Katie Holmes’s Birthday Suit Includes Her Favorite Winter Coat

Yesterday, Katie Holmes celebrated her 41st birthday. The stylish actress marked the special day by taking to the streets of New York City—she is a true New Yorker, after all!—for what we hope was some shopping and celebrating. And for the occasion, Holmes chose one of her favorite winter coats to tackle Manhattan’s unexpected snow squall. (Seriously, watch the ominous time-lapse video of it.)

The star’s coat of the moment? That would be Max Mara’s teddy bear shearling coat. Holmes wore the luxurious faux fur style earlier this month with checkered pants and low-tops; yesterday, however, she really leaned into its warm, cozy factor with a matching hoodie and sweatpants set in gray. (Consider it a primer on how to dress up a sweatsuit in the city.) Her sleek leather tote, crisp white sneakers, large sunglasses, and refined beanie helped elevate the look. Holmes: 1. Winter: 0.

Kylie Jenner Upgrades Athleisure With Vintage Chanel

The billionaire beauty mogul Kylie Jenner has a knack for glittering up even the most “casual” fashion moments with designer gear. She recently posed for a few Insta snaps wearing some seriously fancy athleisure.

Jenner’s off-duty ensemble began with a classic pullover sweater, a rare vintage style by Chanel logo’d with lipstick and a compact. (A fitting motif for a beauty mogul.) Then, she added another athleisure staple—leggings—though hers were a more fashiony pair, complete with a split-open detail at the ankle, which showed off her white stiletto pumps. No comfy sneakers here!

To finish it off, she piled on luxurious accessories, such as her 2000s-esque Chanel sunglasses and a discreet Prada shoulder bag. Her ultimate accessory, though? That would be the sleek, expensive-looking silver car (one of many she owns).

Priyanka Chopra Captures Fall’s Biggest Trends in One Outfit

While a fashion trend may start on the runway, its first real test is whether well-dressed celebrities will carry it into the streets. This season, Katie Holmes, the Hadids and other trendsetters have introduced us to a bevy of must-have jeans and accessories. And yesterday in Los Angeles, actress Priyanka Chopra highlighted many of the season’s biggest trends in one single outfit.

Chopra built her outfit around a pair of high-waisted, wide-leg jeans in white—the trending denim silhouette for fall, as worn by stars such as Margot Robbie and Katie Holmes. Overtop, she added a chic floral-print wrap top by Reformation with capped sleeves — the kind of romantic flourish that was seen all over the catwalks during Fashion Month. Then, she finished off the look with accessories that were of-the-moment, too, including plastic sandals—a major summer trend transitioning into fall—a structured cross-body bag by Bulgari, and retro sunglasses. Looks like someone has done their fashion research this season.

Amal Clooney Finds a New Power Color for Fall

Fall may conjure thoughts of neutral colors and falling leaves, but yesterday in New York, Amal Clooney made the case for a more vibrant autumn wardrobe. Spotted en route to the United Nations General Assembly, Clooney wore lime separates from Burberry’s Fall 2019 show; dubbed “Tempest,” the collection dove into political territory with references to climate change and Union Jack flags adorning its statement streetwear. Never one to go casual, Clooney gravitates towards polished pieces with an office appropriate vibe—and her brightly colored pencil skirt and overcoat reflected both the sophisticated look she’s become known for, as well as her high powered career as a human rights lawyer.

The beauty of Clooney’s look lies in its simplicity. When the shapes are classic, and the details understated, a bold color choice doesn’t necessarily seem showy; verdant green is just as valid as taupe, rust, or any of the other shades traditionally associated with the fall season. Complimented by patent square-toed pumps, a Dior Bar tote, and tortoise shell sunglasses, the look was as confident and refined as we’ve come to expect from the Clooney.

Designer Isabel Toledo Has Died

Isabel Toledo, the independent New York designer, has died. The cause was breast cancer.

Toledo was born in Cuba in 1961 and immigrated to West New York, New Jersey, as a teenager. She was a seamstress from an early age and attended the Fashion Institute of Technology and Parsons School of Design. Not long after she left school (she never graduated), she presented her first collection, in 1985. Her earliest supporters were Fiorucci and Bergdorf Goodman.

Toledo quickly made a name for herself in fashion circles with her focus on craft. A “designer’s designer,” she rejected themes and far-flung inspirations; instead she let fabric and material guide her, draping in ingenious, elegant ways. “I really love the technique of sewing more than anything else…the seamstress is the one who knows fashion from the inside,” she said in a 1989 interview. “That’s the art form really, not fashion design, but the technique of how it’s done.”

In the late ’90s, Toledo also rejected the runway, presenting new collections in museums. Though she stepped far out of the mainstream, she stayed top of mind among her industry peers. “I admire her technique, her individuality, and her incredible eye. Her clothes are always right,” Narciso Rodriguez told Vogue in 2003. Demi Moore, Debi Mazar, and Debra Messing would no doubt agree; all of them wore Toledo’s creations on the red carpet.

Toledo was briefly the creative director of Anne Klein and participated in the 2005 CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund Award, but her claim to fame is the outfit she designed for First Lady Michelle Obama to wear to her husband Barack Obama’s inauguration in 2009, a discreetly chic lemongrass yellow wool lace shift dress with matching overcoat.

Isabel and her husband Ruben, an artist, were collaborators—and one of New York’s most original duos—for four decades. (In fact they were born in Cuba a year and a day apart, and met in high school in New Jersey.) Together they won the Cooper Hewitt National Design Award for their work in fashion in 2005. Their most recent project was an exhibition at the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA). A showcase for the relationship between fashion and art, Labor of Love was an installation of new sculptures, paintings, and drawings that they created together, using the DIA’s collection as inspiration. The centerpiece was Synthetic Cloud, a series of dresses sewn by Isabel from layer upon layer of tulle; the sky blue, hot pink, orange, lavender, and neon green colors of which talked to nearby pieces by Donald Judd and Frank Stella.

“I’m really a forever kind of gal,” Toledo told Vogue in 2005, when she was a CVFF finalist. “If everybody’s going this way, I’m going to figure out how to go that way.”

Justin and Hailey’s Date Night Look Is Peak Bieber

Justin and Hailey Bieber have developed a couples style that’s unlike any other. Whereas J-Rod and Nickyanka are always polished and put-together, the Biebers consistently opt for a grungier vibe. Justin’s all about streetwear—including his own Drew House label—with a sporty twist, while Hailey often pairs designer dresses with denim or leather jackets. Case in point: last night, the couple stepped out for dinner in Malibu, and their date night looks included all of said fashion signatures.

For their night on the town, Justin wore an oversized Fear of God T-shirt with ripped jeans, while Hailey wore a red slip dress with a boxy leather moto jacket and Jennifer Fisher hoops. Their matching accessory? Both sported crisp, box-fresh white sneakers. (Talk about marching to the same drum beat.) It was a night-out moment that was ultimately peak Biebers—so much so that it surely deserves a Simpsonized treatment, something the couple’s style has received before. D’oh!

From Sports Cars to Vintage Champagne, Carmelo Anthony Shares His Views of Paris

As Carmelo Anthony says, “Fashion Week in one of my favorite cities is guaranteed to be a good time!” The basketball player has become something of a regular at Paris Fashion Week men’s shows, and so when he boarded a plane to the City of Light this week, he knew exactly what to expect—well, almost. In addition to taking in Kris Van Assche’s sophomore runway show for Berluti, Anthony set off for a slew of activities outside Paris that were sure to make his fellow front-row friends pretty jealous. In addition to taking a Ferrari to Reims, a city 90 miles outside of Paris that is colloquially known as the “Champagne capital of the world,” Anthony also took a personal tour of the Veuve Cliquot Champagne vaults and learned to saber a Champagne bottle. Your average Paris Fashion Week, this was not.

But it all came together in the Berluti front row, where Anthony chose a navy ensemble and leather beret with the help of his stylist Khalilah Beavers. What did he think of Van Assche’s lively reinterpretations of Berluti’s suiting, now in “Bermuda-formal” colors, or those paint-flecked blazers? Let’s just say Anthony has his eye on Van Assche’s expert leatherwork. “Some of my favorite pieces from the show were the orange leather hoodie and purple leather hoodies, which were tastefully paired with an orange leather suit and purple leather overcoat. Also, the brown leather script bomber—all pieces that I definitely want in my wardrobe come January 2020.” You’ll have to keep an eye on the court next winter to see if Anthony’s wishlist piece makes it into his wardrobe, but we have a pretty keen sense that it will. Until then, see his best snaps from Paris Fashion Week men’s, above.

Cara Delevingne and Olivier Rousteing on Handbags, Friendship, and Their New Balmain Collaboration

Olivier Rousteing understands the power of influence. Throughout his tenure at Balmain, the designer’s approach to fashion has been marked by a keen understanding of online culture. Rousteing was among the first to harness the viral power of the Kardashian-Jenners, for instance, and this perspective also led him to his latest collaborator, Cara Delevingne. The British actress and muse has been a regular presence in the brand’s runway shows and campaign images, but she has moved to member of the design team: Delevingne worked on Balmain’s latest launch, a trio of handbags named Romeo, Twist, and the BBag. Made in black leather with striking metal hardware, the accessories merge Rousteing’s power-femme aesthetic and Delevingne’s nonchalant personal style into purses worthy of It-bag status.

For other brands, the age of limited-edition drops has meant a constant stream of collaborations, but Rousteing wanted to select the right partner for his. Due to their shared love of cinema, social media, and an affinity for futurism, Delevingne fit the bill. “You can’t collaborate with someone if there isn’t that friendship,” said Rousteing, on the phone from Paris. “At least for me there needs to be a camaraderie since my work is my life. I think I always had it in mind to work with Cara since the beginning, but things take time.” The gradual progression led to a back-and-forth brainstorming session, in which they communicated through text, emails, and meetings in Los Angeles or at Balmain’s Parisian atelier. Despite their busy schedules, the process was seamless due to their shared understanding of what the final product had to be. “I feel like I’ve known Olivier forever. The familiarity between us made it really easy to collaborate,” says Delevingne, who came to the table with a slew of references. “Once I saw Olivier’s ideas, I knew we were on the same page [and] that I only needed to give minimal feedback in order for it to be exactly what I had envisioned.”

Easily dressed up or down, the new bags correspond with Delevingne’s versatile take on fashion. Apt to switch from leather jackets and jeans during her off-duty moments to slinky little black dresses for parties and premieres, she’s an ideal representative for the duality of the modern wardrobe and the Balmain woman. “I needed someone that has a strong point of view, that knows how to dress, whatever she’s wearing,” says Rousteing. “Whether it’s sweatpants or a beautiful dress, at the end of day the girl that’s going to work with me can switch her style easily and still add a bag that is timeless.” Each bag offers a different take on that ideal: The boxy quilted BBag is a riff on the traditional quilted flap bag with a gold chain added for a touch of decadent luxury; Romeo’s spikes and studs deliver punk attitude, while the Twist plays up the canteen bag’s regimental origins.

Of course, creating a bag that feels classic is easier said than done. In an effort to find the sweet spot between functionality and beauty, the pair looked to the purpose handbags serve in the lives of their wearers. “A bag is something that is extremely personal,” says Rousteing. “You need to understand a woman’s life to understand her bag.” For Delevingne, who counts herself amongst those who’d be lost without their carryall, the accessory has to have a utilitarian purpose while serving as a form of expression. “They hold everything a person needs to make it through a day, a night, a trip,” says Delevingne. “What I like about the bags we did for this season and particularly next season, is that they are versatile. People can carry them to work and then out to dinner with friends without having to change.”

The first collection will debut with a series of videos that harness Delevingne’s acting skills. Inspired by virtual reality and on-demand platforms like Netflix, Rousteing wanted the marketing around the accessories to be experiential. “Of course we do portraits because they’re timeless, but video is so important today,” he says. “Cara has such great talent with acting, and I wanted to bring that strength into the campaign.” While he remains mum on whether the designer and muse partnership will grow to encompass more than just handbags, Rousteing promises that this is only the beginning. “When you create a collaboration, for me it’s never something that you just drop and afterward you stop,” says Rousteing. “For me it’s creating a universe that we can then share with the world.”

Are You Using Too Much Dry Shampoo? This French Hair Guru Says Oui

If one attribute has come to epitomize the oft-romanticized French Girl’s beauty, it’s her laissez-faire lengths: always tousled, never freshly washed. The secret weapon at her side, we’ve been told? Dry shampoo, a duty-free commodity Americans (and more than one Vogue-ette) have been known to bring back from Paname by the trunkful. As it turns out, though, folklore may have led us astray, causing sensitive, itchy scalps and even hair loss along the way. “If you use it all the time, it’s a real issue,” says Parisian colorist Christophe Robin, who’s behind Catherine Deneuve, Léa Seydoux, and Ines de la Fressange’s inimitable coifs. “It’s like going to bed with makeup on.”

Instead, Frenchwomen “have better habits,” he explains, that ensure every (sparse) shampoo session lasts longer. “They don’t want to go home to wash their hair every day,” adds Robin, citing residue-removing antibacterial vinegar—bought at Diptyque or Santa Maria Novella—mixed into a bowl of cold water and poured over the head as “a great French trick.” Follow it up with a softening oil treatment, which will leave lengths less coated than traditional conditioners. “French girls will comb it through their hair, throw their hair into a little bun, and read or exercise with it [in] before [finally] washing it out.”

Of course, all the planning in the world can still land us in a (greasy) pinch. In that case, reach not for deluxe dry shampoos, whose sweet-smelling scents and shine-enhancing ingredients can further add to irritation, but rather for one unexpected pantry staple: baking soda. “It’s an old ingredient that works,” Robin says. As for his pro tip? “Put it onto a good natural bristle brush, and brush your hair upside down.” No transatlantic flight required.

Should I Break Up With My Hair Colorist to Go Gray?

One evening last summer, I was seated at the Brooklyn hair salon where I spend so much of my waking life. As my scalp was being slathered in a color formula best described as deep espresso with tones of roasted hazelnut, I watched a local jewelry designer settle into the station across from mine. “The regular touch-up?” her colorist asked. “Actually,” she replied tentatively, “I’m ready to grow in my grays.” I cast my eyes away from the mirror, embarrassed to be privy to so intimate an exchange.

A few months later, I scrolled past an image of Jocelyne Beaudoin on designer Rachel Comey’s feed and started to rethink my every-five-weeks habit. The 60-year-old prop stylist and interior decorator, who had recently walked Comey’s spring show, brandished silver-wheat curls that looked radically fresh. I spotted another gorgeous riff on the mother-of-pearl shade on the baby-faced assistant at my dermatologist’s office. “I’ve already tried all the other colors out there,” she told me with a shrug when I paid her a compliment on her new smoky tone.

After years of being a telltale sign of getting old—a stigma so toxic for women in America “that almost no one, no matter her age, will admit she is old,” Mary Pipher recently wrote in her widely shared New York Times essay “The Joy of Being a Woman in Her 70s”—it’s suddenly hip to be gray. You can see it on the pop charts, as musicians such as Cardi B, Ariana Grande, and seventeen-year-old pop phenom Billie Eilish have all had a go at lunar hues that channel cyberpunk princesses, and on the runways, where women of a certain vintage (Stella Tennant, Erin O’Connor, Pat Tracey) are embracing their salt-and-pepper strands to the clamor of casting directors. “Brands are asking for models with their natural hair colors and textures,” confirms Travis Weaver, who is in charge of the lineups at shows such as Comey’s. These frosty streaks “communicate authenticity,” suggests New York gallerist Bridget Donahue, 38, who frequently sweeps her own into an updo to display the flashes of white that run underneath. Look no further than the drugstore aisle for evidence: Earlier this year, L’Oréal named silver the hair color of the year.

Concealing grays has been a popular practice since the early twentieth century, following the advent of the first synthetic hair dye. And while wearing them with pride entertained a brief comeback in the 1970s, when feminists eschewed hair color in what Lois Banner, a professor of history and gender studies at the University of Southern California, calls “a backlash against the patriarchy,” that flirtation quickly fizzled. But today’s pale craze may have staying power. A natural outgrowth of the body-positivity movement, it goes hand in hand with a wide reconsideration of long-ingrained beauty norms. Now, says Banner, choosing to wear your hair gray is an opportunity to assert independence and style. “It’s my favorite thing about myself,” says Sophia Roe, a social-­media star, chef, and wellness advocate who was sixteen when she started seeing silver. Now 30, she is the proud owner of copious tinsel-like ringlets that punctuate her otherwise onyx curls. “It’s like I got bopped in the head with a magical stick.”

That’s not to say breaking with the bottle is easy. “It can be just as much work as maintaining your roots,” explains Christophe Robin, the cult French colorist who regularly mixes mahoganies and flaxens for Kylie Minogue and Tilda Swinton. There are a slew of wash-out color products, such as Bumble and Bumble’s velvety Bb.Color Sticks and R+Co’s Art School root touch-up gel, to help blend natural grays as they come in—a better bet than adding artificial silver additions, according to Robin, who prefers to skip anything requiring a preliminary bleaching process that can be damaging to the hair. Instead, he prescribes an acidic pH shampoo, such as his own wheat-germ formula, used in tandem with Santa Maria Novella’s violet vinegar rinse to lock in the cuticle and protect against environmental pollutants that can turn a perfect pewter into a dull yellow.

In my native habitat of brownstone Brooklyn, women of a creative ilk cultivate streaks of white and silver as part of a uniform that includes A Détacher knitwear and shearling-lined clogs. It’s a constant endorsement for revisiting my natural hair color, whatever it may be. Perhaps I’ll discover that it’s that of a Norse goddess, or the morning fog over Mexico City. But images of ashy pigeons and tarnished silverware inevitably swoop in, and I lose my courage. And maybe that’s fine, too. I recently ran into the jewelry designer whose color evolution I’d been following for the past year. Her brush with grayness had reached its conclusion, and she’d returned to a warm, rich chestnut. Going silver and back again: What’s more empowering than that?

Frances McDormand Wears Custom Valentino Birkenstocks on Stage at the Oscars

While movie legends and breakthrough film stars may pull out their most glamorous attire for Hollywood's biggest night, we can always count on Frances McDormand to do something totally off-beat. Tonight, while presenting the Best Actress Oscar to Olivia Coleman, the actress took to the stage wearing a pair of Valentino custom yellow suede Birkenstocks underneath her pink gown from the Italian house's Spring 2019 Couture collection. McDormand rarely walks the red carpet and isn’t into name-checking designers, but she has grown close to Valentino and its creative director Pierpaolo Piccioli ever since she wore one of his couture confections to the 2018 Met Gala. Though the Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri star kept to her usual no-makeup look, her couture-meets-comfort ensemble made a bold red carpet statement. Tonight, the 2018 Oscar winner elevated the Brooklyn mom wardrobe staple to Hollywood fashion icon status.

While Birks may feel like decidedly casual choice, McDormand explains that much thought went into the Birkenstock and Valentino partnership. "Last year, while swanning on the grand staircase at the Met Gala, by invitation of Pierpaolo Piccioli of the House of Valentino, a spark ignited in me. I have always followed fashion and had a secret desire to find a way to express my knowledge and appreciation for it. When given the chance to lend my enthusiasm and experience to the collaboration of a particular item of fashion there was only one answer for me: Birkenstock's Arizona two strap sandal." She adds, "I have worn these sandals for most of my adult life. They have literally formed me physically and philosophically. All that I desired was to have a pair in my favorite color: acid yellow. And now they exist!" "The spark caught fire and there's no going back."

Sounds like this may not be McDormand's last fashion collaboration and here's hoping it isn't. From head to footbed, she always does her own thing, which is certainly a red carpet trait worth celebrating time and again. To forgo heels for a pair of Piccioli-designed cork-soled slides is fearless, insanely cool, and a totally appropriate move in the wild world of Frances McDormand.

Rick Owens Loves Larry LeGaspi—And You Should, Too

Fashion history can be unkind. Designers without big corporate backing or luxury contracts can be written away, go unmentioned in footnotes, and not celebrated in exhibitions. That’s why we’re dedicating some ink—or some pixels, rather—here at Vogue Runway to celebrating the unsung designers who have changed fashion history. First up, a recommendation from Rick Owens.

You could be the biggest fashion nerd with a Wi-Fi hookup, but even then the name Larry LeGaspi may not ring a bell. It didn’t for me, and I certainly qualify.

Working in New York in the 1970s and ’80s, LeGaspi’s oeuvre is a pre-Internet one, making his legacy almost unsearchable online save for a handful of photos and scattershot quotes. Getting the full picture of what he created through Google is almost impossible; you’ll find a silhouette without a halo, a lightning bolt without any thunder. LeGaspi was the designer who conceived Kiss’s black unitards and peaked collars and shoulders. He clad Labelle (where Patti LaBelle got her start) in transcendent silver leotards and jackets. He helped Grace Jones unlock her supernatural superstardom, and he made clothes to match George Clinton’s rainbow hair and aura. But then he passed away in 2001 from complications of AIDS at age 50, leaving behind his wife, Val, and a treasure trove of sketches, garments, press clippings, and photographs in his Long Island home. It was a remarkable archive hiding in plain sight—and then Rick Owens found it.

In 2002, Owens gave an interview to Plaza magazine in which he revealed his newish obsession. “I just found out that Larry LeGaspi, who did the costumes for Labelle, also did the costumes for Kiss and then Divine’s costumes for the play Pork, and yet there’s hardly any documentation on [him]! I’m gonna talk about him every chance I get.”

This October, Owens will do just that with a book on the designer, published by Rizzoli. But before it’s released, Owens scooped himself, creating his Fall 2019 collection in homage to LeGaspi’s life and work. “For me, as a teenager growing up in Porterville, California, what Larry LeGaspi did was a huge thing—the way he infiltrated Middle America with this subversive sensibility,” Owens told my colleague Luke Leitch at his show in Paris, describing this collection as a tribute to “the glory of lust and vice.” There were Owens-esque puffa bombers and long, sexy, swooping trousers, and on the cuffs of slim jackets there was the label Owens Instagrammed the day before the show that read “L. LeGaspi, Inc. New York.”

About 3,600 miles from Paris in Long Island, New York, Val LeGaspi woke up just before 6:00 a.m. to stream Owens’s runway show on her tablet. “I loved it! I loved it! I hate to sound prejudiced, but I thought yesterday was the best. That disk of light was like the moonbeam, and then the darkness . . . it was wonderful,” she said over the phone the morning after the show. “It’s been so ethereal to me how we were brought together from across the world. It’s so far-out.”

Val, née Aronoff, met Larry in 1975 and was married to him from 1982 until his death in 2001. She was not only his muse, but has become, since his passing, the chief archivist of and cheerleader for his legacy. Val does not own a computer; her friends Theresa and Sandra, whom she lovingly calls “my girls,” helped meticulously catalog Larry’s sketches, photographs, press clippings, and designs, creating a thorough timeline of his life. “Larry had such an imagination,” Val remembers. “It was mind-blowing to see him and the things he created.”

Born in New Jersey in 1950, Larry moved to New York the day after his high school graduation, purchasing his first sewing machine at the Salvation Army and attending classes at the Fashion Institute of Technology. He sold an early collection titled Mother Superior Clothing in 1971, and had opened the Moonstone boutique in the hinterlands of the West Village on Hudson Street just south of Christopher Street later that year with Richard Erker, a jewelry designer, and Rob Comucio, a graphic designer. Around that time he linked up with Labelle, ultimately creating costumes for the trio to wear for their “Wear Something Silver” performance at the Metropolitan Opera in 1974. “Patti [LaBelle] even speaks of that,” Val says, “that they never would have made [it to] the Met as three soul singers [in those days] if they didn’t have that visual created by Larry.”

Kiss came calling around the same time, broadcasting Larry’s signature trapunto-stitched leather pieces into the mainstream. But there’s more to the story than Paul, Gene, Peter, and Ace’s Kabuki makeup and peaked shoulders. In 1977, Larry opened his first salon uptown on Madison Avenue. “Workroom downtown, salon uptown,” Val says. “Eventually he found a space on 57th Street [in 1979 or 1980], which would incorporate the showroom and the workroom under the same roof. We would do PR and sales, go to dinner, and then come back and do production all night. That was our life.”

Larry maintained his ready-to-wear collection and created one-off pieces for clients in New York and around the U.S. while simultaneously clothing the biggest stars of his era. “He did a lovely matte jersey line that was not too outrageous. We had a few society women who, rather than wearing Adolfo or Halston like their other friends, loved Larry’s clothes,” notes Val.

Looking at images from her archive, you can see the languid, sensual appeal. The drama of costume and camp isn’t diminished in Larry’s bias jersey pieces, like a dress-meets-cape aquamarine number worn with a feathered hat and coordinating muff. Rather there’s a clever hot-meets-haute appeal. He was also ahead of the curve on what we today would call prairie chic, creating a series of cherry red frocks and frilled skirts with heart pockets and high collars in the ’70s, versions of which sell online nowadays by contemporary designers for hundreds of dollars.

“He didn’t really look at what was happening in fashion or follow the usual rhythm of the fashion world,” Val explains, noting that Larry’s biggest fashion references were Erté and Charles James, though he much preferred to draw from ideas of science, nature, and science fiction, like the H.G. Wells film Things to Come. “Larry would come out with all this information that was mind-boggling; I don’t even know where he got it from, because it was way ahead of its time.”

He was among the earliest in fashion to adopt Thinsulate, a man-made fabric developed by 3M in 1979. An article in The New York Times quotes Larry on the subject, though the best demonstration of his innovations is the red cocoon dress Val wore to the 1979 Met Gala, then held in December. “That was the most special, I think. That was the first time he and I were out in public together. When I went to the Met in the red dress, that was before Madonna was huge. You had Debbie Harry, who was platinum blonde, but she was more punk rock. I was a full-figured platinum blonde in a fishtail. They went crazy—and I was warm as toast! That was such a magical night for us because I don’t think Larry had ever gotten so much coverage,” Val recalls. That dress now lives in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s archive, a gift from Val.

It was around that time that Val and Larry had started a romantic relationship, too. “There are a lot of parallels between Michèle [Lamy, Owens’s wife] and Rick and Larry and me,” she says, referencing both couples’ nontraditional relationships. “Larry was openly gay for his whole life, and Rick is bisexual, so there are a lot of similarities.”

Another parallel: Bill Cunningham. Having inhabited a space on 57th Street, the LeGaspis became fast friends with the photographer, who spent most days shooting subjects on 57th and Fifth Avenue. “There was one time when Larry was busy working on the bulldog shoes for P-Funk [Parliament-Funkadelic]; he was wearing them, practicing walking, because the shoes had leashes. Bill popped in, and it was hilarious,” Val remembers with a laugh. “Bill loved that. Bill was an artist himself and he really loved the sculptural art of Larry’s wearable art clothing.”

It was a few years ago, around the time that Cunningham passed away, that Owens first reached out to Val over email. “When I was looking up who Rick was, I saw an Instagram of Rick and Bill. Larry and Rick never met, even though they were in L.A. at same time. I felt as though Bill died and he wasn’t dead. He got there [to the afterlife] with Larry, and he made this happen,” says Val.

Shortly thereafter, Owens and Val started discussing a potential book on Larry’s work. “Rick sent me his book so I could see his work. I was blown away. I loved his work, and I really felt good about him. I said, ‘When are you coming to New York?’” In the winter of 2016, Owens made a rare trip stateside to visit Val in Long Island. “He had never seen a LeGaspi in person. He was blown away, because Larry’s construction is incredible. He went right to the clothing racks. I think it blew Rick’s mind when he walked into the studio I set up downstairs,” she says. Suffice to say, the feeling was mutual. “Rick has every right to be the most jaded man, with the empire he has built, but he is just such a wonderful human being,” Val adds.

Soon after, the book idea turned into a collection idea. “Rick surprised me with wanting to do the show in Larry’s name and pay homage to him,” she continues. “It just blew me away. He’s so deep and so sensitive; he really gets it. I just love this man!”

In 1980, Larry gave an interview to Us Weekly for a profile touting him as the future of fashion. “I knew I’d have to wait for the world to catch up to me, but I didn’t think I’d have to wait this long,” he said. In the end, it took 38 more years and a similarly ahead-of-his-time American designer for the world to really catch up. When lightning strikes twice, it’s worth the wait.