Sex, Clothes, & Rock and Roll
(NEW YORK) What happens when you get a business impresario, a renowned photographer, a music legend, a young designer, the woman who made Carrie Bradshaw look so damn cute, and the man who made windows interesting again on a stage together? Well, when the topic is sex and music and fashion, a whole lot. Monday night, Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall hosted interSEXtion: rock & roll * runway * retrospective, with panelists Tommy Ramone, Damon Dash, Patricia Field, Mark Seliger, and Zac Posen, moderated by Simon Doonan. "We just wanted to use the word "sex" at Carnegie Hall," laughed Jimmy Zankel, co-chair of the Carnegie Hall Notables, as he introduced the evening. The Notables raise money to introduce a younger generation to music, and are currently funding a program called the Academy in conjunction with the Juilliard School, which brings the finest post-grad musicians to the city and offers them a stipend to teach music education at local public schools while they continue with their own musical training and performing.
The topic of the evening was the meeting point of music and fashion, which in this day and age means, "Everyone in the music industry looks like a hooker. Let's call it porno-chic," according to Doonan. "It seems to me nowadays that Janis Joplin wouldn't be able to get her clog in the door without a full makeover!" The panelists conceded that the music industry these days was plagued with skimpy clothing and tabloid concern, with Dash remarking, "No real artist could care less about the tabloids, and those seeking publicity and wearing revealing clothes aren't real artists." As the conversation shifted to the direction that fashion was going in--for the music industry and in general--Posen remarked, "There's definitely a disheveled glamour grunge thing in the air. Just look at Amy Winehouse, Kate Moss, Pete Doherty. People respond to that. And Marc Jacobs did it on his runway this season." Dash, a crowd favorite, simply said, "I never understood that whole, 'It's cool to be dirty thing. Why would you want to do that?'"
Though the evening was full of lighthearted conversation, jokes, and visual treats--Posen showed a stunning gown of his that had been edited out of the Spring 2008 collection at the last minute for "sexiness," while Seliger gave the audience a glimpse into his iconic oeuvre with a slideshow of photos he took of Fleetwood Mac, Jerry Garcia, Courtney Love, and many others--at one point an audience member asked about the merits of fashion in a time like this, with a climate in crisis and a world at war. Field, currently working on costuming the Sex and the City movie and launching a small collection with Payless, was keen to respond. "I studied philosophy and art and history, and I spent a large portion of my life dealing with fashion and thinking how frivolous it is. But now, with all the ugliness we see around us today, I'm thinking that the work I do isn't so frivolous. It brings beauty and happiness to a world that's so tortured, and it makes me really happy that I can be a part of that."
JENNIFER BARTON
