Interview

But first, a slightly easier-to-negotiate Sprouse moment happened in New York, an homage flashback to the late designer (now likely wearing Day-Glo camo in Nirvana) hosted by Louis Vuitton andDeitch Projects.

“We went in to see the Stephen Sprouse fashion show. It was early but it was mobbed already. My seat was gone, so I took Charivari’s. Teri Toye, the transvestite, was in the show. And everybody was saying it was like the sixties. The show wasgreat, really the fashion is so good again with these disco kids, they have a real look. Like the boys with thestraight cut over one eye. So extreme now.”—The Andy Warhol Diaries, May 1, 1984

Andy adored SS. At Interview back in the day, he was family. I remember skating with him and Paige Powell at Wollman Rink. He always talked really slowly and kindly, and he listened carefully, as if he were having trouble following what you were saying.

On January 8, 2009, designer Marc Jacobs opened his Vuitton boutique homage to SS in SoHo. The floors were tagged with Day-Glo SS script. TheJacobs-designed sneaks with Velcro claspswere SS to the nth, and the sale of SS-tagged skateboards benefited Free Arts nyc. A few blocks away, at Deitch Projects, the hired AH’s at the door weren’t listening to anyone, creating a velvet-rope S&M situation. They didn’t let in JamesReginato from W, and even denied access to Paige, SS’s BFF. Still, the Deitch show of SS’s art and fashion felt historic, as if his canvas of Iggy Pop on the cross were some undiscovered religious artifact. Rock on, rock angel! Later, Vuitton transformed the Bowery Ballroom into an SS tribute venue, complete with vintage video. SS’s family commandeered one fork of the VIP balcony, where his angel mom in a red leopard-print scarf waved at Debbie Harry, another SS BFF, onstage. Both Harry, a punk angel, and SS’s mom have similar broad and beautiful faces. Paige’s cousin Hilary stood on a Plexi cube for a better view of Debbie, but some leather dudes shoved her off the box to grind one another. What AHs! When I asked Paige about Cal, -Stephen’s model friend,another rock angel, she told me that he had died -recently of a brain aneurysm. “Only the good die young” doesn’t begin to -describe the S&M downer of Stephen and Cal missing this insanely wonderful SS moment.