“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 ...
A Shaded View On Fashion: Fashion Underground: The World of Susanne Bartsch at the Museum at FIT
Photo Gallery
The Creators Project: A New Exhibit Is Reviving NYC Nightlife's Glory Days
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 ...
Gayletter: Fashion Underground: The World of Susanne Bartsch
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!
Tages Anzeiger: New Yorks Schweizer Partykönigin
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 ...
NY Art Beat: Bartschland Comes to FIT
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 ...
NY Mag: Tour the Fantastical Wardrobe of a Nightlife Queen
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?
Wall Street Journal: ‘Fashion Underground: The World of Susanne Bartsch’ Review
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 ...
The Globe and Mail: You are now entering Bartschland
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 ...
Bowery Boogie: Queen of the Night: Scoping out the ‘Fashion Underground’ of Susanne Bartsch
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 ...
Washington Square News: Fashion Underground: Club icon’s edgy style on view at FIT
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 ...
Another Mag: The Underground World of Susanne Bartsch
The counterculture icon talks Leigh Bowery, dressing for pleasure and her outlandish new exhibition ...
Wall Street Journal: Talking Shoes With Sarah Jessica Parker and Susanne Bartsch
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 ...
World of Wonder: #NYFW: Susanne Bartsch’s “Fashion Underground” Opening at FIT Brought Out New York’s MOST Dressed
Well, I should have listened to Susanne. She told me to come early to the opening of her Fashion Underground exhibit at FIT, but my date was held up in traffic and we arrived late with the usual organized crush outside. The Museum at FIT is glassed it, so, who do I see through the front window but Dianne Brill (the OTHER legendary Queen of the Night) talking to who…? RUPAUL! I had to grab THAT picture, kids! So, I squeezed my way in and who else is standing right there? None other than Mr. World of Wonder, Randy Barbato (sans the other Mr. Wonder, Fenton Bailey, who was in town too, but under the weather) OMG! Then the night was off! EVERYBODY came out to see this AMAZING exhibit. You know, I started right in the middle of this thing… maybe you need a little backstory…?
Vogue Australia: Susanne Bartsch: Queen of the Night
Sitting in Susanne Bartsch’s apartment in the Chelsea Hotel, long a Manhattan home for artists, but now fraying at the seams, it is hard to believe that New York's “Queen of Night Life” is not acting a role ...
InStyle: Susanne Bartsch Unveils Fashion Underground Exhibition at FIT
Nightlife mainstay Susanne Bartsch, known for her legendary parties at Copacabana and Savage in the 1980s and The Top of The Standard today, likes to think of herself as a “people person.” “I like bringing people together,” she says before the opening of her new exhibition, Fashion Underground: The World of Susanne Bartsch, which opens today at New York's Fashion Institute of Technology. “I like evoking emotion in people.”
New York Times: Evening Hour
Photo
Observer: FIT’s Underground Fashion Reveals the World of Susanne Bartsch
“Fashion Underground: The World of Susanne Bartsch,” which debuts today at the Museum at FIT in Midtown Manhattan, focuses not on a designer or thematic fashion idea, but on a woman who embodies the idea of the fashion muse. Curated by Valerie Steele, the exhibition takes viewers on a whirlwind tour of Susanne Bartsch’s 30-year career as a fashion renegade, avant-garde boutique owner and spectacular party-thrower. These extravagant parties, filled with gyrating bodies in outlandish clothes, were nightly spectacles of performance art. Hosted at various venues, such as Savage, Copacabana and Le Bain, the parties attracted the fringes of the fashion world—“the people who are obsessed with fashion who might not be professionals,” said Ms. Steele ...
Village Voice: Fashion Exhibit Draws Celebs, Club Kids to FIT, Gramercy Theater
Susanne Bartsch and her crew of club kids celebrated her exhibit, "Fashion Underground: The World of Susanne Bartsch" at FIT. Hundreds of her nightclub outfits are on display in a recreated nightclub within the space. Calvin Klein, Rupaul, Amanda Lepore, Bill Cunningham, and many others stopped in to see the show. The celebration migrated to Gramercy Theatre for Bartsch's KUNST party with music by DJs Amber Valentine, Juliana Huxtable, Exquisite, and the Carry Nation.
Paper Mag: Scenes from the Opening for Fashion Underground: The World of Susanne Bartsch at the Museum at FIT
Last night was the opening of Fashion Underground: The World of Susanne Bartsch at the Museum of FIT, an exhibit dedicated to the fabulous, glitter-flecked fashion worn by legendary nightlife doyenne, Susanne Bartsch, and her friends. Designs in the show come from Leigh Bowery, John Galliano,The Blonds, Stephen Jones, Jean Paul Gaultier, Pam Hogg, Alexander McQueen, Thierry Mugler (who can forget the egg-shaped wedding dress he designer for her 1995 nuptials to David Barton?!), Rick Owens, Vivienne Westwood, Zaldy and Rachel Auburn. After the opening, Bartsch did what she does best -- throw a killer party -- and this time it was an iteration of her roving bash, Kunst, at the Gramercy Theater. As always, it was a feast for the eyes. Take a look at photos from the opening by Rebecca Smeyne, below.
