Both dresses below are my designs in 1978, far left on me.
Dear Shaded Viewers,
This is really vintage…43 years ago…back in 1978, that is how long I’ve been involved in the fashion industry… I was just starting out as a fashion designer and my good friend Steve Menges was starting out as a photographer. This was the first dress that I ever designed. While I was designing my first collection I was also selling antique clothes. I did that to support my collection. I had no idea of timing like collections were proposed six months in advance, I just thought I’d show the collection when I was ready and then see if someone wanted to buy it. A friend, who was perfect sample size, took the designs to stores and they sold, of course I was clueless how to price them and probably lost money on all sales. I essentially grew up in public as far as designing went, I had my brand in New York for 13 years till I abandoned it and moved to Paris. At any rate many memories came back with the photos. I remember Annie Flanders, the fashion editor in chief of the SoHo News, came to my workroom and saw the dress on the mannequin and gave me a full page in the paper.
Out of the blue I received a mail from an ex-lover of Steve, Larry Gwinn, who told me how Steve had died of AIDES in 1993. I had moved to Paris in 1990 and was not aware of his death. By the time I moved I had lost so many, too many, friends to AIDES, that was the main reason why I was so happy to work with Susanne Bartsch on Balade de l’Amour, an AIDES benefit that took place in Paris in 1991. Her right arm in the benefit was my dear friend Gary Lee Pennington, a year later he died of AIDES just after his 30th birthday. People still get AIDES but now they are living with it even more than 4 decades, wish that had been the case back then…
Above, Gary Lee Pennington with his dog and a photo I took at an event for Francoise Auget the day Gary Lee died. He did the PR for the event and PR for Balade de l’Amour and commissioned me to take photos for Francoise’ s auction. Gary died that day and the auction went on. It was not very easy taking the photos and the twins in the photo above Gary was the only image that turned out on the roll of film, to me they looked like a symbol of death…
Later,
Diane
