Heavens to Betsey



Technicolor dreamer: Designer Betsy Johnson speaks at Moore College of Art and Design photo: Maria Kotsikoros

Designer Betsey Johnson goes back to school.

by a.d. amorosi

Call designer Betsey Johnson a legend and she stammers.

"That’s, wow, just something that happens while you’re working," says Johnson from her East Hampton home.

But seeing the girlie-girl clothing designer — who practically invented the "junior" genre; Paraphernalia’s plasticine look of the ’60s; the sexy, post-hippie Alley Cat rock look of the ’70s; and the body-conscious cotton-Lycra rosebud print dresses of the ’80s and beyond — being swarmed by admirers at Moore College of Art and Design, it’s impossible to deny legendary status.

Johnson came to Moore last Thursday (and also dropped by Decades Vintage shop on South Street where she found four of her Alley Cat items) to speak as part of Fashion Group International’s Career Day. And she received a heroine’s welcome.

"Her personality reflects her clothing and that’s how you feel when you wear it; happy, without a care and colorful," said Shannon Mulhern, a violet-haired Moore junior.

That seemed to be the sentiment shared throughout the student body — that rather than a textbook icon dwelling within tattered pages, Johnson is one of them, alive with color (literally), bright ideas and a sensuality that radiates the sexual as well as the tactile.

When the student assembly was presented with the video of Betsey Johnson’s Playboy Bunny Spring 2001 runway show — shot during Manhattan’s Fashion Week in a tent at Bryant Park for 2,000-plus well-wishers and newly adoring press — pandemonium ensued. The Moore students were visibly amazed at the video/live presentation with its busty, high-haired models wearing Johnson’s breast- and hip-hugging outfits — grape-colored chaps, bathing/biker girl wedding outfits, green satin disco dresses, denim Daisy Dukes and low-cut sailor tees. It was akin to witnessing an encore at a rock concert.



	Flower power: A Betsey original photo: Maria Kotsikoros

And like a concert, Johnson’s Spring 2001 show played to strengths old and new, finding the middle-ground between her mass-market outfits — using lots of Lycra — and her pricier ULTRA line — featuring chiffon, sequins and Crepe de Chine — as well as setting up her audience for her next move, Fall 2001’s future-forward, back-to-Betsey of the ’60s and ’70s.

During the post-show chat, Johnson, wearing a beat up black-leopard T-shirt, longish skirt and silver "fuck me shoes," revealed her past. She wheeled out a rack of older clothing and talked about the body types she’s developed outfits for.

"In the ’60s if you were a hip, young designer you were designing for Twiggys and Jaggers; that high armhole, tight-busted, shrunken look."

By the ’70s her designs for the North-Philly-based Alley Cat company were more relaxed; a do-your-own-thing, loosely knit body type she now has so much nostalgia and enthusiasm for it may very well be part of her Fall 2001 look.

"It was hysterical, real Cirque du Soleil stuff," she says of Alley Cat, where she developed not only ethno-hippie maxi-skirts, petticoats and kooky sweaters, but an affinity for independence.

"I fought for my life and came out on top," says Johnson, who during the ’60s worked within the freaky walls of Manhattan-based Paraphernalia, the gallery/boutique setting that birthed not only Betsey’s reflective/plastic outfits but Diana Dew and Elisa Stone’s famous paper dresses.

While Alley Cat didn’t offer much in terms of cash, it really paid out in freedom, allowing Johnson a chance to develop an independent spirit, handpick her sales staff, paint her showrooms and draw her own ads.

"Alley Cat was pure Betsey," says Johnson.

What is "pure Betsey," what makes her so much of the femme-cultural lexicon, is that her heart is in the mass-market. While some of her stuff is expensive and far-out, Johnson remains true to affordable, cute, easy to wear clothing.

"I’m surprised and pleeeeeased how well the extreme stuff is selling but what I do best is affordable clothes for a lot of girls," says Johnson, who answers only to her own monthly overhead, as opposed to many designers who are often part of a larger company.

"My look this season was All-American sexy; a girl who goes from low-cut chiffons and off-the shoulder polka dots at The Plaza to a trip on a sailboat with poplin cotton knickers."

The muse for this is her daughter Lulu, a real Sex in the City gal who has her own money but is looking for function and savings.

"Your reputation comes from your price range," says Johnson, laughing. "I’m in a lot of closets because I’m a gal next door/ girlfriend/ playmate."

But the affinity she feels for her customers comes from the mass-market aspect that utilizes Betsey herself as model.

"I don’t believe in expensive clothes. I design for myself and girls like myself: middle class, Connecticut cornball, conservative Doris Day, hot wash/hot dry — I hate dry cleaning — with a dancing school background that let me dress up and pretend I was all these characters. I wanted to join the circus. That’s my customer: the normal, unprecious, irregular gal who dreams."