Quite like nothing the black-tie charity circuit here had ever seen, the Love Ball was a ”walk” on the wild side.
”You don`t see these things in Italy, or even in London. It`s pure New York,” murmured Nando Miglio, the worldly wise Milanese fashion impresario, emerging from a forest of feathered Copacabana ”girls.”
”It`s certainly not like one of those traditional benefits,” said Laurie Mallet, the elegant president of WilliWear, as a handsome young cowboy, wearing jingly coin-trimmed black chaps, a star-studded G-string and little else, sauntered by.
Indeed, billed as a ”Vogueing Extravaganza” to benefit the Design Industries Foundation for AIDS, the event Wednesday gave many of the 1,500 guests gathered at the Roseland Ballroom their first view of ”vogueing.” At times, a harrowingly stylish hybrid of ballet, break dancing, gymnastics, bodybuilding, tai chi, and, above all, runway fashion modeling, ”vogueing”
is a dance form that takes its inspiration and name from freeze-frame drama of fashion photos in Vogue magazine.
Although it only recently emerged from the underground scene, it began about 25 years ago in Harlem`s black and Latin gay communities, where it was an elaborately costumed dance approach, particularly favored, as it still is, by transvestites. Modern voguers belong to ”houses,” which have been called ”a chic form of gay gangs.” Houses compete for prizes at balls, a process called ”walking the ball.” At the Love Ball, WilliWear was one of dozens of fashion and design-related firms, stores and magazines that sponsored
”houses” in the evening`s vogueing competitions.
While the wide-eyed guests, including the model Iman, munched on hatpin-skewered shish-kebabs drawn from the pink hatbox-shaped dinner pails at each place, the voguers vied in such categories as ”Battle of the Runway Models,” ”Sequins, Feathers and Beads” and ”Wedding of the Year.”
Each performance was rated by a panel of judges, who waved paper plates marked with scores from 5 to a perfect 10. Among the celebrity judges, which included rock star David Byrne of Talking Heads, wry writer Fran Lebowitz was most concerned with ”deportment and neatness,” while actor Geoffrey Holder was looking for ”magic.” Dancer-choreographer Gwen Verdon of ”Sweet Charity” fame judged the contestants ”more Vogue than Vogue models,” she said.
Among the most memorable, if not the trimmest, was the well-upholstered team fielded by Metropolitan Home magazine, that lumbered onto the runway dressed as armchairs, chandeliers and even a table, laden with a full-course dinner, complete with candles and flowers.
The winners were awarded designer trophies, while their efforts raised about $400,000 for DIFFA, which distributes funds directly to those with AIDS. Verdon, in fact, was particularly on hand to present a $50,000 check to the House of Sweet Charity, a trio of Harlem apartments that will become home for homeless voguers with AIDS.
