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Suzanne Bartsch
By Roxy CottontailPhoto By Danielle Levitt
For over 20 years, Suzanne Bartsch has been a fixture in New York’s underground fashion and nightlife scene. Achieving longevity in the fickle world of the metropolis’s trendsetters is almost impossible; to become a legend in this scene is almost unheard of. It takes hard work and delicate timing – Bartsch has both.
Originally from Switzerland, Bartsch transplanted to London in the late 1960s, where she developed a fascination for second-hand clothes, and began creating handmade knit fashions. In 1981, she came to New York City to visit a lover for a Valentine’s Day vacation at the Chelsea Hotel. She had no plans to stay past the weekend, but she never left. To this day, she still lives in that infamous hotel.
At first, Bartsch wasn’t particularly enthused by the fashion she saw in New York. “If you had a flower in your hair you were dressed up,” she notes dryly. But soon enough, the era of New Romantic street fashion arrived, and it dawned on Bartsch that New York could use some British flair. “It’s an art, dressing yourself,” she says. “I thought if I brought in the fashion that I loved I could give people the opportunity to express themselves.” Within a year of her arrival in New York, Bartsch opened a store in her name in SoHo that sold the creations of various London fashion students alongside her one-of-a-kind knit pieces. Many of the designers she featured in her store went on to become superstars in the fashion industry, including Vivienne Westwood, Steven Jones, and John Galliano.
All this cutting-edge fashion that Bartsch imported onto the streets of New York created a surge of newly fabulous and stylish people. Though it was chic to get dressed up just for the sake of it, Bartsch realized that her clientele needed a place to show off their fresh looks—hence her segue into a career in nightlife.
Under the Chelsea Hotel, Bartsch discovered a club that piqued her interest. “It was a ‘70s disco being built in 1987,” she recalls. “I said, this is too good to be true; it’s really camp.” Unfortunately Savage, as the space was called, had no liquor license. Bartsch periodically checked back to see if the club’s owner was able to obtain a license, always to no avail. A year later, she had a falling out with the financial backers of her clothing store, and as if by fate, the club secured a liquor license around the same time.
Bartsch threw her first party within days, and she arranged for customers from her store to get into the club for free. Bartsch’s parties—which she describes as “a place where you could see and be seen, and flirt”—turned into fashion shows of sorts, where underground New York scenesters could celebrate their personalities through style. The eclectic mix of people was crucial; performance artist Leigh Bowery was a regular, as were Jean- Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring.
Bartsch doesn’t see herself as a party promoter so much as an entrepreneur who likes to bring people together. She is invariably sober for the wild ride at night, unless you count the high from the rush of uniting people for a moment of positive social energy. Her proudest achievements were her Loveball charity events, which raised $2.5 million for the fight against AIDS. Held four times between 1989 and 1995, these parties have cemented her legacy in the gay community and the nightlife scene.
In 1995, Bartsch got married and took a sabbatical from event promotion to raise her son. “I’m really taking it seriously,” says the woman who jokingly calls herself “Mommie Dearest.” “You don’t really know it until you’re in it. It’s really powerful; we can make or break a human being.” Bartsch takes the nightlife scene less seriously as time goes on, preferring to spend her free time traveling and relaxing at her vacation home in Pennsylvania with her husband and son.
But you can only take the girl out of the party for so long. In October 2005 Bartsch started Tuesday night events at Happy Valley on East 27th Street and Fifth Avenue. “Again we have hipsters, we have old timers, girls, gays, everything,” she says. Naturally, “Dressing up is encouraged, although you don’t have to.” Part of Bartsch’s success may lie in her old-school promotion methods: She has no presence on the Internet, and tried MySpace for a day and quickly renounced it. (She did, however purchase a domain name in the 1990s that she wants to develop.) Instead, she prefers to get the word out through fancy fliers with her image on it, or personal phone call invitations. One recent evening Bartsch brought a special guest to one of her parties: her 12-year-old son. “He liked it,” she remembers, “but so many people were bombarding him. He said, ‘How do you do it, Mom? It’s so much work! ’”
Roxy Cottontail is a prolific promoter in NYC’s nightlife scene. Her parties have been held in venues like the Tribeca Grand Hotel and the Bowery Bar. She recently made a foray into music, with her first song, “Oxy Cottontail,” released as a B-side on Amanda Blank’s “Blow” single.