NEW YORK – The Cock is a low-ceilinged, dark East Village dive that has been described by one website as “the last dirty gay bar in New York.” It shuns publicity, having been raided frequently by police in the 1990s during the Giuliani administration, and is notorious for its cruise sex scene. For these reasons, it seems an unlikely place for a party organized by a luxury fashion the company.
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But last month, Farfetch, the London-based online fashion retailer, threw a party there to celebrate Pride. Stephen Tashjian, an artist better known as Tabboo!, covered the facade with original artwork. And artist Narcissister, dressed as Marilyn Monroe’s character in “The Seven Year Itch,” performed a reverse strip for the crowd, which included Emily Ratajkowski, Julia Fox and Jeremy O. Harris.
“These days, don’t assume that because it’s a corporate brand, they want it to be a rainbow flag, dumb, dumb idea that’s very digestible,” said Mel Ottenberg, editor-in-chief of Interview magazine, which was a host of the party. “Farfetch allowed us to do something interesting as opposed to something boring.”
Indeed, some global brands have discovered that it’s more authentic to throw a party in a gritty venue than, say, a general event space or glitzy boutique.
A few weeks before the Farfetch event, Coach launched Pride month at Monster, a venerable Greenwich Village gay bar near the Stonewall Inn that’s been around since 1981. The staff from Vogue mingled at a club known for attracting older men and their much younger following.
People at the Farfetch party at Cock in New York on June 23, 2022. (OK McCausland/The New York Times)
Before that, Burberry took over Lucien, an East Village-looking bistro (and celebrity hangout), for 10 days in May. The British fashion house replaced the restaurant’s awning with its signature Burberry Check pattern, redecorated the interior and created limited-edition T-shirts to celebrate what it called “legacy, heritage and community”.
And when Opening Ceremony celebrated its latest collaboration with designer Peter Do, it did so at Nam Son, a Lower East Side restaurant that serves cheap Vietnamese food in a tasteless space with a dropped ceiling and tile floors. brown tiles.
The choice of place for the opening ceremony was a sign for him cultural heritage i Do, who is Vietnamese. But in other cases, fashion brands may be reflecting the trend of taking street culture and making it luxurious. When Balenciaga sells a pair of “extra destroyed” sneakers for $1,850, it hardly makes sense to throw that party at the Carlyle Hotel.
As New York – and especially Manhattan – has become venerable and wealthy, the old institutions feel fresh and true precisely because they feel timeless.
“You can’t recreate the skate and energy of a monster space in a local white-box space,” Stuart Vevers, Coach’s creative director, wrote in an email. “There’s a sense of freedom and possibility that’s unique to spaces like Monster in New York that I wanted to celebrate.”
Perhaps this is the same reason that the old-fashioned Forlini’s red sauce became a difficult hangout for children. But as Forlini’s closing showed, places that seem to be there year after year, miraculously unaffected by rent pressures or other changes, are at risk.
“It’s legal, it’s small, it still exists,” Ottenberg said, explaining why he suggested Cock for the Farfetch event. “We’re so lucky that it’s not a pure New York version of what it used to be.” He could have picked the monster, he added, but the trainer got there first.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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