Puerto Rican-born, Harlem and Bronx-raised Antonio Lopez was the most influential fashion illustrator of 1970s New York and Paris. And Antonio Lopez 1970 Sex Fashion and Disco, from filmmaker James Crump (Troublemakers: The Story of Land Art, Black White + Gray), brings an exhilarating, often outrageous chapter of fashion history to rich life. Winner of the Metropolitan Grand Jury prize at this year’s Doc NYC Film Festival and produced by Crump and Ronnie Sassoon, Antonio Lopez 1970 is a time capsule of Paris and New York between 1969 and 1973 as viewed through the eyes of Antonio Lopez (1943-1987), the dominant fashion illustrator of the time. Lopez was a seductive arbiter of style and glamour who, beginning in the 1960s, brought elements of the urban street and ethnicity to bear on a postwar fashion world desperate for change and diversity. Counted among Antonio’s discoveries-muses of the period-were unusual beauties such as Cathee Dahmen, Grace Jones, Pat Cleveland, Tina Chow, Jessica Lange, Jerry Hall and Warhol Superstars Donna Jordan, Jane Forth and Patti D’Arbanville among others.
Through archival footage and stills of studio life in Carnegie Hall, infamous venues such as Max’s Kansas City and Hotel Chelsea, a soundtrack featuring disco superstars like Donna Summer, Chic, Curtis Mayfield and original interviews with principal characters from the time, Crump takes audiences back to the swinging seventies when fashion designers and their entourages gained the prominence of rock stars. Antonio Lopez 1970 Sex Fashion and Disco, features interviews with Lange, Cleveland, Jordan, Forth and D’Arbanville, as well as revered fashion photographer Bill Cunningham in his very last interview, Grace Coddington, Joan Juliet Buck, Michael Chow, Bob Colacello, Corey Tippin, and Paul Caranicas, among others. The film which Interview Magazine called “dazzling,” perfectly captures Lopez and his entourage, blithely on a quest for beauty and pleasure before the decade, saturated by drug use, addiction and sexual promiscuity came to a crashing halt.
Check out photos from Antonio Lopez 1970 Sex Fashion and Disco:
