The Seventies in New York were the most creative, expressive time for the fashion industry.

New York was bankrupt, and it was dirt cheap to live in the city – because everyone that could was fleeing. As my friend Ian Schrager pointed out when discussing the success of Studio 54, New York drew everyone from anywhere in the USA who felt different and wanted to be free to be themselves in NYC. That meant a very creative, spirited population could coexist with the upper echelon of the city, and the blend of both fed into every creative possibility.

This was also the time when gay men and feminists came out. They let it be known they existed, and the world was going to have to learn to live with the change they were expressing.

The creativity in New York was evident everywhere. Women’s Wear Daily helped build the celebrity designer and chronicled all the creativity happening throughout the city. From the amazing fashion sketches by Antonio Lopez in the New York Times Magazine Sunday section to new concepts in fashion and the celebrity designers like Halston, Calvin and Ralph.

The store windows became a showplace, a rotating weekly theater where magnificent presentations were exhibited. Shopping was a ritual and everyone got dressed to look at the windows and the displays within the stores. The gay community was buzzing with a creative energy that was exciting, that could only happen at that time, and was never repeated again in the same way. There was an excitement and realization something new and wonderful was happening. If you were different you fit in. I made some of the best friendships of my life at that time. The bond within the different groups was strong. I was an accidental feminist as a result of going On My Own in a time when women just wouldn’t do this type of thing, and I was so connected to my gay brothers in the most creative powerful way.

As I write this about my dear friend Bob Currie, my eyes fill with tears. So many years have passed and I have a physical, emotional reaction to the loss of this friendship. Bob’s birthday was June 26, mine June 27, and Dennis Lee June 28. We were stuck together like glue and we were a new type of family.

I met Bob and Dennis when I opened my first store at 229 East 53^rd Street. I was in a $285 basement space in a brownstone under a parlor floor. Opposite my basement space was another store called We Give Great Hair Cuts. Dennis was a hair cutter at the salon. When I met him, he was cutting Sylvester Stallone’s hair and a few other similar-type guys’s hair for a film. I believe it was Stallone’s first movie.

Dennis was very friendly, and welcomed me to the street and the building. Each brownstone had an upstairs and a downstairs shop. We painted the fronts of the buildings in different colors and took pride in every detail.

Dennis decided we were going to be friends, and I am so glad he did. We clicked immediately. He was inspiring, funny, and always ironic. His friend Bob Currie would come to visit, and Dennis was sure to introduce me as soon as Bob walked through the door. We made an immediate connection. Then of course, when we realized we were all Cancers three days in a row, it was clear we were meant to be together.

Before Bob came to New York City, he was studying to be a priest in a seminary. His sense of humor was not appreciated when he got caught short-sheeting the headpriest’s bed. He was thrown out, and that was that. Now he was an aspiring interior designer. He had a great eye and a sense of humor I miss to this day. We spent so much time laughing and thinking all the time about creative ideas. We looked at everything from museums to exhibits –you name it– and would talk about what we saw and the inspiration. We spent time drawing ideas, and talking about ideas. We were individually inspired, but together, we amped up the excitement of the creative process.

When Eddie Kamali and I moved from 53rd Street to a Madison Avenue second-floor store, I had the challenge of decorating the space with $10,000. Bob said he would help me. I knew how I wanted the space to look and feel. He helped me make it even better than I imagined. We sprinkled small bits of crushed broken glass on the pale gray walls so they sparkled as you walked through the space in a subtle elegant way. We did huge banquets and a big cement table. There were a mirrored counter and freestanding clothing racks built out from an architectural base.

Bob was obsessed with doing the widow. This was the real challenge. How do we get folks to look up at the window? At the time, Madison Avenue did not have a second floor retail store occupancy.

Bob asked me, “What is your first window? What clothes are you featuring? ” I showed him workman zip-up jumpsuits designed in white and orange.

There was no budget left to do anything in the window. Bob said, “Leave it to me!” That evening, he called to say he is on his way with some props.

Through the door to the shop come a couple of guys carrying a complete Con Ed construction site. The barricades, the big funnels where the steam from pipes below the street escape, the signs, everything!!

I am ecstatic and freaked out at the same time. I thought for sure we would be arrested for theft. Bob assured me it would be ok because we were going to return it all!!! The window had everyone talking, we had dry ice creating a steam affect out of the funnel tubes and it was written about and people were looking up. Yes, he returned the complete Con Ed site.

The next window, I was featuring floral print dresses.

Hundreds of tulips walk in the door in the arms of a small army of guys. “How could he afford to buy the flowers?” They were cut perfectly and a massive amount of flowers filled the window with the mannequins immersed in the color of the tulips. Anything for beauty and creativity!

One window was better than the last, and we were able to breathe a sigh of relief. Within a short time, everyone was looking up, and Geraldine Stutz from the amazing Bendel’s store reached out to me to find out who was doing the windows. Bob reinvented window design with his imaginative, fun, gorgeous, exciting window. He was then asked to redesign the store and did that too.

When I was doing my frequent trips to Japan for my clothing license, there was Bob, also in Japan doing the Hanae Mori building display interiors and the windows of course. We were so lucky to be there at the same time doing what we both loved – to design, be creative, laugh and have a good time.

Then, Bob was asked to style the sets for Richard Avedon and became an important part of his team. Dick introduced me to his friend Twyla Tharp and I created the costumes for her revolutionary dance In The Upper Room.

Every holiday, Bob, Dennis and more of our friends would gather for holiday dinners together.

AIDS hit the gay community hard and no one had any idea of the devastation to follow. Bob and I had apartments in the West Village in one of the first loft buildings in the Meatpacking area.

The impact in the village was visible and so difficult to understand. Why is everyone sick and why are they dying so quickly?

That horrible day came when Bob wanted to have a talk, just the two of us. “I have AIDS,” he said, and I can remember that moment in detail. The disbelief, the hugging, the crying. There was no cure or medication that had been developed to save anyone. I remember looking at his silhouette as he headed home. His boots, the sack he carried over his shoulder, his walk. Bob was private, dignified, and worked to the end. He passed before Dennis, who died less than two years later. Then it was one after another. The mourning for friends passing left a sadness and an empty space in the city, never to filled again.

I feel Bob’s presence whenever I think of him. I visited a psychic years ago, and she told me your friend, a very dapper guy with a wicked sense of humor, is going to be there for you when you are ready to pass.