{"id":24720,"date":"2015-12-31T12:30:16","date_gmt":"2015-12-31T17:30:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wendybrandes.com\/blog\/?p=24720"},"modified":"2015-12-31T14:55:05","modified_gmt":"2015-12-31T19:55:05","slug":"throwback-thursday-new-years-eve-ten-years-ago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wendybrandes.com\/blog\/2015\/12\/throwback-thursday-new-years-eve-ten-years-ago\/","title":{"rendered":"Throwback Thursday: New Year’s Eve, Ten Years Ago"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ten years ago tonight, I wore a vintage Clovis Ruffin dress, my gold Cleopatra earrings and a whole lot of extra hair to my New Year’s Eve celebration at Balthazar.<\/p>\n

\"throwback<\/p>\n

Normally, I love a 10-year fashion-anniversary opportunity<\/a>. But tonight, I’m wearing a (new-to-me) secondhand dress that, with the right hair and makeup, is intended to give me a Klaus Nomi-inspired look.<\/p>\n

Klaus, born Klaus Sperber, was a German countertenor and cabaret performer with an otherworldly style<\/a>. When David Bowie wanted to create a new image with his Saturday Night Live<\/em> performance in 1979, he asked Nomi to be one of his backup singers<\/a>; the other singer was performance artist Joey Arias. For “The Man Who Sold the World<\/a>,” they carried Bowie to the front of the stage like he was a life-sized doll. It’s must-see TV<\/a>. Nomi later adopted the oversize suit that Bowie wore for that performance as his own signature look. <\/p>\n

Klaus Nomi died in 1983, aged 39, from AIDS before it even had the name AIDS<\/a>. All these years later, he’s still inspiring fashion<\/a>, music and art<\/a> … and at least one New Year’s Eve outfit. This quote from Nomi’s collaborator Page Wood, from a 2008 Village Voice story, is right on<\/a>: “But Nomi isn’t dead \u2014 Klaus Sperber is dead. And I think he’d have loved the idea of this character going on.”<\/p>\n

This is Klaus Nomi.<\/p>\n

\"klaus\"<\/a>

Photo via Pitchfork. Click to read Pitchfork’s piece on Klaus Nomi.<\/p><\/div>\n

Odds are that I will look more like a punk colleague of Julia Roberts’s sex-worker character in Pretty Woman<\/em> than an artiste <\/em>from another planet, especially because I’m not going to shave off my eyebrows. One has to draw the line<\/a> somewhere! But my dress’s strong shoulders and V-shaped detail are my effort to pay homage, like Lady Gaga did in a more extreme way in her video for “Telephone.”<\/p>\n

\"Such

Lady Gaga in a very Nomi look.<\/p><\/div>\n

I definitely have to choose the right lipstick. While looking at Klaus Nomi lipstick photos, I came upon this circa 1980 ad featuring Klaus for J\u00e4germeister. Whoever got this approved by the corporate suits in marketing must have plied them with a lot of their own product, because it’s crazy fabulous.<\/p>\n

\"Click<\/a>

Click to read the story.<\/p><\/div>\n

I also found this video of Klaus (“I’m Klaus Nomi from the Planet Nomi”), Joey and their avant-garde colleagues alarming the passersby by dancing to the B-52s’ “Rock Lobster” in the windows of Fiorucci. Fiorucci! The store of my dreams then and now<\/a>. I can’t believe I’m seeing it in action.<\/p>\n