Chapter Three: How ACT UP and the Downtown Fashion Scene Came to the Rescue

Drag performers get dressed in the men's bathroom near the urinals during the Love Ball a fundraiser for AIDS research.
Drag performers get ready for the Love Ball, a fundraiser for AIDS research, 1991.Photo: Mark Peterson / Getty Images

This is the third in a four-part oral history of fashion's response to the AIDS Crisis. Here, industry leaders explain the role that fashion played in rallying the community.

The Untold Story of Fashion and ACT UP 

Fern Mallis, fashion consultant and public speaker

There was a certain amount of people in this country and world that could care less and thought, Well, good punishment to them. It was a really hostile kind of thing. The gay community rose up and fought it, and the things that came out of AIDS were extraordinary—from amfAR, and God’s Love, and ACT UP [ AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power], which fought to have all the regulations changed about drug testing, and bringing drugs to market, and getting product out there. It’s that anger that they took on to fight for their lives and their communities.

Avram Finkelstein, artist and activist 

The love of my life, the person I was building my life around died in 1984, before AIDS even had its name. I formed a small consciousness-raising group with six friends and we went on to design the Silence=Death poster, which then became inextricably bound to the activist work of ACT UP. I was also a founding member of the art collective, Gran Fury, that came out of ACT UP.

We worked on the Silence=Death poster for about nine months. In the conversations about what the posters should look like, we purposefully chose pink for the pink triangle, and decided that the background of the poster should be black, because fuchsia and black were fashion colors. Every editor, every musician, everyone who went to all the clubs in the East Village wore fuchsia and black. It was completely intentional.

Simon Doonan, writer

Avram and I started dating and he said, “Oh, I just went to this ACT UP meeting.” He explained Gran Fury, and said, “You should come next week.” So I went to the second-ever meeting with him and it absolutely blew my mind. There were all these young gay men in their twenties, some still at college, and they were so decisive, and so forceful, and so unstoppable. They were just relentless in their desire to look for solutions and get the attention of the government and the CDC.

Larry Kramer at the Village Voice AIDS conference, New York City, June 1987.

Photo: Catherine McGann / Getty

ACT UP (Aids Coalition to Unleash Power) protest at the Gay and Lesbian Pride march, New York City, June 1988.

Photo: The New York Historical Society
Avram Finkelstein

One of the things that ACT UP was famous for was bootlegging essentially corporate crap—bootleg resources, billing and printing costs to clients, and using Xerox machines at work. That was very much the way ACT UP functioned before it had its own fundraising mechanisms. As a consequence, individuals who worked in fashion were forcing fashion to the front line without ever admitting it or anyone ever knowing it.

One really great example of this invisible hand of fashion was Simon Doonan, who I was dating at the time that ACT UP formed. We had done the Silence=Death poster, but it was Simon who forced me to give him the posters to mount on foam core to bring to the second ACT UP action in New York. I was very reluctant to do it, because ACT UP hadn’t actually adopted the image of Silence=Death and I didn’t feel totally comfortable with it. He said, “Oh, just get them to me. I will take responsibility for it.”

Simon Doonan

I thought, I don’t really know all this stuff about the political machinations of the system, but I do know how to take old bits of foam core and spray mount some posters. I said, “You can’t just hand out rolled up posters.” We had all this scrap foam core leftover from other projects and signs at Barneys, so I took them and spray mounted them all.

But then I realized we had to do both sides, because when you hold a sign up, it can’t say “invitation to a trunk show at Barneys” on the back—you have to see a Silence=Death poster. So I would take all the posters and spend the weekend in the display studio, spray mounting them on foam core. I’m sure I’m infertile from all that spray mount.

ACT UP protest outside of the Federal Drug Administration building to demand the release of experimental medication for those living with HIV/AIDS in Rockville, Maryland, October 1988. 

Photo: Peter Ansin / Getty Images
Avram Finkelstein

You might have never seen a Silence=Death image at an ACT UP demonstration if it weren’t for Simon Doonan. I think that he is one of the unsung heroes of ACT UP. I don’t know how he views his place in history, but I think it’s a really essential example of understanding the way in which agency can be articulated as multifactorial.

Simon Doonan

I remember one time at an ACT UP meeting, me and the T-shirt people were in a clutch, all excited. It was the AIDS walk we were preparing for, I think. What we were going to do, how we were going to sell them, can you just put them over your arm? Do we need to have a table?

Larry Kramer came over and he heard us talking, and he just went off. He said, “You useless queens babbling on about T-shirts! People are dying out there!” And we all loved it because we thought, That’s why these people are getting shit done, because they got guts.

ACT UP protest, Rockville, Maryland, 1988.

Photo: Catherine McGann / Getty Images

ACT UP protest, New York City, 1988

Photo: Allan Tannenbaum / Getty Images
Valerie Steele, fashion historian

The message in those T-shirts was so powerful and it really got people to act. I think what’s so terrifying is when you look back, you realize the government was doing nothing. Reagan was doing nothing. And ACT UP, they were out there protesting and getting arrested and their slogans were so compelling. Those images, like this Silence=Death equation, galvanized people.

Hal Rubenstein, author

I think the reasons for ACT UP and the protest was simply to combat the helplessness. It was us not being the victims. People were fighting for their lives and the lives of their friends, and the lives of their families and the lives of their cousins and their coworkers, and people they didn’t know, because you knew this was just going to continue. As an HIV-positive person, I knew it was only going to get worse. It wasn’t going to get better.

ACT UP protest, New York City, June 1994. 

Allan Tannenbaum

Barneys Takes a Stand

Simon Doonan

My job at Barneys was, “Okay, we’ve got this new designer, they’ve got their product, who’s going to write about it?” I used to do the windows, that’s what I’m known for, but my job encompassed PR. It was an incredible thing for me, because it was such an all-consuming job that allowed me to escape from the daily horror of going to hospitals, seeing people in hospital, hearing so-and-so had died.

So we did, I think, the first-ever AIDS fundraiser that was in a store. We did an incredible event in 1986 to raise money for St. Vincent’s, which was so full of AIDS patients that people were dying in the hallways. It was just down the block from the original 17th Street Barneys store.

It was a fashion show and we got artists to embellish denim jackets—Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Robert Rauschenberg, incredible artists. We sent them a jacket, they painted it, sent it back. The models in that show were Madonna, Iman, Debbie Harry, and Kate Pierson from the B-52’s.

Bethann Hardison, model and activist

Madonna and I were at the fashion show for AIDS at Barneys on 17th Street. We were talking about how, when we know that someone is sick, that’s the time we tend to shut down. She had a friend who was a designer and he was sick, and she took care of all his bills, she took care of his rent. Anyways, we did the show.

Keith Haring at the Celebrity Fashion Show Benefiting AIDS Patients of St. Vincent Hospital at Barney's, 1986 in New York City.

Photo: Ron Galella / Getty Images

Madonna models a denim jacket at the Celebrity Fashion Show Benefiting AIDS Patients of St. Vincent Hospital at Barney's, 1986 in New York City.

Photo: Vinnie Zuffante / Getty Images

Paulina Porizkova at the Celebrity Fashion Show Benefiting AIDS Patients of St. Vincent Hospital at Barney's, 1986 in New York City.

Photo: PL Gould / Getty Images
Simon Doonan

Madonna came with her friend, Martin Burgoyne, her roommate who was an artist who had Kaposi sarcoma. She sat with him all night and held his hand, and that was like Princess Diana holding the patient’s hand. It was this signal to people: You can do this, we should touch out.

James Scully, former casting director

No one in fashion was doing much of anything. I really feel like when Perry Ellis died, all of the most powerful people retreated and didn’t talk about it. But then, Barneys did this huge fundraiser. This was the beginning, beginning of Madonna. Her first peak. She was doing a lot in the community and not even taking credit for it. I remember being on the scene then, lots of these old Pyramid and Club 57 kids that she knew were getting sick. She was giving them money and not telling people, but everyone knew she was doing it. When she came down the staircase in that show, for me, that was a huge, seminal moment. People would have done anything just to be at that event, and that fashion show was held on a staircase. Madonna literally put that event on the map—those pictures went around the country.

Debbie Harry.

Photo: PL Gould / Getty Images

Fran Lebowitz.

Photo: PL Gould / Getty Images

A model.

Photo: PL Gould / Getty Images

Kate Pierson.

Photo: PL Gould / Getty Images
Simon Doonan

There are pictures online of Madonna and Iman coming down the stairway. Iman is wearing her Keith Haring jacket, which is painted the way he painted Bill T. Jones and Grace Jones’s body. Andy Warhol came, too. I think he mentions it in his diaries. Before that you thought, “Well, store events aren’t groovy. Who goes to a store event?” But we sort of set this new bar: “Oh my God. This Barneys event.”

Because, you know, the window display world got decimated and the window display world loomed very large. In the ’70s, these display people, they were huge celebrities. When Bob Currie did his windows at Bendel’s, people would go see the new windows and then go over to Studio 54. Victor Hugo used to do all those incredible windows for Halston.

All these people died and it kind of cleared the decks in a weird way. Linda Fargo and I have chatted about this painful issue where this whole community was decimated, and then we kind of got our start and walked into their shoes.

Paloma Picasso, Carolina Herrera and Bill Blass attend the Barneys AIDS benefit, 1986.

Photo: PL Gould / Getty Images

A model.

Photo: PL Gould / Getty Images

How the Love Ball Was Born 

Patricia Field, stylist

I was introduced to the ball culture in the ’70s because I had a client who was from Thailand, a very wealthy queen. He said to me, “Pat, I’m going to walk in a vogue ball. I want you to come.” I said, “Okay, sounds good.” He said, “Don’t come till 2 a.m.” Well, at 2 a.m., I was up there, but it didn’t start till 4 a.m.

Jose Xtravaganza, dancer and choreographer

The balls were happening in Harlem at this place called the Elks Lodge. They were held late at night because it was very dangerous on the New York City subways at that time. Gangs were still really big. So they would start at three or four o’clock in the morning because it was the safest time for all these colorful folks to head up there—and it was like another world for those couple of hours.

I discovered voguing and I was totally inspired artistically because I was a dancer. I was able to pick it up very well. So I would go out there and just vogue around and it caught the eye of the House of Xtravaganza. It was like a dream come true.

Drag ball in Harlem, 1988.

Photo: Catherine McGann / Getty Images

Drag ball in Harlem, 1988.

Photo: Catherine McGann / Getty Images
Patricia Field

I had the House of Field, but we were the only, let’s say, white house. We were known to the vogue community as the punk rockers, which always amused me because the last thing I am is punk rock. I believe that our contribution was bringing the fashion world to the vogue community. They had categories like body, face, or dance. But then we started doing runway because that’s what we had to offer. I held a big voguing ball in the mid-’80s and I invited all the fashion people to come and judge: Marc Jacobs, Mary McFadden, Betsey Johnson.

Jose Xtravaganza, dancer and choreographer

The House of Field was one of the staples of the New York club scene. Pat was a big deal because of who she was in the fashion industry—fashion and these balls went hand in hand. Her balls were when the press would come. She was a big supporter of the ballroom scene.

Patricia Field

Susanne Bartsch, she’s a friend of mine today and those days. However, I invited her to the ball that we held and she got her idea of the Love Ball from the vogue balls. It was a good idea; Susanne’s smart, I’m not holding it against her.

From left, ball dancers Cesar Valentino, Derrick Xtravaganza Huggins, and Fidel at the Copacabana nightclub, New York City, May 1989.

Photo: Rita Barros / Getty Images
Simon Doonan

I remember Susanne [Bartsch] called me up. Her v’s and w’s get mixed up, so she said, “I’m going to the woguing, you’ve got to come to the woguing, it’s all about the woguing.” I thought, What the fuck is she talking about? So we went to the Paris Is Burning Ball up in Harlem and she said, “You could structure a fundraiser that brings in money from corporations in the fashion world based on this idea,” and I thought, Well, yeah, you could.

Jose Xtravaganza

The epidemic had just swept through, and very few people wanted to raise their voices for us or nevertheless give money for funding and programs and research. So it was a very big deal; the Love Ball was an event that was the first of its kind. Susanne Bartsch even before the Love Ball had always hired voguers for her parties at The Copacabana. I vogued for her, along with a lot of other voguers at that time.

Susanne Bartsch, nightlife personality 

By that time, I mean, it was like half of my address book was crossed out. I kind of did the Love Ball out of pain. I was so devastated by the loss of so many incredible friends and incredible people. Somebody had said to me, “You know, you should really do something. You should do an event, donate the money to fight AIDS.” I was at a house ball that afternoon, so I thought, Why don’t I do a ball?

And that’s when I came up with the idea of doing the Love Ball—to fight instead of cry. I said, “I got to fight back and celebrate life.” But it was also to get the fashion community involved.

So I went to fashion houses and asked them to be a house for the night—Swatch, Donna Karan, Armani. I also had a panel of judges, and I would get fashion companies or designers to compete on stage in front of the panel of judges and get the trophy, just like they did at the house balls. And they paid to be on stage, because it comes down to how to make money. I involved the house ball community, brought everyone together.

Susanne Bartsch's Love Ball 2 at Roseland Ballroom, New York City, 1991.

Photo: Sonia Moskowitz / Getty Images

The stage at Susanne Bartsch's Love Ball 2 at Roseland Ballroom, New York City, 1991.

Photo: Sonia Moskowitz / Getty Images

Susanne Bartsch hosts Love Ball 2 at Roseland Ballroom, New York City, 1991.

Photo: Catherine McGann / Getty Images
Simon Doonan

I had to go to my boss, Gene Pressman. I said, “Susanne [Bartsch] wants to do this Love Ball thing and we could be a house, the House of Barneys.” And he got it and said, “We’re in.” We all went, they all came, bought a table. We had our own house and we dressed the Xtravaganzas and we rehearsed.

Susanne Bartsch

And then I called Annie Flanders, who was the creator of Details magazine before it became a man’s magazine. She said, “This is incredible. I’m going to help you sell that, not pay to print the programs.” At that time, Michel Roux had this campaign going with vodka bottles painted by different artists. And he gave us right there and then, $100,000. Bang!

And then we had $10,000 tables. We sold tables to Calvin Klein—everybody that was anybody was there. Even Madonna showed up. The society babes, like Blaine Trump. And it was a huge success, to the point that I did the second one. One in ’89 and ’91.

Jose Xtravaganza

I was in the category where they got all these popular pop artists, like Keith Haring and Kenny Scharf to lend their talent to create these beautiful, almost sculpturesque trophies as awards. I won.

Waitresses in drag at the Love Ball 2, 1991.

 Photo: mark peterson / Getty Images

Tony Ward and Madonna attend Susanne Bartsch's Love Ball 2 1991 in New York City. 

Photo: Sonia Moskowitz / Getty Images
Simon Doonan

I was on the committee and we used to meet every Monday night. You called people to help and they said sure. They didn’t say, “Oh, I need a town car and a green room and someone to do my hair and makeup.” All that bullshit didn’t exist back then. People were just like, “Great,” and they showed up. Susanne [Bartsch] was doing everything—her motto was, “No flowers, no nothing, don’t spend any money. All the money goes to the charity.” How many New York charities are run on that line?

Susanne Bartsch

We raised over three million dollars. I think the point is, we did something. And then I ended up doing it in Paris as well: The Balade de L’Amour, a Walk for Love, which was at the Folies-Bergère. Gaultier and Mugler were exchanging jackets on stage. Susan Sarandon, Cindy Crawford, Gaultier, Azzedine Alaïa was there, Jean-Paul Goude also came, with Alaïa on his shoulders.

Jose Xtravaganza

One night, Madonna showed up at Southside where I was dancing, and she came up to me and said, “Hey, I heard you’re the one that does this vogue thing. Show me.” I was like, “Are you serious?” I went out there in these ridiculous pants and showed her dips and vogue poses and splits and stuff. She was very impressed. And then she was like, “Come to the audition. I’m writing this song about the dance.”

I was just so young—even in the video production of it, I thought it was going to be kind of ridiculous. But then I saw the finished product and it was like, wow. Madonna gave voguing the world stage. And she picked me. She took me and gave me this chance to put it together and teach her the history.

Jean-Paul Gaultier attends the Love Ball 2, May 1991.

Photo: mark peterson / Getty Images

Sister Dimension at the Love Ball 2, May 1991.

Photo: Sonia Moskowitz / Getty Images

Cindy Crawford attends the Love Ball 2, May 1991.

Photo: Ron Galella / Getty Images