Richie Wealthy saunttered into Cafeteria dressed to thrill. Heads spun to soak up his arrival on the deluxe Chelsea diner final month sporting a crimson fedora, a mottled inexperienced leather-based jacket and lavender shades, which he dropped to indicate off blue-tinted lids slicked with beneficiant lashings of glitter.
“That is my day look,” he stated. “For evening I simply placed on extra make-up.”
Day or evening, he likes to make an entrance, a behavior he perfected in the course of the ’90s, when he was a marquee member of the Membership Youngsters, a raffishly creative post-Studio 54 clan fanning its plumage at Limelight, the Tunnel and different fabled New York Metropolis nightspots. Lengthy earlier than the arrival of web influencers, they lured followers and raised eyebrows, flaunting their gender fluidity and homespun fashions on speak exhibits and within the tabloids.
By the early 2000s, Mr. Wealthy had parlayed his notoriety right into a stridently subversive trend label, Heatherette, that drew Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian and Debbie Harry as followers. The road shuttered in 2008.
There have been hole years, a long time in actual fact, throughout which Mr. Wealthy supported himself principally, he stated, by stitching customized designs for a clutch of lesser-known personal shoppers together with YNG Zuck, a music artist, and Pachi Lake, a TV and trend character.
Now he’s again, courting a brand new breed of fashion renegade with a digital membership of his personal.
His newest enterprise is Btykwn (pronounced “magnificence kween”), which payments itself as a metaverse for make-up fanatics, improvised magnificence lab and, come late spring, a purveyor of gender-free make-up. Mr. Wealthy envisions the platform as an advert hoc collective the place magnificence fanatics of each gender and stripe can launch their interior diva.
“Whoever you’re, we would like you to be you, we would like you to really feel fabulous,” he stated as he sipped a Virgin Mary — “That is a Mary with out the alcohol,” he felt the necessity to clarify.
A sweet-natured promoter, he was addressing an imagined fan base of “freaks, punks, princesses and outcasts,” as its promotional copy proclaims, who he hopes will flock to the location as a secure house. Its motto: “If you happen to do not slot in, stand out.”
As a result of the neighborhood is digital, “you’ll be able to be a part of on the cellphone from any a part of the world within the privateness of your bed room,” he stated, urging followers to “be on the celebration,” and, within the lingo of extreme-makeup fanatics, “Growth! Beat your face.”
He partnered with Mister D, the cosmetics and occasions impresario who helped make the make-up artist François Nars a family title within the Nineties, and who’s funding the brand new platform via Extremely Entry, his model administration and funding firm.
“Individuals will join, share their tales, speak about social points, trend, type and TV,” Mr D stated. “They are not coming to us as a typical purveyor of nail polish.” Because it began in March, the location has been drawn about 10,000 members, in response to Mr. Wealthy.
Mr. Wealthy, the irrepressible ringmaster of this on-line circus, has hardly deserted his over-the-top aesthetic, one which, looking back, was properly forward of its time. Constructed on futuristic fantasy, its affect is discernible now in pop tv fare like “Euphoria,” and “Glow Up,” a British tv competitors through which aspiring make-up artists exhibit their aptitude with neon tints and blush.
It is usually seen amongst a constellation of laptop generated “It” women together with Lil Miquela or Imma, and evident within the form of surreal results — jeweled eyes, vinyl lips and iridescent pores and skin — proliferating on the metaverse. And that’s to say nothing of the influencers peddling their make-up wizardry on TikTok, YouTube and Instagram who’re catching up with Mr. Wealthy.
Considerably demurely, he acknowledged his legacy. “We weren’t reinventing the wheel,” he stated. “We simply, with out realizing it, did one thing that is actual to a brand new crowd of youngsters.”
At 51, he’s one in all them at coronary heart. Rising up in San Jose, Calif., Mr. Wealthy (born Richard Eichhorn) was aware of being an oddity. As he likes to say, “I got here out at beginning with glitter on my face.” In his teenagers he was a determine skater, touring for a yr with the Ice Capades. “Being a boy, that wasn’t so common,” he stated. Not that it fazed him.
Way back to the third grade, “I used to dream of seems I might be sporting to high school the subsequent day,” he stated. “I might get up and be like ‘Mother, the place’s that satin disco glitter jacket,’ and she or he was like, ‘What are you speaking about? You do not have that in your closet.’”
His two brothers launched him to the musical and stylistic inventiveness of David Bowie and Debbie Harry. “Little bro, you are like them,” he remembers being advised. “I used to be 10 on the time, however they acknowledged the artistry in me.”
By his teenagers, he was sneaking out of the home with pals to One Step Past, an area membership. “We have been all doing make-up within the toilet,” he stated, “then going out dressed up in lipstick, scorching pants and curler skates.” At 17, he ventured with pals to San Francisco, the place Julie Jewels, a founding member of the Membership Youngsters, found him and inspired him to affix her scene in New York.
In Manhattan he found a house and showcase for his extravagant preening, befriending the Membership Youngsters’ founders Michael Alig, James St. James and others. The Membership Youngsters’ affect peaked within the mid late ’90s, dissolving when Mr. Alig and his roommate Robert Riggs pleaded responsible in 1997 to manslaughter within the killing and dismemberment of their fellow membership habitué Andre “Angel” Melendez — a sordid denouement through which Mr. Wealthy had no half.
Half artist, half provocateur, Mr. Wealthy went on to work with Susanne Bartsch, a producer of outré nightlife occasions, earlier than teaming with Traver Rains to design T-shirts and leather-based put on out of Mr. Rains’ condo. He drew the discover of Patricia Subject, the stylist and costume designer, and earlier than lengthy was whipping up items for Gwen Stefani, Sarah Jessica Parker and Cunning Brown.
Thus was born Heatherette, with standout seems that through the years included tartan promenade clothes, voluminous “cotton sweet” bubble skirts and a stole cobbled from dozens of Howdy Kitty dolls. Made up of novelties not readily present in shops, the label put an irreverent spin on the idea of disposable stylish.
When it ceased operations for causes undisclosed, Mr. Wealthy labored to maintain his title alive. Along with his buddy Pamela Anderson, he launched A*MUSE, a line of one-of-a-kind T-shirts, beachwear and clothes. “We’re like somewhat circus of misfits,” Ms. Anderson advised Blackbook on the time, “residing little wild lives that simply match collectively and are by some means complementary.”
In 2010, Popluxe by Richie Wealthy, a group of day and night one-offs, made its debut at Lincoln Middle, with Ellen DeGeneres performing a star activate the runway. By 2016, he was again with Wealthy by Richie Wealthy, a group and fall present meant to spotlight LGBTQ rights, local weather change, immigration and different urgent social points.
There have been darker moments within the intervening years. In 2013, the tabloids reported that Mr. Wealthy was arrested in Manhattan for failing to pay a resort invoice. He defined that he had assumed on the time {that a} consumer had paid upfront. On his launch, he paid the invoice in full.
“All of it appears laughable now, nevertheless it on the time it wasn’t,” he stated. “Being a Membership Child, folks, have been at all times anticipating you to mess up and derail.”
Defying expectations, Mr. Wealthy continues to indicate off his items on Btykwn, the place he will be seen smearing scorching fuchsia on his lips or scrawling an outsize coronary heart on his cheek. He’s one in a crew of regulars that features Kevin Aviance, a drag performer and nightclub character, and Desmond is Superb, a 14-year-old TikTok star, all cropped hair, kohled eyes, and little gingham clothes.
“I used to be drawn to Desmond,” Mr. Wealthy stated, “as a result of on social media he would emulate the lips I used to be doing as a Membership Child.”
Mr. Wealthy hopes to ultimately enlist a roster of pop entertainers, superstar make-up artists and influencers prepared to share their magnificence routines and carry out on-line. He imagines Madonna, whom he first met within the ’80s, “getting on our air and giving us all her make-up secrets and techniques.” One can dream.
Not simply daunted, Mr. Wealthy is adamant that magnificence is the type world’s subsequent frontier, a promising area for giddy theatrics and nervy self-invention. “Actual innovation is going on in magnificence, not on the runway,” he stated, its parts extra adventurous and accessible to the younger.
He’s banking on the adage that what goes round comes round, a notion he has nurtured since arriving on the scene. As he declared in a 1993 interview with the speak present host Phil Donahue, with regards to self-expression, “We’re all future superstars.”
How correct was that assertion? We’ll discover out quickly sufficient.
