul. It’s just the community.
Patrick Kelly, when he went off to Paris, he was quite successful. He was the first American designer accepted into the [Chambre Syndicale du Prêt-à-Porter]. He had grown up very poor in the Jim Crow South, and he and his French boyfriend really emphasized a lot of African-American themes and stereotypes—and to some extent, that even made it controversial. But he was, I think, most famous for his buttons. Growing up, his mother and his grandmother used mixed buttons, miscellaneous buttons, and people would make fun of him because he would have unmatched buttons. He took that and made it a decorative theme. He was part of this multigenerational Black diaspora that went to Paris to be accepted.
Patrick Kelly, I mean, come on! What he was doing, the lifestyle that he had attached to his brand? I mean, his shopping bags—I remember I kept the shopping bag for years. It was the mammy thing that he had done, you know what I mean? The buttons, you know? Everything was whimsical, and everything had a story.
Designers today need to know that Patrick Kelly opened the door. He was the first, if not one of the first, in the forefront to bring a flair and a play into fashion. Because he did some really great, interesting fun stuff. Paris loved him. He deserved to reap the benefits now—to see everything that he worked for and dreamt of come to fruition.
The people of color that died in the early days of AIDS, that kind of really struck a chord with me. It felt personal—Fabrice felt personal. Patrick Kelly felt personal. Because remember, fashion back then even more so than it is now, was very white. So we really couldn’t even afford to lose people, especially not people like Fabrice [Simon], or Angel Estrada, or Willi—when Willi made the clothes, it was for us, by us but prior to FUBU.
I often think about who would have continued, who had the wherewithal. Because not everybody has the ability to have an enduring brand like Ralph Lauren. Which ones would have endured? I think about that a lot. Especially the designers of color. It wasn’t easy for them to get a foothold and they were doing really well. Willi Smith was a nationally known name. Patrick Kelly was showing in Paris. These people were doing great and breaking barriers. So it’s a fucking tragedy that they were cut down.
Think about what I was saying to you about the vibrancy of the Patrick Kelly, of the Willi, of the Fabrice. They died, and then the next thing we see is austere fashion and minimalism. Every day looks like a fucking scrim—the joy is taken off the runways. Think about the fact that models used to dance down the runway, they had to have a personality, and then all of a sudden it was like, nope. That was a huge, huge generation of geniuses that died way before their time. What would the business look like today if Patrick Kelly had lived, you know what I mean? You think about a Virgil Abloh or you think about my baby from Pyer Moss, Kerby [Jean-Raymond]. Had they had someone like a Patrick Kelly who was part of the Chambre Syndicale, the first American, not just the first Black, the first American? What would have happened if they lived?
PERRY ELLIS, DESIGNER (1940–1986)
Perry Ellis was a fresh voice when he started his own brand in 1978. The community of American fashion designers at the time was much smaller than it is today, and we were very connected, particularly through the CFDA.
Perry had a very defined point of view—I can see his clothes now. He was such a nice man. He was always in chino pants and a blue shirt. It’s like I could see him right now, he was so cute. And so respectful.
He did really cool clothes. They were really, really creative. It was mostly, I think, a question of proportion. He was one of the first to do that preppy look in a more playful way—not just a Brooks Brothers way, but in a really playful way.
When I first met Perry, I was 15-and-a-half. I was working at Charivari; I begged them for a job as a stock boy. At the opening of the store, Perry Ellis came in with his two assistants, Jed and Priscilla. And I met Perry Ellis, who was my ultimate idol because he was the New York–based designer. He was the American designer I related to. He had spirit, charm, and he was gorgeous with long hair, and he felt like the rebel, the cool one. I went up to him and I asked him what I could do because I was serious about studying fashion. And he said, “If you’re serious, you’ll go to Parsons School of Design.” So he recommended that I go to Parsons—and on that recommendation, that’s where I decided to go.
Everyone was dying of AIDS, and I felt we had to do something. So I went to Perry, who was the president of CFDA at the time. I said, “Perry, we have to do something about this.” And he was very sharp with me. He said, “Donna, this is a personal matter. This is not for public discussion.” I looked at him and he had spots [editor’s note: Kaposi sarcoma] all over his face. I said, “But Perry, are you okay?” And I had known he wasn’t. He said, “Well, I’m allergic to strawberries.” By his last CFDA awards, I think it was in the [New York City Public] Library, he was so frail.
I received an award from Perry at the CFDAs. At first, I heard he wasn’t going to make it and of course I understood that he was too weak. When he did manage to show up, it was heartbreaking to see him—this person who is like my mentor and somebody I idolized. At that point, I had known so many other people, so many great, talented, creative people in fashion who had died. I can’t even describe to you how overwhelmed I was when he did show up that week onstage to present me this award.
What really, truly, abruptly woke up the entire fashion industry was Perry walking out at the end of his last fashion show. He barely could walk, and here was someone young, talented, great-looking, full of charm and life, and suddenly this was a shell of a human being. And I think for the stores, the retailers, the fashion editors, the community, this was someone who they had rallied behind, and that was just a lightning rod.
Something about Perry Ellis dying really changed the face of AIDS in our business. Before, people died in the shadows and they were mentioned in biographies, or they died of some mysterious illness or pneumonia in The New York Times. But Perry really was the first person where everyone knew something was wrong. It was the shot heard around the fashion world. It would almost have been the same effect if Instagram had existed—that’s how fast news got out.
It became something that had hit the industry in a way that they hadn’t realized, and they needed to do something to begin to make aware, but also to see how they could give back.
I don’t think anybody was surprised, unfortunately. We all knew what was happening. The fact that he wanted to keep it private, I think, was a little bit more difficult. Because it was obvious.
Though Perry’s death was not communicated as AIDS-related, it was assumed that he, like his partner, had also succumbed to this awful scourge.
I think it was interesting how early on, they would never admit that Perry died of AIDS, because people were afraid that if you bought the clothes by someone’s company, somehow you would get AIDS from that. People were fearful, and people were just plain stupid.
HIV was a whisper word, AIDS was a whisper word. When Perry Ellis died it’s “reportedly.” Yes it’s widely known today, but at the time, people didn’t really know.
With the whole debacle about Perry Ellis, the rumors were so rampant and specific, but it wasn’t until years after his death that anyone admitted that he died of AIDS, even though it was clear to everyone in the fashion community and in the New York world at large. For every Todd Oldham or John Bartlett who conducted themselves as people who were politically engaged, there were 25 people who worked in corporate fashion brands who wouldn’t even admit that the designers were queer, much less at risk for HIV.
It was incredibly puzzling to a community of activists who had dedicated themselves to risk-taking on behalf of people living with HIV and activating social spaces around political questions. It was really puzzling as to how the hothouse world of fashion in which Perry Ellis could insist on showing his face and then have it be years before anyone would admit that he died of AIDS. It’s impossible for an outsider to wrap their head around that world.
I think everybody wanted to do something about AIDS. But I think Perry sort of blocked it. I would say particularly, when there is a problem, we have to speak up and come up with the solution. And where Perry felt this was a private problem, it became beyond a private problem. It was an industry problem. It was larger than a person. And the fact that it was affecting so many young people, I think that was the shock.