I'm Not Perfect; but MORE Perfect Than YOU!!!!

HEREEEEEEEE"S GRACE!!!!

by Leah Greenblatt

Lady Gaga may adore cult pop icon Grace Jones, but Ms. Jones won’t picking up her t-t-telephone calls any time soon.

The 61-year-old Jamaican-born model/actress/fashion radical, best known as a club performer, Warhol muse, Bond girl, hair maverick, and all-around fabu freakshow, was recently asked by London’s Guardian newspaper what she thought of the world’s current preeminent mistress of carcinogenic eyewear. Jones’ reply? “I really don’t think of her at all. I go about my business … I wouldn’t go to see her.”

And would they ever work together? “She did [ask], but I said no. I’d just prefer to work with someone who is more original and someone who is not copying me, actually.”

Mild-ish words, actually, from the woman who gave the world Strangé—and one wonders why she doesn’t call out her other obvious acolyte, Rihanna—but she can hardly be blamed for drawing the comparison.

As stated on The Future on February 5, 2010, Gaga’s genealogy has never been much of a mystery: She is unabashedly built from the DNA of many stars who came before her—including but not limited to Madonna, David Bowie, Roisin Murphy, Prince, Cher, Labelle, Freddie Mercury and of course the original cult-of-personality maestro himself, Mr. Warhol.

Like the recent M.I.A.-chugs-the-Lady-haterade episode, this one will surely be met by Gaga loyalists‘ insistence that the Lady is, like, ten billion times more amazeballs than Jones, who is just too jealous/old/All About Eve-ish to acknowledge her younger and more commercially successful rival.

If they do, they may be touching on some truth (sometimes, Strangé get cranké), but they’re missing the larger point: Gaga, definitively, could not exist without Jones, Madge, and Mercury, and she seems very much aware of that. In fact, she acknowledges them ad nauseum in her album liner notes and interviews and in, basically, the way she lives her outsized life-as-performance-art existence (bedazzled face crustaceans for brunch! Personal head planetarium for Ellen!) every day—if not in the fairly straightforward and markedly commercial (much more, at least, than Grace’s ever were) pop songs that anchor it all. I AGREE and I am the BIGGEST GRACE JONES FAN AROUND!!! Lil Mogul...

If progenitors like Jones are sometimes a little bothered that Gaga sails so easily down the far-out road they paved—and with a much fatter wallet tucked in her triangle pants—is that jealousy, or just humanity? I call it LIFE!!!

NY Fashion Week ends at the Studio Museum of Harlem of with Andre Leon Talley

LaQuan Smith / Photo: Suzette Lee

Last night at the Studio Museum of Harlem, a special conversation about fashion and art with André Leon Talley and emerging fashion designer LaQuan Smith was moderated by the museum’s Director and Chief Curator Thelma Golden.

A 25-year veteran of and contributing editor to Vogue, André Leon Talley regularly pens a witty, pithy column called “Life with André." He also worked at Interview during Andy Warhol’s tenure. Talley regularly appears on television and in film and can currently be seen as a judge on the television show “America’s Next Top Model.”

LaQuan Smith has designed custom fashions for artists including Lady Gaga, Rihanna, Aubrey O’day, Amerie and more. Smith’s New York Fashion Week debut was held on February 15, 2010 and he has been featured in many media outlets including The New York Times, New York Daily News and Studio Magazine.

Both shared a wonderful view on fashion. Mr. Talley told the standing room only audience, “Fashion is HARD WORK, hard core work;” he continued to say, “true fashion insiders must do their homework, be patient, learn the business and live your dream.”

LaQuan’s 2nd fashion collection frenetic energy filled the Gramercy Room of the Peninsula Hotel as editors and buyers waited for wunderkind LaQuan Smith’s Spring/Summer 2011 show, entitled “A Storybook Path,” to begin. While a crush of photographers circled around rapper Common to get a shot, a gaggle of reporters rushed before Vogue’s Andre Leon Talley and designer and CFDA President Diane Von Furstenberg for a soundbite. The excitement generated so much heat, attendees fanned themselves with hot pink paper fans provided on the tables. As classical music began to play, a young lady wearing a blush pink corseted brocade jacket and matching frilly skirt came out, pursing gold lacquered lips and tottering atop Walter Steiger stilettos. The show had begun, and the air erupted with shouts of enthusiasm over the clothes–and the models themselves:

Exclamations of “Honey better work!” and “Ok!” could be heard as models sauntered out in a series of bust and thigh accentuating pieces seemingly inspired by the famously coquettish and fashion loving late 18th century Marie Antoinette. Brocade fabrics in champagne pink, deep burgundy, white, black, and electric blue were fashioned into cropped frilled tops and bodice dresses, perfectly fit for modern day princesses. Though dreamlike, as if cut from a storybook, the clothes were designed to titillate. To wit, an almost bare bottomed Jaslene Gonzalez elicited whoops of “Yes, girl,” as she worked a sheer mint green flapper dress with green plumes of feathers peeking out the bottom.

The shouts reached an almost fevered pitch as even more celebrity models emerged. Singer Cassie in a corseted gold and burgundy bubble hem dress; Deborah Cox in a Tiffany blue gilded number with an asymmetric train; Serena Williams, who closed the show, in a Bourdeaux red regal gown with exaggerated hips.