Eat your heart out Madonna!
Designer Marc Jacobs, 58, opened up about his roots in vogue culture following a screening of a new documentary, “Love is in the Legend,” about the 1980s underground ballroom scene.
Carlos Leon, Les Trois Chevaux restaurateur Angie Mar, and designer Sally Lapointe also attended the event at at SVA Theatre that included a vogue performance as well.
Jacobs told the crowd that he appeared on the runway in designer Patricia Field’s famed “The House of Field Ball” — which reportedly merged the Harlem ball scene with downtown club culture, and celebrity — in September 1988, helping to bring vogueing into the spotlight.
Jacobs said it was one of the most “freeing experiences,” of his life, an attendee of the screening told Page Six. He added that he hadn’t planned on taking the runway at Field’s event, but felt the “spirit” come over him and strutted his stuff in his underwear, a tuxedo jacket and motorcycle boots.
Director Myra Lewis told us that the film is about the “story of outsiders finding belonging through fashion, dance, and music in the [gay nightclub] Paradise Garage, the Harlem Ball scene, and the formation of the House of Field.”
Field — later the costume designer for “Sex and the City” and “The Devil Wears Prada” — and the staff who worked at her store created their own “House” in 1987.
Lewis explains of the event: “‘The House of Field Ball’ was the first ball to have celebrity and design judges like Deborah Harry, Betsey Johnson, Steven Meisel, André Leon Talley, Dianne Brill, Giorgio Di Sant’Angelo, Mary McFadden and Malcolm McLaren.”
Lewis said that if McLaren, the Sex Pistols mastermind, hadn’t been a judge, he would’ve never met choreographer Willi Ninja. The pair went on to develop the song and tour, “Deep in Vogue,” which went around the globe.
Lewis says that dancer Jose Gutierez Xtravaganza was a competitor before going on to star in Madonna’s “Vogue” video and her 1991 tour documentary, “Truth or Dare.”
“Ballroom culture was disseminated throughout the world through these pioneers,” Lewis said, explaining that it “brought together the worlds of Seventh Avenue fashion, downtown club culture, and the Harlem ‘houses,'” and became “the missing link that introduced voguing to popular culture.”