Pop Culture

So You Wanna Be A Fashion Illustrator

~ DIRNDL SKIRT

Forty-five years ago (!) (I just did the math, both in my head and on the calculator), I was shifting into what would ultimately be the ejector seat that got me to where I am today. Which is sitting in a chair at my computer, going through digital mountains of Collyer Brothers-style desktop folders filled with scans of my art through the decades. Over the years I have often detoured from the fashion art I had felt destined to create since childhood, but the whimsical style that became my career trademark is all here— interspersed with more serious veins I tapped into through collage, assemblage, and photography. This is one of my new year’s resolutions: to see what all I have and organize it. The archivist in me is following her slightly OCD’d lead.

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I still have my tackle box for toting art supplies, and my first and only pack of Color-aid paper. All purchases were made at the Parsons School of Design “company store” in 1971.

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After a bumpy first semester, where I decided that Draping and I were never going to be a seamless match, I switched departments from Fashion Design to Fashion Illustration. And the rest is, shall we say, history.

By the end of the first semester, I had managed to extricate myself from the Fashion Design department and was transferred into Fashion Illustration with my full scholarship intact. Amid my angst of landing in the wrong place after all those childhood years of strategic fashion career planning, there was also discomfort from my weight gain and shame. I no longer enjoyed dressing inventively, or envisioning myself in my own creations that had once filled spiral sketchbooks. Besides, I had gotten a whiff of where fashion was heading and I wasn’t embracing it. Counterculture values were combining with my newly hatching mores, convincing me that there were more important things to focus on than French bodices and cutting fabric on the bias. Besides, the current styles were meant for very thin, androgynous people.

Like Richard—my first openly gay friend—who always came to draping class with a pale midriff peeking out from under a cropped sweater, slim arms stacked wrist to elbow with his signature chunky Art Deco bakelite bracelets. From there, it was a short trajectory to the glam rock look that would erupt onstage just one year and a few blocks away from our Avenue A apartment, at CBGB’s on the Bowery.

After the department transfer, I found myself in the deep end with city sophisticates from the High School of Art and Design—mostly young women with names like Romney, Anelle, and Karin (with an “i”)—poised and secure on their classroom stools, and in their place in the world, or so it seemed to me. They wore boutique folkloric blouses and pricey Frye boots, and were clannish with each other and chummy with the teachers. Desks lined three sides of the classroom, freeing up the wall for us to hang our 18” X 24” newsprint pad sketches. I would compare our differing styles, wondering if I could hold my chin above water in that talent pool on the Upper East Side.

Soon I would even be mixing with the General Illustration department, leaving behind Women’s Wear Daily dish for discussions about Cat Stevens, Carlos Castaneda, and Color Theory.

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Fri. Jan.21, 1972

Dear Mom,

I like illustration a lot. Here is my schedule:

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Even tho my course names are repeated, I always have a different teacher. No homework so far, either. This weekend, Tessa and I are going to art galleries, buying furniture, going to church (?!) (you heard right—Norman Vincent Peale’s), eating out in a cheese restaurant, and seeing A Clockwork Orange (again).

There’s so many things (little) wrong with the apartment—the piping at the tub still leaks (it was fixed once), there hasn’t been hot water, & no heat! We might check out another apartment on 12th St. that is a bit smaller and $200/month to our $180. Ours has more character but is more of a fire trap. Also, in my bedroom, the ceiling is cracked and water or something leaked along the cracks from the apartment above us. Plus someone is breaking into mailboxes.

I’m in a life drawing class now, on a break. I think the only other “A” in Life Drawing besides me last semester was Richard.
Well, that’s all that happened.
Love,
Sharon
P.S. Art supplies CO$T A LOT!! — Hell’s Kitchen and Couture Dreams

copyright Sharon Watts

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“Fasten Your Seat Belts . . .”

~ DIRNDL SKIRT

Two days after the presidential election, I was in the city—my emotional touchstone. All day long I had done my walking meditation, hobbling in new (but sturdy) shoes, from Grand Central to the Upper East Side, through Central Park and over to Riverside Drive. I sometimes forgot that this was a new world. A lunch date with a friend I had reconnected with after a thirty-year hiatus had us lamenting the “good old bad old days” in Hell’s Kitchen. With what we’d been through in our lives, we could deal with this looming apocalypse, right?

Darkness fell, and I continued down upper Broadway past the Trump Tower on Columbus Circle that replaced the Gulf & Western Building (which housed an underground movie theater in 1970, where I first saw Midnight Cowboy). Finally, heading down Eight Avenue somewhere in the 40s, I realized I was desperately seeking comfort, looking for familiar landmarks to pin me to a map in my head (and heart) that went back over forty years.

Entire blocks are now eviscerated. Blarney Stones have yielded to video game streetscapes, a Trump-visioned hell. I didn’t expect such physical disorientation that had me second- and third-guessing my sanity as I tried to locate a cross street sign. Passing the neon reminder that Smith’s Bar still existed, I briefly considered ducking into the neighborhood hangout that I had never hung out in. Spiffed up by new owners, it teemed with pre-theater goers—something that definitely was not part of the Runyonesque clientele that reflected the neighborhood back in 1972. I wasn’t looking for a yuppified Times Square institution. I was looking for a place that felt timeless. All I wanted was something even peripherally from my past, that predated Disney’s porn-ification of Times Square.

Swinging a left onto a stretch of 44th Street layered like a pastrami sandwich with tourists lined up for their 7 p.m. curtain times, I saw the sign.

sardis

Of course.

In 1971, when I lived within spitting distance of the legendary landmark

—famous for its celebrity caricatures marla-maples and frequented by Broadway stars and theater critics—

I was too intimidated to enter. Now I was ready. I was fastening my seat belt for a bumpy four years.

With my modest monthly allowance, I somehow managed to see almost every play that came to life within the neon trapezoid that encompassed the theater district. Balcony seats in 1971 cost $7, yet I had another, still more frugal ploy. I would arrive at intermission break, mingle with the crowd outside, then enter with them for the second act. Making my way up to the rear balcony, I discreetly nestled on the aisle steps, unreported by the paying seat holders and unnoticed by the usherettes in their prim white collars and black cardigans. By now their flashlights were off and they were clustered in the ladies’ lounge puffing on cigarettes or catching up on gossip. By now, they were far too jaded to the magic happening on stage.

Fri. Sept. 17th, 1971
Dear D____ ,
It’s now 11:30, & Penny & I just got back from a walk around town. First we had ice cream at Howard Johnson’s, where we’re pretty good friends with this guy that works at the counter. He always gives us extra and 1/2 off. Then we felt so full we had to walk around (it was dark) & it was really nice—everyone dressed up to go to the theatre. But we decided to walk through the lobbies of the big hotels. First the Taft (to go to the bathroom), then the NY Hilton. We glanced in the Kismet Room at the Hilton, & these guys (def. between 25-60) invited us in & we said we didn’t have any money but they said they’d buy, so they were smashed & we had 2 sloe gin fizzes a piece, plus the musician came by to play the accordian & sing. They spent $3 on each of us & invited us to see Englebert Humperdink right up the street, but we declined & got out. Then we hit the Warwick, the Park Lane (Central Park South—very ritzy) & the Plaza—just hitting the newsstands & gawking at the classy lobbies. Then we went past Thursday’s, a night-clubbish bar/restaurant for “young singles,” & ended up talking to the doorman who wanted Penny’s number. It was about 10:15, so we headed home. . . . Did I tell you about the Hare Krishna guy who got us in his apartment? — Hell’s Kitchen and Couture Dreams

copyright Sharon Watts

Meet Me on MacDougal Street ~ Part 1

~ DIRNDL SKIRT ~ 4 Comments

Street awnings

On this hot July weekend I gravitated twice in two days to the neighborhood where I spent the summer of 1972. Miraculously, not much has changed on the stretch of MacDougal that was right around the corner from my Bleecker Street tenement.

Friday, I dipped into the cool of Caffe Reggio for an iced cappuccino. It’s hard to tell if any grime has ever been removed from the old world paintings, and the only upgrade I could detect was electrical outlets added for laptops popped open on the small marble tables. 

Cafe Reggio interior

I looked around and was relieved to see something else—a paucity of tourists! Instead, young city dwellers (iGens, my savvy Boomer buddy from days of yore informed me) holed up in the still cozy surroundings, plugged into the old Beat Generation vibe for the price of an espresso.

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This young bohemian’s parents met here, she told me. “If it weren’t for Caffe Reggio I wouldn’t exist!”

By the spring of 1972, the neighborhood’s charms had tarnished a bit since the Beat Generation made it their digs a decade or so earlier. Still, junkies nodding out near West 4th Street couldn’t completely mar the aural graffiti scratched by Bob Dylan onto Washington Square. Our stoop put us directly opposite the famed Cafe Figaro.

In fact, there were authentic Beat cafes everywhere we turned. I discovered the nirvana of cappuccino—heavenly foam forming a cinnamon cloud cover to the dark, rich roast I had never before experienced. I’d sit at a sidewalk table, sipping slowly with the regulars, rubbing shoulders with ghosts of beatniks past. I learned to diplomatically deflect the panhandlers, all the while keeping an eye peeled for Dylan to stroll by with Donovan, interpreting “Subterranean Homesick Blues” as he gave Sunshine Superman the grand tour before ducking down Minetta Lane. The Fat Black Pussycat was still there, a cafe where Dylan supposedly penned “Blowin’ In the Wind.” But my main haunt was the dark-walled Caffe Reggio that opened onto the street near West 3rd. The many solo patrons kept to themselves, and so did I. I was learning how easy it was to be alone without being lonely. With no Camus at hand—not even Ginsberg’s “Howl”—I hunkered down with my cappuccino and cannoli, embracing my own anonymity. — Hell’s Kitchen and Couture Dreams

copyright Sharon Watts

my cappucino
Yum!

Attic Archaeology

~ DIRNDL SKIRT ~ 2 Comments

Attic overview

In my attic is my own personal Collyer Brothers scenario. Childhood scrapbooks tower precariously as I trip over shoe boxes filled with the dubious bounty of a lifetime’s routine—over-sentimentalizing or saving for posterity. Contents include a not-quite complete set of Beatle bubblegum cards (both black & white and color), the long hair I chopped off just before my church Confirmation (my patron saint in 1967 became Twiggy), and elementary school classroom photos that I look at and can still name nearly everyone (!) Plus all my report cards (Where did that D in Algebra come from?) I can easily get lost in the past. But I am archiving! Not going crazy. Not yet.

art & scrapbooks

Shifting around my ankles are layers of my old art—from my earliest attempts at drawing princesses (on the back of Civil Defense notebooks—Duck and Cover!), to the waning work-for-hire that I still do—a stratum of my life in fashion-centric art.

Necklines & heart hems

I find my Scholastic Award from 1971—my ticket to New York. The accompanying art is somewhere in here . . . under yellowing newsprint pads and portfolio pages and illustration boards and spiral sketchbooks. The cement of memory is dry and flaky in spots, but what I remember most are my dreams, and how light I once felt. I was going to fly like a crow from the only nest I knew, and make a new one in a skyscraper. Or a railroad flat.

Ali MacGraw

Incessantly creating outfits for paper dolls in fourth grade was a sure sign that I was a future fashion designer, despite a brief defection into the world of secret agents. TV shows like The Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Avengers, and Honey West toyed with my trajectory as cool characters in chic black turtlenecks and trench coats, walking pet ocelots on leashes, filled the screen. I soon realized I was not so much interested in thwarting Evil as I was fixated on what figure I would cut while taking an Emma Peel stance, my diamond-encrusted mini-derringer aimed at the enemy agent.

My subscription to Seventeen magazine (a fifteenth birthday gift), was added to a tower of 16 magazines that kept me in tune with all my favorite pop stars, and I continued exploring ways to express myself in the trendy world of fashion. Which, in the Mod 60s, was everywhere.

By my senior year, the high point of my creative life so far was winning a National Scholastic Art award. This was the holy grail for our public high school art department, with the winners exhibited in New York City. I had entered a fashion drawing; my subject: Ali MacGraw, fresh from Love Story, lounging in a maxi-skirt. Instead of just rendering from a photograph, I used white line on a black background, with the skirt pattern  popping out of the negative space.

“Can I go to New York to see my art? Please, Mom, please please?” — Hell’s Kitchen and Couture Dreams

copyright Sharon Watts

Elvis and Me (and another footnote that I won’t go into here)

~ DIRNDL SKIRT ~ 1 Comment

Looking back, I realize this was a busy weekend in June 1972.

I remembered that I had seen the King.

And that I lost (or tossed) my virginity.

I just forgot the particulars.

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The collective cultural energy building up was from the littered streets, the cracks in the sidewalk, the “are you talkin’ to me?” and “I’m walking here” and fuck-you attitude of survivors that perhaps has always been the backbone of the city. Holly Golightly had retreated to the wings and Patti Smith was about to take center stage.

I must have sensed this changing of the guard when I purchased a ticket to see Elvis at Madison Square Garden. I probably should see him before he dies, I thought, already shelving and archiving a cultural icon who represented so much of the America I grew up in. I went by myself partly because no one I knew was interested. But mostly because—I realized even then—I feel most comfortable when alone in a crowd. I sat in five dollar nosebleed seats behind the stage, never really connecting with The King on that sold-out afternoon. For all these years I assumed that I had seen “fat Elvis” on the ebb. While perusing a forty year-old scrapbook, a yellowed New York Post review fell out and I read to discover that this was his first live appearance in New York since the 1950s, and one of his finest. I wish I had felt it at the time. — Hell’s Kitchen and Couture Dreams

It was a great show that Elvis Presley put on at the Garden last night, this cornball express, this John Wayne of music, this heavyweight champion in a game that his successors don’t play anymore —Alfred G. Aronowitz

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Fred B. contact info
for a good time?

copyright Sharon Watts