Janis Joplin, Cyndi Lauper, Debbie Harry, Nico, Madonna, Amy Winehouse — that’s just a short list of music icons who have benefited from the Betsey touch during the designer’s 40-plus-year career. Indeed, Betsey Johnson has been sewing rock ’n’ roll’s high priestesses (and priests) into second-skin pants, corset tops and playful printed frocks since the early Sixties, when she began selling handmade pieces out of the ladies’ room at Mademoiselle magazine (she was a fresh-out-of-college guest editor at the time).
Her first musician clients were her friends, the people she chummed around with at New York “It” spots like Andy Warhol’s Factory and Max’s Kansas City.
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“I mean, we hung out,” said Johnson of her now-famous friends, who were her early adopters in the Sixties and Seventies. “To me, it was that they liked my stuff. So I would go, ‘Well how do you want to feel onstage?’ And I would do custom.”
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The Velvet Underground’s Lou Reed and John Cale, for example, were Johnson’s pals long before they were clients.
“I always made John his black canvas suits with big hunks of ruffles and bows coming out, which were gorgeous,” Johnson said of designing for the rocker, to whom she was married from 1968 to 1971. She added, “And Lou [Reed] wanted his crotch to be big, so I would always cut him a big crotch.”
The mutual attraction between Johnson and musicians continues to manifest itself in many a rock ’n’ roll-inspired runway look and pop star’s stagewear, despite the fact that these days, Johnson is more likely to be listening to classical tunes in her design studio or relaxing at her Mexican villa than partying at nightclubs or dank concert venues. So how, then, does a Betsey Johnson dress seemingly appear on every red carpet on twentysomething singing starlets from Avril Lavigne to Rihanna to Winehouse, who wore Johnson’s sailor-inspired sheath dress to her 2007 nuptials to Blake Fielder-Civil? More often than not, they come to her.
Take Katy Perry, the 22-year-old pop star whose single, “I Kissed a Girl,” currently tops both the Billboard and iTunes charts. She proffered her love for all things Betsey in a November WWD profile.
“I’ve been a big fan since I was, like, 12. I still have my own set of Betsey Johnson clothes that I wear, which I bought long before, you know, people were sending me clothes,” she said.
The shout-out didn’t go unnoticed by Johnson, who soon after invited Perry to her fall 2008 runway show, and now outfits Perry for the singer’s 2008 Warped Tour shows and red-carpet appearances.
“I’m continuing to support the label because our fashion senses are so similar,” said Perry. “We’re very into humor, we’re very into patterns, we’re very into girly stuff, but also I think that Betsey can have an edge and a punk-rock-ness to her that I try and cultivate sometimes, as well.”
But despite hitting home runs with the hip music set, don’t expect to fi nd Johnson slaving away over custom pieces. Like Max’s Kansas City and the Factory, that day has come and gone.
“I never liked custom,” Johnson said, “because [artists] always change their mind. That’s why I didn’t do my daughter’s wedding dress, you know.”