Interview

At this late date, holiday pop-up shops have pretty much jumped the shark; the same goes for heritage brand fashion collaborations. That said, we found an exception last night at the launch of the Hurley by Pendleton pop-up shop, which runs through New Year's at NYC's Saturdays Surf. In addition to the whiskey, fresh-grilled brats, and live music they had a very current re-interpretation of the Pendleton boardshirt. Though the style wasn't named as such until 1992, this classic wool button-down has been a surf staple for decades. "In the 60's they didn't have wetsuits, so surfers would rub themselves down in Vaseline and wear a Pendleton shirt over it as a makeshift wetsuit," says Hurley designer John Cherpas, who slimmed down the brand's boxy silhouettes for a more modern fit as well as reinterpretting some Hurley jackets in Pendleton's classic fabrics. And if that blue check pattern looks familiar it's for good reason. "The Beach Boys wore it on the cover of "Surfin' Safari," says Cherpas. "They first started wearing these shirts back when they were still called The Pendletons. They thought it looked cool, because it looked like they were part of the surf culture."


Hurley by Pendleton pop-up shop through January 4. Saturdays Surf is located at 31 Crosby St between Broome and Grand. 

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"If it is not always possible to decipher what Patrick is saying," writes Anna Wintour in her introduction to Patrick Demarchelier's new monograph (SteidlDangin). "His pictures most definitely speak loud and clear." At Soho's Clic Gallery last night I got to experience both observations firsthand while speaking to the French-born, New York-based lensman, who was dressed down in jeans, sneakers and a grey hoodie for the US launch of the career-spanning book. Like Anna, I found myself struggling to catch every third word amidst the mob scene that was descending upon Demarchelier (one girl nearly broke a wine glass on him), but he remained clear when defining how he masters his model- and magazine-defining images. "I like to shoot very fast, before they have a chance to think about their expressions," says Demarchelier, admitting that while he was working as Princess Diana's official photographer, "We gave her a little more time because we loved her."

The eight-pound tome also contains some 400 arresting images of lone Baobab trees in Tanzania; Knicks legend Patrick Ewing cracking a rare smile; Richard Avedon working his own camera; and a brilliantly staged portrait of Yves Saint Laurent with Pierre Bergé from 2004; not to mention hundreds of beautiful, primarily nude women. "More than anything he knows how to make women beautiful with nothing but a camera," says longtime retoucher Pascal Dangin, who curated the September 2008 retrospective, Patrick Demarchelier: Images et Mode at the Petit Palais, which birthed the book. "It's not easy. As he talks to you in the beginning of a session, you don't think you're being photographed, then just when you think about starting to pose it's over and he's got the best picture of you. But that takes a ton of preparation." For his part, Dangin was tasked with choosing the order of the book's images so they "introduced people to [Demarchelier] in the most pure form." Which is why you'll find a blooming profile of Christy Turlington from a 1992 British Vogue shoot on the cover followed immediately by a whimsical pic of Demarchelier's dachshund Puffy. Which begs the question, does Demarchelier have a favorite subject? "Not really. I don't stop at my past, I like new work," he says. "I like what I'm doing tomorrow."

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"This book has been 55 years in the making," says Mickey Leigh of his recently released "family memoir" I Slept With Joey Ramone. In it the writer-rocker-Ramones contributor (born Mitchel Lee Hyman) details growing up in Forest Hills and Howard Beach as the little brother of the punk avatar once known as Jeffry Ross Hyman. The book began in earnest as a column for the downtown punk rag, New York Waste with a title that was meant to "grab everyone's attention," says Leigh. "The story was really about me getting scared when I was two or three years old and going to sleep in my big brother's bed."

Some of the most entertaining pieces in the book are the childhood moments only a brother would remember like having rock fights with the neighborhood bullies, quiet anger over losing songwriting credits on Ramones tracks, Joey pulling a knife on Leigh and their mother, or even Joey's passion for ice skating. "Really, who the hell would have thought that?" says Leigh. "It was the one sport he really enjoyed and was actually good at it, maybe because he had those long, strong legs."  To take it beyond the strictly personal Leigh also brought on Punk magazine co-founder Legs McNeil to help him conduct 50 interviews—with everyone from Bono to Ramones' mother, Charlotte Lesher, who died in 2007. "The tricky part was that Legs had been in this world of doing oral, uncensored histories [like the seminal Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk] and that's not what I had in mind at all," says Leigh, who actually had to turn in the chapter on his brother dying of lymphoma almost six years to the date of his death. "I kept trying to take myself out of the story, but my publisher wanted the personal approach. I only wanted the quotes where it was really necessary for things that I didn't really want to say myself."  

For instance, when his brother got drunk and threw a television at then-girlfriend Angela, Leigh and Legs got her take so it didn't seem like he was making any unbalanced swipes in his brother's absence. The same could be said for detailing the difficulties the band encountered while recording End of the Century with Phil Spector, Johnny Ramone stealing away and marrying Joey's girlfriend Linda, or the medical report Leigh obtained from St. Vincent's to inform his writing about his brother's crippling OCD, which got so bad Leigh once had to take Joey back to JFK after a flight from England so he could "rectify the mistake of not having stepped off the curb properly." "I put it in there so people would really know what happened and to inspire people who've been in similar situations," says Leigh of the medical revelations which have stirred up some controversy. While critics and fans have been very receptive to the book's unflinching narrative, as evidenced by a packed reading in Tribeca this Tuesday and early interest from studios about making it into a film, Leigh's also received some angry letters from old friends like Ramones ex-manager Danny Fields. "He wrote me this letter saying how despicable I am. It's like the The Ox-bow Incident, like he was trying to start a lynch mob or something," says Leigh. "Maybe he was mad because he was trying to write his own Joey Ramone biography. But the real fans on the fan boards at JoeyRamone.com have been really touched by it and they would have been the most critical."

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In the early 1980s, Andy Warhol gave Sante D'Orazio his first assignment for an American magazine (this one), right around the time the then-budding fashion photographer started making his diaries. "I started [making them] because back then I had to be my own accountant, my own lawyer, my own producer and I wasn't going to remember how many rolls of film I shot that day. Even back then I didn't have a memory," says D'Orazio of his process, which references the infamous style of the diaries kept by his great friend and mentor Peter Beard. "Then I hated the empty pages so I'd just fill them in with the things I did that day, the label of a wine bottle I had at dinner or matches from the restaurant. It became my daily meditation when I ended my day, my transition from my workday to my so-called home life."

In 1998 he turned these meditations into his first book, A Private View, a behind-the-scenes look into the frenzy that is the fashion world and the attendant celebrities who make it sparkle. Now he's back with the follow-up, Barely Private, which launched last night at New York's Taschen bookstore. I spoke with him before the source material for yet another bawdy diary descended. Whether it's the witty marginalia of late nights at the Rose Bar with Jack White and Warren Beatty, a funny snapshot of Larry Gagosian parading around in a mask in St. Barth's, or a decade's worth of self-portraits ,the book is a wild romp through the life of a truly indefatigable jetsetter who's revealing more and more of himself these days.

"It's a self-portrait. The first one was a little more decorative in the sense that you have supermodels, this and that. I don't want to use the word careful, but in comparison it's a tiny bit more careful," says D'Orazio. "This book is where I make girls who are not supermodels look just as good if not better." Or as Ed Rusha puts in his pithy intro, "His pictures are remarkably free of staging tactics...he makes cleavage growl like a dog."


MICHAEL SLENSKE: Have you always been doing journals like this?

SANTE D'ORAZIO: I've been doing them since '81. I was in Milan and somebody gave me a Trussardi diary and I thought "Genius." Inside I put the Polaroids, how much film I shot, who I shot with. This way for billing later on I had all the information.

SLENSKE: So it's almost for your own record?

D'ORAZIO: Yeah, and every day became a note because I either edited that day or shot that day or met so-and-so. It developed out of necessity, and then it became total addiction and habit.

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