The promise of spring is finally starting to put a positive little ding on my thoughts and fears, which have been exponentially expanding with the pace of bodies being layered into refrigerated trucks outside New York City hospitals.

Just a month ago, I was in Manhattan, excited to be there on the final day of a fashion art exhibit at the Society of Illustrators. I met my old friend John, who dates back to our early years in Hell’s Kitchen (mid-1970s) when he lived across the hall of a fifth floor walk-up all the way west near 11th Avenue, and introduced him to Bil Donovan, the show’s curator. Bil is what I wanted to be when I first arrived in New York City—a bonafide fashion artist star. And deservedly so. I have no envy, only awe at his talent, focus, and arc. We all come from varying degrees of working-class Pennsylvania, and I’m pretty sure we all pinch ourselves that we’ve managed to live our dream in New York City.

For this exhibit—“The Visionaries”—Bil rallied many of the same fashion artists that inspired me when I was an eager young sponge. Included were works by three of my favorite Parsons instructors—Bobbi Pearlman, Al Pimsler, and Albert Elia—as different as chalk, cheese, and Chinese checkers.

On that early spring-like day, we all knew a little bit about the coronavirus, but no real alarms were being sounded. A touching-of-elbows greeting was performed by some with a smile of self-awareness, as a hopefully unnecessary precaution. Of course John and I hugged. The devastating rollout that soon would cross continents and oceans was still being met at the top with: “It’s a hoax” (of course, “perpetrated by the Democrats”). It’s a cold. It’s nothing. Dismissive drivel and drool from the president was constant when prodded—the same person who had recently gutted the Center for Disease Control’s pandemic response team. And, racist to the core, he insisted on calling it “the Chinese flu.”

Good-natured diners at the Society of Illustrators acclimated to our group of about fifteen hovering over them, as Bil gave democratic attention (with low-key charm and a scholarly fashion knowledge) to each piece of artwork on the walls of the café. John and I then relaxed on the patio, enjoying some late winter sun, planning his birthday celebration. On April 7 we had tickets for Patti LuPone in Company, and we were jazzed. Here the two of us were after all these years, “ladies who lunch.”

We then wandered up Madison Avenue to Bemelmans Bar at the Hotel Carlyle for a taste of vintage Cafe Society. Ludwig Bemelmans’ demented bunnies painted on murals and lampshades are always a delightful reminder that there is still a touch of an old New York time warp to tumble into. And so we did, on that day shortly before the city closed up shop.

John is always a fixture on Fifth Avenue for the Easter Parade. He alternates between bunny ears and elaborately flowered hats, always with a spiffy bowtie, prompting smiles and photos as he revels in his own particular fashion-art expression. This year the parade is cancelled. If John is out and about, practicing social distancing, a matching mask will be part of his get-up. John lived through the AIDS crisis up close and personal, so he dourly proclaims, “This ain’t my first ride at the rodeo.”

On Easter Sunday I’ll be isolated here at my house with my cats, blasting my Jesus Christ Superstar album. Hoping for a complete resurrection of all we fear may be dead.

By my third and final year of art school the soft, black stick of charcoal was a natural extension of my arm, its loosely controlled line cantering over the newsprint pad. The class with the freest range was taught by Barbara Pearlman, whose own lush fashion drawings adorned the Galey and Lord textile ads appearing in Vogue and Women’s Wear Daily since the mid-1960s. We longed to emulate or even (was it possible?) transcend her, and basked in her approval when she nodded her head at our efforts. Dark-haired and -eyed, she was gypsy-fiery, brimming with both confidence and charisma—qualities I wished I had, or could still attain.

But “Bobbi” Pearlman did not prepare us to churn out gracious Murray Hill fashion plates for Lord & Taylor’s loyal lady customers browsing the Sunday Times over tea and croissants. Not by a long shot. The models she hired veered from sweetly eccentric to truly bizarre, the fringe of the Warhol fringe, not-yet-iconographic downtown denizens.

With the hippie scene a decomposing compost heap somewhere in middle America and the neon dawn of punk yet to break on the city’s horizon, the missing evolutionary link was found in this room on lower Fifth Avenue, in these living, breathing mannequins who flourished in the tar pit of a time when New York City was teetering on the brink of bankruptcy.

None possessed the healthy, golden glow of a Cheryl or a Christie or a Cybill. Instead, we had towering transvestites in platform shoes and glam rock Lurex, striking the exaggerated poses of their Hollywood heroines, reveling being on any stage, even a plywood platform in the middle of a drawing class. Others—Dietrich-esque women with pencil-thin eyebrows, slicked back hair, and bored expressions—languished in their men’s pinstripes as we dragged chalk lines around the forms, into our sketch pads. Fleshy dominatrixes in full regalia straddled fishnet-gartered legs over wooden chairs to assume Bob Fosse slouches, while we smudged the red pastel rouge onto their portraits with abandon. — Hell’s Kitchen and Couture Dreams

copyright Sharon Watts