Happy Clothes

Tropic Sprockets by Ian Brockway

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Patricia Field, the mistress of “freaky fashion” is irradiated on screen in the new documentary “Happy Clothes” by director Michael Selditch. The film is breezy, carbonated and popping with color. The documentary possesses a kaleidoscopic look following Field from here to there as she talks about her eclectic and electric life. The film’s momentum is intimate and buzzing with a who’s who of personalities, which makes it a solid primer for the 70s and 80s in New York City.

Inspired by the look of pinup dominatrix Bettie Page, Field opened a small retail store in the 1970s. It soon became a communication center, and haven for the underground punk movement, a favorite of the LGTBQ community and eccentrics from all over the city. The Patricia Field store was the first to carry shirts by the artist Keith Haring. RuPaul and Jean-Michel Basquiat were store regulars. Madonna was famously thrown out of the store for arriving too early by the late stylist Codie Ravoli. John Kennedy Jr. was also ejected from the store for being verbally rude.

Field is famous but does not act like it. She scampers through the city like a whirling dervish with long and waving maraschino cherry hair. She laments the passing of time but keeps moving forward, swimming, smoking, and cackling along the way. Her eyes are a Halloween camera, always looking for the next creature comfort. Fields is always eager to jar conventional humans, upsetting the status quo. Only this process of feeling upset and off-kilter can lead to new ways of experience and understanding, not only as a creator but as a human being. This is Patricia Field’s life work.

The stylist is the color-spirit behind “Sex in the City, “Emily in Paris,” and “The Devil Wears Prada.” Field lives for uncommon juxtapositions and splashes of color. In this sense, Patricia Fields is a textile Surrealist. Colorful provocations and visual jumbles thrill her.

Though Field is somewhat saddened by the 21st century and the iPhone parade of “blah blah” people, she surrounds herself with the young and is optimistic. Field is one of the few remaining wearable Warholians and she continues to create, blending and mixing forward—a happy curmudgeon.

Write Ian at ianfree11@yahoo.com