by Simon Doonan
Monique and I repaired to the Greek diner across the street to strategize.
“Morty thinks he can intimidate me with the steelworkers’ union. Hah!”
“I guess we use lots of pins and staples,” I posited, struggling to find some common ground between the screechingly nelly world of window display and the hairy, übermacho steelworkers.
“No disrespect, but you are an idiot,” snapped Monique, adding, “and the ‘fucking’ part is silent.”
I called home to the UK and tried to explain the whole thing to my mother. Betty Doonan had been a union shop steward in a typing pool in the sixties. When her girls were underheated or overworked, she would blow her whistle and shriek, “Everybody OUT!” Given Betty’s background, I thought she might have some helpful advice. On this occasion Mrs. D. was a little stumped. She found herself torn between loyalty to her staple-gun-wielding son and her natural inclination toward union solidarity.
After listening patiently and puffing her way through a couple of Woodbine cigarettes, Betty posed a simple question. Why were we not simply renegotiating the contract? Why were we quitting the union?
The next day I cornered Monique and asked her the exact same question. Why throw out the glue gun with the bathwater?
Monique exploded with lesbian rage.
“What kind of deal do you think those chauvinist pig fuckers will give us, a bunch of freaks and trannies and part-time hookers? They will take you and your wigs and your wrist pincushion to the cleaners. We need out!”
And so we went for it.
During the complex decertification negotiations, I had to rally the troops and obtain their signatures. This was not easy. Many of my display gypsies were less than interested. When they weren’t working in the store, they were in a coma in the lunchroom recovering from last night’s K-hole at the Area club or the Limelight.
A Human Resources chick with a frizzed-out Joan-Cusack-in-Working-Girl hairdo cornered us in the elevator. She warned us to be on the lookout for any intimidation.
Monique seemed to delight in the threat of hostility, especially any hostility which might be directed toward me.
“You better watch your back! After all, you might be a window nelly, but you are also the big boss.”
“But you are clearly the instigator. Why do I have to watch my back?”
“You know how these union types are. They would never hurt a lady.”
“Is that what you call yourself these days?”
“Fuck you!”
“All I wanted was to make wigs and lashes. Now I’m going to end up going for a swim in the East River wearing concrete flippers.”
“Don’t forget your waterproof mascara.”
• • •
THE DAY OF THE SHOWDOWN ARRIVED. Morty and his new union cohorts filled the display studio, and I do mean filled. They were a husky group.
The meeting was short and sweet. They took one look at us and capitulated. These burly heterosexuals were not going to spend member dues trying to keep this bunch of freaks and Krishnas in their pristine union.
Monique was triumphant.
Morty was crestfallen.
He went to the men’s room and came back wearing his girdle.
The next day the steelworkers offered Morty a job at their headquarters. He looked like he had won the lottery. He tossed his girdle in the trash and was gone.
After the decertification, I was authorized by the store management to mark the occasion by taking everyone to lunch at a “gourmet” restaurant. We decided to get dressed up for the occasion. The girls began painting their eyelids. So did some of the boys. Even Monique applied a dab of lipstick.
When Yana found out the name of our fine-dining destination, she set us straight.
“Sorry to break it to you but that’s not a gourmet restaurant,” she said, taking off her hat and coat, “that’s a pseudo-gourmet restaurant.”
Rather than risk being seen at a pseudo-gourmet restaurant, Yana elected to stay behind in the basement studio and man the nude wall phone in case any urgent calls came through. I was relieved. When left alone in the studio, Granny Krishna tended to answer the phone in Sanskrit.
The outing to the pseudo-gourmet restaurant was a howling success. A great time was had by all, as evidenced by the fact that the maître d’ asked us to “keep it down” no less than three times. Sheree and Elise—they were dressed like refugees from a Pat Benatar concert with shades, black jeans and tight leather jackets—got plastered and disappeared with some businessmen who were carousing at another table. Monique befriended the lady chef and flirtatiously told her that she might consider selling her the next weekend’s catch for a rock-bottom price.
After lunch, I assessed the general level of inebriation and sent everyone home.
Tired, drunk, and relieved, Cynthia and I returned to the studio. As we neared the side entrance to our subterranean salon des refusés, a strange sight met our eyes. We found a barely recognizable Yana standing on the street. She was furious, wet and disgusted.
“My weave is ruined! Everything is destroyed.”
Seated on a nearby fire hydrant, clutching a snoozing saffron-robed baby, was Cynthia’s mother. She rocked back and forth, murmuring hare, hares under her breath.
I opened the door to the display studio and peered down the stairs. The sound of a light tropical rain was clearly audible.
“All of a sudden . . . shshshshsshshs!” screeched Yana, doing a convincing imitation of a furiously spraying fire sprinkler.
“What could have set off the sprinkler system?” I asked, sounding oddly sleuthlike.
“Mom, were you burning incense again?” demanded Cynthia accusingly. Granny Krishna adjusted her sari, drawing the soggy veil over her face.
By the time the sprinklers were turned off, there were three inches of water throughout the basement. It was an unmitigated disaster. Soggy boxes of display wigs bobbed about. Waterlogged mounds of paperwork, invoices and unpaid bills covered Monique’s desk. Papier-mâché props were dissolving into giant mounds of pus. Holiday ornaments bobbed around like miniature buoys. By some miracle all the livestock survived.
I sloshed over to the wall phone and called Human Resources.
“You better come over here,” I said, “there are mice swimming round my office.”
“Oh, you guys! Always joking around!”
I hung up. There was only one thing for it. We turned off the lights and fled.
The aftermath of the flood was quite biblical. The drowned mice decomposed in various unreachable nooks and crannies. Maggots and then flies were the unhappy result. Flood, vermin, flies, plague! It was hard not to see these biblical events as Morty’s revenge.
How did we cope? We did what any typical proud American family would have done: we kept calm and carried on while wearing fluorescent hot-pink blunt-cut mannequin wigs.
thierry mugler’s flying shoulder pads
THE MUGLER WOMAN is a wicked bitch. She stands atop the Empire State Building wearing a stainless-steel evening gown and sporting cut-glass fingernails. Her eyelashes are made of scorpion stingers. Her elaborate coiffure is fashioned from platinum wire. She doesn’t care if she gets struck by lightning. She is lightning. Her laserlike pupils are searching the sky for passenger planes. She will destroy them with her gaze. She is Cruella de Fabulous. She is Cunty von Mugler.
Thierry Mugler—the founding designer of this storied house—took the cruelty and beauty and madness of fashion, and magnified it and pumped it full of steroids and doused it with gasoline, torched it and owned it. His vision had staggering breadth and imagination. Within Thierry’s universe, there were myriad archetypes: vampires, space aliens, Sicilian widows, B-movie sluts, praying mantises, superheroines, ascending virgins, homicidal secretaries and jump-suited communistic cult members. The Mugler frame of reference was broa
d and rich, and the designs, perfectly expressing each theme and variation, were always exquisitely and meticulously executed.
Every aspect of the cruel, jagged, crazy Mugler vision was taken to its most bizarre and most creative and most lunatic conclusion in the notorious Mugler fashion shows.
The Mugler gals of Thierry’s era—Pat Cleveland, Betty Lago, Dalma, Iman, Jerry Hall, Violetta Sanchez, Dauphine, L’Wren Scott, Naomi—smoldered down the runway looking as if they had just eaten their own young. In amongst the models du jour, Thierry thrust his favorite style icons—Tippi Hedren, Julie Newmar, Diana Ross, Patricia Hearst, Ivana and Ivanka Trump being a random sampling thereof.
And the music!
The typical Mugler fashion-show soundtrack featured an improbable mash-up of Puccini, Uum Kulthum, Carmen Miranda and Yma Sumac.
Who was Yma Sumac?
Yma Sumac was a Peruvian proponent of exotica. In the 1950s she took her four-octave range and used it to churn out fabulously atmospheric albums with titles like Voice of the Xtabay and Legend of the Sun Virgin. Alongside the tropical stylings of Martin Denny, Don Ho and Les Baxter, Yma’s music was heard at tiki bars across America during the fifties and sixties.
Yma, as depicted on the covers of her albums, was every inch the Mugler woman. Bitchy, remote and with an expression which says, “Don’t fuck with me. I like to ride on the back of a giant condor just for kicks and, besides, I am too busy enjoying my own private sick and twisted fantasy world to bother with the likes of you.”
I am an Yma fan of long standing. Her birdcall screechings, basso profondo growlings and incomprehensible Andean yodeling formed the backdrop to my life after I found a cache of her albums in a jumble sale in the early seventies.
In the eighties I was flicking through The Village Voice when—gasp, yodel, birdcall, screech!—I saw that Yma Sumac, she herself, would be appearing at a venue called the Ballroom.
I called Thierry in Paris and alerted him to the fact. He boarded the next plane.
Thierry decided that for his next show he would build a giant replica of Popocatépetl. At the finale, the volcano would erupt and Yma would emerge, singing all the while. Would she be open to such an idea? He had come to New York to find out.
Thierry combined his trip with a shoot or two. An accomplished photographer—Thierry often shot his own ads—he strapped a couple of girls to the top of the Chrysler Building, where they struck heroic attitudes while wearing scalpel-cut Mugler suits, dangling thousands of feet up in the air.
Thierry always loved to put a gal on the top of a building. This was less about suggesting an imminent suicide and more about deifying the model in question. His dream had always been to shoot a chick in Mugler couture atop the Mormon Temple in West Los Angeles, a singularly Mugler-esque piece of architecture. Permission has so far not been granted. One day.
The big night arrived. Yma’s New York comeback!
We—me and a whole gang of Yma fans including Joey Arias, Alix Malka, Chiclet Johanknecht, Nell Campbell, Lypsinka, David LaChappelle, Larissa, David Yarritu, Susanne Bartsch and John Badum—all ensconced ourselves excitedly in the cozy Ballroom auditorium. Expectations were running high. The Styrofoam pre-Colombian effigies flanking the stage only served to ratchet up our feverish anticipation.
Eventually the lights dimmed, the jungle drums started, and Yma appeared.
Enrobed in exotic chiffons, she looked exactly like her album covers, only slightly fleshier. Her demeanor was haughty and cold. Her eyeliner and lashes were showgirl perfect.
Thierry noted with satisfaction that she was wearing a midriff-exposing top. If she was bold and ballsy enough to reveal this much of herself at her age—she was born in 1922, so the Yma we were watching would have been in her mid-sixties—maybe she would be intrepid enough to allow Thierry to launch her heavenward from the bowels of an erupting volcano like so much diva lava.
The drumbeats continued. Yma struck angry princess poses, which reminded me of Maria Montez in Cobra Woman. We waited anxiously for her to sing.
Would she still be able to hit that dog-whistle top note? Could she still growl like an Amazonian leopard?
Bam!
Without any it’s-great-to-be-here preamble or warm-up banter, she launched straight into an aggressive rendition of “Goomba Boomba” from the album Mambo! Soaring and hooting and shrieking, she knocked it out of the park and straight up the Amazon.
We, of course, gave her a standing ovation. Did Yma care? Not really.
Despite the fawning, foaming fan worship frothing from the front row, Yma remained remote and rather bored looking. However, her queenly bearing only served to fuel our ardor.
Next came “Taita Inty,” from Voice of the Ixtabay. As fans of the song will know only too well, “Taita Inty” has a slow build, like Ravel’s “Bolero.” By the time she reached the crescendo, arms akimbo like a wicked chiffon-clad insect, we were on our feet again.
Next came “Jivaro,” a personal favorite of mine. When she reached the growl—grrrr J-I-V-A-R-O grrr—we let out a collective cheer. This did not go over well.
Yma looked startled. She stopped singing. When she realized that our exuberance was a response to her growling with such proficiency, she looked almost annoyed.
“Doesn’t everyone growl?” her pissed-off expression seemed to say.
As the set continued, it became abundantly clear that Yma was prone to mood swings. Her pianist seemed to be the focus of much of her irritation. On several occasions she would stop midsong and admonish him in some ancient Peruvian dialect, even though he was clearly a local dude. These castigations were often followed by her counting time with her finger, as if teaching the rudiments of music to a child.
Yma continued with her classic hits. Joy beamed from every face in the audience. The only person not enjoying the proceedings was Yma herself. Toward the end of her set, she suddenly developed an irrational aversion to her Styrofoam totems. Every time she caught sight of them she would recoil. This made no sense. I wanted to shout out, “What are you scared of, you crazy old Peruvian princess? After all, those are your ancient Styrofoam totems.”
Yma’s focus eventually shifted from her pianist and her totems to her dragon-lady fingernails. Between songs, and increasingly during songs, she began pressing each bloodred talon to make sure it was firmly attached. When she emerged from these distracting manicure sessions, she would glare at the pianist and make him start over. Her imperious gaze defied contradiction. It said, “You are the one who lost his place. Don’t blame me and my dragon-lady Lee Press-on nails.”
After the performance, Thierry went backstage to meet his idol and pop the question. Would she be willing to fly to Paris and explode from a flaming faux volcano?
We were on tenterhooks.
Thierry undertook this task alone: our collective enthusiasm had already unsteadied the great diva. If we all crammed into her dressing room and began gushing, she would probably spread her chiffon condor wings and fly straight back to Machu Picchu.
Eventually Thierry returned from his mission. We clustered round to see if Yma was up for it.
“Ymassuming she said yes.”
“Ymassuming she wants a ton of cash.”
“Ymassuming we are all off to Paree.”
Thierry described his surreal encounter with the Voice of the Xtabay. When he introduced himself, Yma was quick, almost insultingly quick, to respond that she had never heard the name Thierry Mugler.
Thierry tried appealing to her vanity. He thumbnailed the costume he would make for her. Referring to herself in the third person, as she did throughout the interview, she rejected the frock and the offer.
“But Yma already has so many beautiful gowns . . .”
We all repaired to the Odeon to lick our wounds and relive the undeniable magic of the evening.
During dinner, I sought to a
ssuage Thierry’s disappointment by telling him that, allegedly, Yma was not from Peru at all, and that her whole schtick was the invention of a record company, fabricated to meet the public’s taste for exotica.
“Some people say she was born in Brooklyn,” I explained, “and that her real name is Amy Camus, and that she had flipped it. Like Isaacs to Scaasi! Maybe it’s true. Maybe the whole Peruvian Inca bit is just made up.”
Thierry swallowed his filet mignon and then let out an anguished sigh. “But don’t you see? That makes her even more fabulous!”
the unkindness of chic
I ONCE INTERVIEWED the legendary fashion designer Sir Hardy Amies for Nest magazine. Not long after our cozy chat, Sir Hardy kicked the bucket. He was ninety-four years old. Did I kill him?
As I look back on the brief time we spent together, I am aware of a vague lingering sense of responsibility regarding his death. This results from the fact that, during the course of our conversation, I caused him to become somewhat agitated. I sincerely hope I did not hasten his demise in any way. Murdering a knight is a horrid thing to do.
Full disclosure: Hardy Amies is not my only maybe-I-had-a-hand-in-it celebrity death. I also suspect that I might have played a role in the snuffing out of Mr. Show Business himself, the late, great Liberace.
It all happened at one of his final concerts at Radio City. I was excited, turned on, if you will, by the unbridled richesse of his costumes. (Liberace floated on stage wearing a bejeweled purple ostrich cape.) During the curtain calls, I lost all inhibition and bum-rushed the stage with a lady friend named Henny Garfunkel. Henny has multiple ear piercings and a brazenly overpainted lip line. She bore no resemblance to the other female blue-hairs who were crushing toward their idol. She looked more like a bohemian kitchen witch.
There is no question that we—me with my rabid enthusiasm and my pal with her unconventional appearance—startled the gorgeously sequined old pianist. When confronted with our fan-worshipping ardor, Liberace drew back and his eyes popped wide open. Clearly he was freaked. His visage assumed a startled look as if he were experiencing a white-hot rectal shooting pain. A few weeks later, he too was pushing up the daisies. Did we kill him? I hope not. RIP, Lib.