Patricia Field is just like you’d picture her to be: bold, expressive and prominent like her signature red tresses.

Clad in Moschino leopard leggings paired with wedge sneakers for added height, her rose-tinted cat-eye sunglasses perfectly frame her face with that same enterprising sartorial flair that brought her fame.

We’re welcomed with open arms at her latest endeavor, Art Fashion Gallery, a neatly tucked away location on East Broadway on the Lower East Side. Hidden in plain sight, Field’s new pursuit is a diamond in the rough.

Although both her first flagship on 8th Street and iconic retail store House of Field on the Bowery are now gone, they are most certainly not forgotten.

Her stores have always been a place of refuge – a church of sorts – for the congregation of artists, outcasts, bohemians and eccentrics. If rebellion was the religion, Patricia Field was their evangelist. The rest is herstory.

Field has always had her nose to the grindstone, influencing major fashion trends with her styling. Her impressive resume and lifetime of work boasts projects like Sex and the City, The Devil Wears Prada, and, currently, her role as lead costume designer for the revival of Murphy Brown.

The acclaimed and legendary Patricia Field is here to stay, is not slowing down any time soon, and she wants you to know that!

Aldo Araujo: You’ve been around to witness the evolution of fashion week, and just held a presentation this past September at a strip club near Bryant Park. Can you talk a little about that?

In the times that have elapsed, many things happened at the fashion shows. Fern Mallis is an old friend of mine since the 1980s. We had Bryant Park, and that was the place until we lost it. I loved Lincoln Center, but it wasn’t the same. Then it started proliferating all over the west side by Washington Street and Greenwich Street.

My last show in September was at the Sapphire strip club, a block away from Bryant Park. When we sent out the invitations, we were like, “We’re coming back to Bryant Park!” They called and said they would like to do a show with us, so we went to see the space. I was like, “Oh my god, look at the screen and this whole place.”

Those days, fashion, music and clubbing were all one big soup. It all worked together, and I don’t feel that this way now. People don’t dress up anymore. That was just part of it, part of the circus, and the whole part of the life and atmosphere.

Karyl J. Truesdale: Your concept of juxtaposing high and low, second-hand with couture was genius. Where did the idea come from?

I grew up that way. I grew up in the city. My mom used to love to buy me cashmere sweaters, and I think, in her brain, she thought she could afford cashmere sweaters for her daughter. I was a kid wearing a Burberry trench and $2.99 pointy sneakers, and that was the beginning of high-low for me. It was natural for me to marry the two, as I was never into designer clothes, period. That’s boring to me. It’s how you mix it up. It gives people ideas and the notion they can combine pieces in their wardrobe and be unique, like finding a good vintage Chanel jacket, and pairing it with jeans and a T-shirt or a set of pearls with a tank top. It’s more fun, accessible, and more possible. It gives people the opportunity to be creative on their own and display their own uniqueness.

K.J.T.: Did the culture of hip hop inspire you to introduce bamboo earrings and nameplate necklaces, like Carrie’s on Sex and the City, to the mainstream audience?

In the 1980s, back in the days of Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat, my flagship store on 8th Street was the hang-out for the club kids, graffiti artists and downtown kids who embodied the grit and culture of the SoHo scene. My customers were all New York City girls who wore nameplate necklaces. During my tenure as a costume designer on SATC, I bought Sarah Jessica Parker a nameplate, and she liked it. It came from my world. The diaspora were the boroughs of Brooklyn and Harlem, the inner city. That’s been the representation here. The contributions of life and art that came through those doors are what keep fashion alive to me. When the painters are talking to the designers, who are talking to the deejays…it’s that culture.

A.A.: Talk a little bit about your newest endeavor, Art Fashion Gallery, and what this space means to you and is intended for.

This place [Art Fashion Gallery] is the result of a couple of conversations that I had in my store before I sold it with my clients and a couple stylists in 2016. We had artists that sold painted clothing who were doing well. The stylists were telling me, “We always come here, never know what we’re going to find, but it’s always a surprise.”

This space, my little studio gallery as I like to call it, isn’t really an evolution of anything. I can look at it as an evolution, but I see evolution as linear. I think I see it more like another expression of the same, but with a different edge to it.

I wanted this to be a gallery as opposed to a store. People ask me, “Where’s your new store?“ and I tell them there isn’t one. I believe it’s a blend, because fashion belongs in the family of art, just like paintings or music or literature are art.

Maybe fashion is a demigod. Not Aphrodite or Athena, but a demigod. It’s in the art family. Putting painting together with clothing is compatible. You’re not forcing something that’s artificial or gimmicky. It’s very organic.

A.A.: You’ve had a lifetime of success and been in the fashion and art world for decades. At this point in your career, what makes you the happiest?

Being with my friends and enjoying my time. To me, the biggest gift is if I can inspire.

I do my work, I like my work, and I like being successful. I have a great life. I don’t think of it as a legacy. It may be, but I don’t think I’m there. I don’t really think about it. I don’t think about it, I just want to live. Like Susan Hayward: I Want to Live!

I have more than enough money and I don’t spend it stupidly. My life hasn’t changed majorly because of anything that has happened to me. It’s the same. I like my own expression. I’m comfortable inside my own world, and that’s how it should be for all people. Make your world and live in it.

K.J.T.: Who would be the perfect guests at a Patricia Field’s dinner party, living or deceased?

I would invite Cleopatra and Socrates, as well the Greek poet Homer, and a few of my old friends that have passed on like Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat. I would have loved to have met Audrey Hepburn and Edith Head, whom I admire. It would be a wild party!