MATTE profiled trailblazing fashion icon and creative director Susanne Bartsch as she designed and styled three irreverent looks for The Hunger Games' Capitol Couture Magazine.
Photographer Steven Klein was on hand to capture Susanne's designs worn by supermodel Hannah Davis; check out a preview of our feature above and view the full three-minute piece on the Samsung+ app on Galaxy phones.
It was an age of excess, and at the center of it all was a party promoter named Susanne Bartsch. For each of her parties—from her monthly parties at venerable Midtown club Copa in the late 80s to her annual Halloween extravaganzas at Palladium in the 90s—the tall, thin, angular Swiss-born Bartsch would spend hours assembling a unique look. Her outfits—which invariably included an outsized headdress, makeup, corseted body armor, and matching shoes—would combine threads from her designer friends with bits of so-called "found fashion" she discovered lying around ...
Susanne Bartsch is a well known muse for fashion designers and makeup artists. Born in Switzerland she moved to swinging London as a teenager, and ended up in New York in 1981. Bartsch opened a boutique in Soho while still on a tourist visa, something that today is unthinkable. She was also one of the first New York retailers to import British designers to the United States ...
Document visits MoMA/PS1 for Susanne Bartsch's annual halloween party. Photographer Dustin Pittman shoots some his favorite, and most imaginative costumes of the evening. "Having some of the most creative artists wearing such imaginative creations on this special night in front of my lens is magic for me." We couldn't agree more ...
Nightlife without women would be like a meal without a table, plates, and utensils. A traditionally male dominated field, club life has been sparked by female club owners, promoters and “It girls” who liven up the scene with glamour, smarts, and a sense of how to take a party to the next level. While thuggish types sit in a back room and count the money, it’s often the ladies who plant themselves in the key lighting and make an event worth going to in the first place ...
“It’s too early in the morning to wear lashes,” Susanne Bartsch says as she greets the press for the preview of Fashion Underground: The World of Susanne Bartsch, now on view at The Museum at FIT, New York, through December 5, 2015. The exhibition features approximately 80 looks from Bartsch’s personal collection of clothing, accessories, and hair that have made her the reigning queen of New York nightlife for over three decades ...
With guest-list in hand, a lifelike replica of Susanne Bartsch leads a line of mannequins en maquillage, greeting guests at an alley-like entrance to the Museum at FIT's Fashion Underground exhibit. Behind closed doors, black walls, disco balls and 80+ designer-clad divas pay tribute to the 'Queen of NYC Nightlife' in a club-themed showcase of clothing as a means of transformation. From her first party in 1986 to the weekly productions almost 30 years later, Susanna Bartsch continues to unite the creatively energetic in a flamboyant ecosystem of self-expression. Keep reading for a look into the exhibit (and some great ideas for Halloween!) ...
“There was the uptown and the downtown, the gays, the straights, socialites, Brazilian dancers, muscle men... We had it all!” Talking to Susanne Bartsch is like scrolling through Instagram photos of the best party you’ll never attend – you’re just asking for FOMO. The original ringmaster of after-dark counter culture, Bartsch is practically a New York institution: since moving to the city in 1981, she’s opened innovative fashion stores, raised $2.5 million for AIDS advocacy and hosted too many wild disco parties to count. Running a series of legendary nights in the 80s and 90s, first at Savage, and later at the Copacabana, Bartsch’s infectious energy and madcap personal style was a magnet for New York’s new underground: upstarts like Keith Haring and Marc Jacobs mingled with legends like Leigh Bowery and Laurie Anderson, while drag culture was made visible in an art and fashion context for the first time ...
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Bartsch was one of the driving forces behind the emergence of household British designers like Vivienne Westwood and John Galliano in New York’s fashion scene, introduced through a boutique she operated in SoHo in the 80s. But it’s her role as a nightlife figure during the same period that truly cements her status as an icon. The proclaimed “Queen of the Night” hosted incredible and diverse parties at clubs like Copacabana and created "Love Ball" nights in Harlem that brought vogue to national attention. The persistence of extravagant club culture is due in large part to Bartsch’s groundwork in the past ...
If I was asked to describe Susanne Bartsch in one word it would be “enduring.” The woman has been on the New York nightlife scene longer than I’ve been alive. And she is still killing it. If this show (featuring 100’s of her outfits from the 1980’s to today) is anything to go by Susanne Bartsch has a wardrobe the size of the World Trade Center, and nothing in there is remotely boring. The show’s curator Valerie Steele had this to say about Susanne’s closet to the website Racked: “In the 80s and early 90s, there was a lot of this kind of excess of fashion, but it sort of disappeared. But Susanne is still waving the freak flag for that sort of thing, and I think a lot of people miss that...It’s a nice moment to remind people that there’s other aspects of fashion.” Yesss honey, it’s time the kids of NYC stepped up their game. Life’s too short to be dressed in all black, find some feathers and a bejeweled corset and a lime green alien jumpsuit and have some fun. It’s fashion, not brain surgery. Fashion Underground is on now until Dec 5th at FIT. Don’t miss it darrrrrrling!
Kleider aus Puppenköpfen, schwarze Perücken mit Zöpfen bis zum Boden, goldglänzende Stiefel und ausladende weisse Engelsflügel: Die Outfits von Susanne Bartsch können gar nicht schrill genug sein.
Auch noch auf der vollsten Tanzfläche im dunkelsten Club muss sie damit auffallen, herausstechen und fotografiert werden können, das gehört zu ihrem Job. Bartsch ist Partyveranstalterin und hat sich mit ihren Sausen in New York zur Legende hochgefeiert ...
Most exhibition openings don’t end up in Page Six. Valerie Steele’s Museum at FIT did just that when her door staff turned away Bette Midler from an opening night crowd that brought together Calvin Klein, Norma Kamali, Amanda Lepore, and RuPaul. Apparently the event was at capacity, as several Fashion Week events were, although world-famous singers usually don’t have a problem making it in ...
A moth with a taste for luxury fashion is bedeviling Susanne Bartsch. Arriving at the Museum at FIT's exhibit dedicated to her, she has in her hands a nibbled swath of Alexander McQueen cashmere. Why, she wants to know, does this pesky insect only target the designer pieces in her wardrobe?
If you mix the Ziegfeld Follies, Mardi Gras, the ball culture drag happenings of Harlem, the 1980s and a splash of Galliano—that is, the young couturier John Galliano—then add music and shake, what do you have? “Fashion Underground: The World of Susanne Bartsch,” the new show at the Museum at FIT. It’s a nocturnal world to be sure, with the Dionysian vibe of a midnight bacchanal. It’s also a more innocent world than the disco decadence that preceded it. For one thing, aside from the odd glass of bubbly, Ms. Bartsch keeps a clear head ...
As the queen of New York nightlife in the eighties, Swiss-born Susanne Bartsch turned New York on its ear when she introduced some of Britain’s edgiest fashion to the city and then staged events where avant-garde style enthusiasts could strut their stuff. A member of the “New Romantics” style movement when she moved to London from Switzerland as a teenager in the late ‘70s, Bartsch was all about celebrating herself via fashion, and after moving to New York in the early ‘80s, she made it her mission to encourage others to do the same. Her philanthropic efforts for the creative gay community are legendary – her famous “Love Ball” events raised millions for the AIDS cause. Now the Museum at FIT in New York is paying homage to Bartsch’s “art as fashion” philosophy with a exhibit entitled Fashion Underground: The World of Susanne Bartsch. Featuring more than 100 outfits from her personal collection, the show includes designs by Thierry Mugler, Vivienne Westwood, Jean Paul Gaultier, Alexander McQueen and John Galliano. I spoke with Susanne Bartsch about the glory days of expression through fashion, her staunch support of the ravaged gay community, and the inherent joy in simply dressing up ...
If anyone ever inspired people to march to their own drummer, it is Susanne Bartsch. As a boutique owner and then an event producer, the Swiss expat arrived in New York City in the early ’80s, and New York nightlife was never the same again. Feeling bored by the fashion scene here, Bartsch opened a SoHo boutique where she imported young European designers she admired, including Vivienne Westwood, John Galliano, Stephen Jones, and Leigh Bowery ...
In the midst of a dark room covered in graffiti, a cartoonish figure holding a sign that reads, “It’s show time” welcomes guests to “Fashion Underground: The World of Susanne Bartsch,” the newest exhibit at the Museum at FIT ...
The counterculture icon talks Leigh Bowery, dressing for pleasure and her outlandish new exhibition ...
You can only imagine what happens when Sarah Jessica Parker enters a restaurant full of New York women, but factor in the launch of her latest collection of shoes and bags and you have a kind of volcanic frenzy ...