When She Was "It" – The 80s

You could find the "It" girls .... Dancing with Madonna at Dancelaria before she got big, then sitting at the next table over from her at the Odeon a couple of years later, going to AREA and the Palladium and, before it went all bridge-and-tunnel, Limelight (but not the briefly rebarn Studio 54); working out at the Vertical Club, hanging out at Elaine's and Indochine; shopping at Charivari and the Antique Boutique; staying up with cocaine and coming down with Quaaludes, (barely) eating macrobiotically; ordering Absolut on the rocks; reading about themselves in Michael Musto's column and Stephen Saban's and Liz Smith's after they turn up at the same East Village parties as Basquiat, Keith Haring, and (still) Andy Warhol.

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Dianne Brill at Cookie Mueller's party at AREA.

Dianne Brill “The lady in latex is Dianne Brill, a 26-year-old fashion designer who has become, seemingly overnight, First Citizen of Manhattan nightlife. If there’s an opening, a party, a lotto drawing, anything where cameras are clicking from Harlem to Tribeca, she is there. In an era when status is determined by visibility, her bursting hourglass figure is the highest profile in town. When she arrives, the party begins.” —David Hutchings, “No Double Exposure, That’s All Dianne Brill, the New Queen of the Night,” People, 1985.

I don’t think they understood me in Tampa. I had a friend who knew someone who was in New York, and my friend said, “You know, just come up for a couple days.” So this was 1980, and I was 19 or 20, and I took a giant body bag full of vintage clothing that I bought in Tampa, and I walked into Trash and Vaudeville and showed Ray some rock-and-roll buttons, and he bought everything in cash. Then I went into Patricia Field, because I’d seen an ad for Patricia Field in Interview magazine, and that was my lifeline. And she was, like, a hard-ass, and she was looking at me in my five-inch stilettos and a rubber dress and all that stuff, schlepping my body bags down the stairs and into the store, and she’s looking at this, that, and the other, and she took everything. So there I was with a pile of cash in my hand, and I thought, Okay, I’ll stay.