Interview

SEPTEMBER 1987

Edit DeAk is an art critic who published Art-Rite in the 70s.

Edit DeAk: When did you start making clothes for Debbie Harry?

SS: In 1975, I moved into the building that she and Chris Stein lived in. They lived on the bottom floor. I lived on the top floor with a hot plate. The guy who owned the building lived in the middle. We all became friends. As for the clothes, we'd cut up old stuff and pin it together. Then they'd go up the street and play at CBGB's. Punk kind of started in New York and then went to England. I think Malcolm McLaren was here at the time, handing around with the [New York] Dolls, and England made punk really big.

ED: Aren't you just repeating punk?

SS: Right now it's kind of repeating a ten-year period. I think the reason cycles are being repeated is that in this People magazine generation, information gets absorbed so fast that you've got to repeat the past quicker. You can basically repeat what was in style a couple of years ago, and it's new gain because so much was absorbed in the meantime.

ED: There's no new image anyway, right?

SS: No. There's nothing new happening in New York and there hasn't been for some time. It's kind of weird. Maybe next year; 1988 should be a good year. Plus it's only twelve years until the year 2000.

ED: Do you think you're working toward space, the space age?

SS: I hope so. New York is so boring that you've got to leave it as much as possible, go wherever you can and see whatever you can, and bring that information back and recycle it, put it out as something new. That's why space shuttles would be great—you could go out to space and get ideas and get new ideas and information and bring them back.

ED: What about space creatures?

SS: I think because of sex we would want them to be kind of like us at least physically.

ED: You'd like to have sex with an outer-space person.

SS: Yeah. Wouldn't you?