In the wake of several well-known fashion brands closing shop in the past few months, Fashion Reverie takes a fashion glimpse back at one of the rowdiest, irreverent brands to ever obtain a significant fashion audience.
Founded in 1999 by Club Kid Richie Rich and Travis Rains, Heatherette started out as tee shirt and leather goods line. Encouraged by a buyer from Patrica Fields who bought 20 leather tops based on a leather top Richie Rich wore to a party, in its heyday Heatherette boasted in major celebrities from Paris Hilton, Ellen Degeneris, Pamela Anderson, Lydia Hearst, Anna Nicole Smith, Boy George and Jenna Jameson to drag artists Amanda Lepore and Jujubee, to supermodels Karolina Kurkova and Naomi Campbell appearing in their runway shows. As one of the most talked about and sought after shows during New York Fashion Week, everyone from major celebrities to nightlife club kids vied for front row seats at their fashion shows.
“I was living in the club scene with all my friends. It came purely from a place of designing what we wanted to wear—we weren’t following the fashion world,” explained Richie Rich in a 2008 Paper magazine article. Patricia Fields and photographer David Chapelle really helped put Heatherette on the fashion map.
Naomi Campbell in a Heatherette fashion show. Image courtesy of Paper magazine
“The clothes were attention getting and fun,” Heatherette’s longtime friend and muse Amanda Lepore remembers. “They had a distinct look, which at that time— everyone wanted it. David was using it. All the celebrities wanted it. It was in demand.” “I think their shows were the most fun New York had,” Lepore continues. “All the big models wanted to do it. All the celebrities and everyone wanted to be apart of it. To this day I haven’t seen anything like it. Whenever I go to things that are kind of like that now, it’s not the same. It’s always more serious. Heatherette was wild and fun. You always want a party like a Heatherette party.”
Though the brand was wildly popular among club kids and the underground nightlife scene, fashion cognoscenti always questioned if there was real fashion design or retail value in the clothes. And although Daymond John Lesson of FUBU fame sank $6 million dollars into Heatherette, the influx of cash was not enough to rescue the fledging brand from extinction due to bad management.
Nicole Richie and Naomi Campbell in a Heatherette show
“Six million dollars later, we didn’t have a business,” Daymond John Lesson says in a businessinsider.com article. The designers indulged in extravagant costume clothing for the runway but failed to develop a hot ready-to-wear retail line.”We thought we could just throw people at it, throw money at advertising, [but it] didn’t move the needle. It was just us lying to ourselves,” John says. “Not that we were lazy. We tried to put in the work. But the money never made the difference.”
Still, Heatherette was significant of a fashion house that was representative of a period in the late 90s when fashion meets celebrity culminating in the pop fashion phenomenon that still exist in a lesser more nuanced form.
—Staff
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