GQ India – July 2019

JULY 2019 — 43

Creative Director Alessandro Michele and the Gucci

team can also have the biggest hearts.

Looking back, what are your favourite memories of 1980s

New York?

The vibe of the city was high-voltage energy, fun,

extravagant, Japanese and Italian clothes, outrageous

after-hour clubs that opened at 3am like Brownies,

Laight Again. Lots and lots of parties – and because we

worked at Interview, we would get stacks of elaborate

invitations hand-delivered daily, to parties, museum

openings, film and theatre premieres and dinner events.

But there was a terrible and sad downside to the city:

the AIDS epidemic. It was like an unknown transparent

war and we lost so many extraordinary friends and

other creative people to this horrible disease. NYC is,

and was, about extreme highs and lows.

magazine in 1995, Ark Online. My friend, the novelist
Tama Janowitz, and I had a TV cable access show
in Manhattan and on Long Island called It’s A Dog’s
Life. Cats’ Too. And Sometimes Birds. We modelled
the 30-minute show after Grey Gardens and QVC –
profiling dogs, cats and birds for adoption, neuter and
spay, educating the public about caring for their canine
and feline kids. It was very successful, and we won
the Humanitarian Award for best programme on
the channel.
Gucci has also been so supportive of me, my art
projects and my activism. It generously gave a gift to
panthera.org, whose mission is to protect the world’s
40 wild cat species from poaching and encroachment by
humans on their ecosystems. I am so grateful to Gucci
for its humanitarianism, openness and generosity. It’s
pretty amazing that the most successful and visionary

(Top) Paige Powell

with Andy Warhol,

featured in Paige

Powell; (Far left)

Madonna, Erika Belle

and friend at Fresh

14, featured in Beulah

Land; (Left) Stephen

Klein’s family pig,

Ernie, helps clean

the dishes, featured

in Animals