Paradise Now by William Middleton

Author:William Middleton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2022-12-31T00:00:00+00:00

20

Gentlemen Callers

For me, sex has never been particularly interesting. I always thought that it was something like a sporting activity for the young. I’m an authentic puritan.1

FOR SOMEONE SURROUNDED BY so much beauty, male and female, clothed and unclothed, Karl could be something of a prude. There were many in Paris fashion who were militant in terms of their sexuality: Jean Paul Gaultier, Thierry Mugler, and Alexander McQueen, for example. And Pierre Bergé was a committed AIDS activist. Karl was not the kind to bang the drum for a cause but he was, at the same time, a gay man who was certainly interested in attractive men.

In the mid-’90s, Karl made a trip to New York and went for a night out on the town with Patrick McCarthy, the influential successor to John Fairchild at Fairchild Publications. McCarthy would be named, in 1997, the chairman and editorial director of W and WWD.

McCarthy had begun his career in the 1970s in an unpromising way, with the Fairchild bureau in Washington, DC, then was promoted to London. An excellent reporter and outstanding editor, he quickly became Mr. Fairchild’s dauphin. In 1980, he was named Paris bureau chief. If he was not as capricious as Mr. Fairchild, who embarked on legendary fashion feuds with designers from Geoffrey Beene to Azzedine Alaïa, he could be just as competitive about exclusives and equally relentless if denied. The title of a cover story in New York magazine on his ascension: “The McCarthy Era.” As he told the journalist Michael Gross, “No one else could get the story, and if anyone else got the story, someone had to pay!” pounding his hands on the table to punctuate each word. “You can’t make the New York Times pay, so make the poor little designer pay—or the big rich designer. Mr. Fairchild instilled it in me. I’m like the abused child that is now abusing. I will kill for the story, and if I don’t have it, I will get angry.”2

Suffice it to say, Patrick McCarthy was a piece of work. He had known Karl since 1980, when he moved to Paris. “We bonded immediately,” he said of the designer. The feeling was certainly mutual. McCarthy was one of the handful of editors with whom Karl maintained a close personal friendship. As he said of McCarthy, “He has wit, great talent, and is a marvelous friend.”3

The editor was discreet about his sexuality, although he was not closeted. He favored bridge games with Upper East Side grandes dames to slumming it in nightclubs. In choosing where to take Karl on his trip to New York, however, McCarthy decided to be adventurous. They headed to the Gaiety, a notorious strip club, just off Times Square, at a time when the entire neighborhood was still very seedy.

The Gaiety was at 201 West Forty-Sixth Street, just west of Broadway. It was marked by a canopy on the side street, behind the Howard Johnson’s, the orange-and-white restaurant that held the corner for decades. Three

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