Stephen Sprouse 1953-2004: a tribute to the man who put pop into fashion's palette

Interview, May, 2004 by Berry Berenson

How does one label an artist who hated labels? Such is the dilemma when describing the life and work of Stephen Sprouse, the fashion designer, painter, pop-punk visionary, and longtime Interview contributor who died in March at the age of 50.

Paige Powell, a close friend of Sprouse's, remembers first meeting him in the early 1980s at Andy Warhol's Factory, which was also home to Interview. "Stephen would come up and have lunch," she recalls. "He was extremely shy, but he constantly provided Andy with energy. He was just so rock 'n' roll."

And he was a perfect embodiment of the cultural renaissance of the times, when the barriers separating high and low, uptown and downtown, and fashion and art---once as solid and redoubtable as the Berlin Wall--came crashing down and everything from painting to politics came together. Sprouse was front and center for this big bang, and he carried with him throughout life the idea that art could exist without boundaries.

Case in point: his 2001 design collaboration with Marc Jacobs at Louis Vuitton, in which Sprouse splashed graffiti across Vuitton's leather goods, giving the iconic company a much-coveted shot of cool. Some remarked that Sprouse was at it again, blurring the line between high and low, but the truth is that for Sprouse, notions of high and low had long since gone the way of the dinosaurs.

"He loved the future and anything futuristic," says Powell. Here we take a look back at a pivotal moment in Sprouse's life, when the then-30-year-old maverick spoke with Berry Berenson about his past, his present, and his vision of things to come.

Uptown sophistication meets downtown imagination in the pop culture clothes of designer Stephen Sprouse. With a fluorescent orange wool overcoat worn over a bright yellow tank dress and graffiti-print headband coming at you, it's not too difficult to recognize the work of this 30-year-old designer. His growing success is substantiated by well-made, classically-styled, seasonless garments, It's the American clothes tradition with the Sprouse twist: cashmere T-shirts, sequined miniskirts with the words "peace," love," and "rock." Day-Glo yellow flannel hip-hugger bell bottoms printed with black graffiti, and Sprouse's re-styled, silver graffiti-printed engineer boots.

Sprouse got into the business at the age of ten when columnist Eugenia Sheppard wrote a raving article in the "New York Herald Tribune" on one of his "imaginary collections." His Indiana-based family encouraged their child with summer trips to New York, where at the age of twelve he found and apprenticeship with Bill Blass, and later with Coty Award-winner Leo Narducci. A few years later he was studying fine art at the Rhode Island School of Design, until he was offered a job as Halston's assistant. After three years of intense experience and pressure, he took time off for painting and photography, and in that time developed patterns and silkscreen techniques which uses today.

Last December, his first one-man show at his silver-painted showroom on 57th Street dazzled the fashion public with designs that remind us just how relevant the 1960s are to today's pop culture. Just a fad? Sproase says, "The neon coats should last ten years. They're classics." His creations are available at Bergdorf Goodman and Henri Bendel in New York.

STEPHEN SPROUSE: I grew up in Columbus, Indiana, a kind of industrial and farmland place. It's south of Indianapolis; a town of about 30,000 people. I lived in town until I was eight and then I moved nearer the farmland, so I had a mixture.

BERRY BERENSON: What kind of hobbies did you have when you were a child?

SS: I watched television a little, but I mostly just drew and read magazines.

BB: Fashion magazines?

SS: Yes. Like Vogue.

BB: How old were you when you began reading about fashion?

SS: Eight.

BB: So rather than sit and watch television, you would pick up a pad and pencil and draw. Would you draw from the pages of Vogue?

SS: Yes. That's how I taught myself how to draw--tracing the ads and petting new clothes on the models.

BB: Did you have friends who were also into this kind of thing ?

SS: No.

BB : Did your friends think you were a little strange?

SS: I told a couple of friends, but not very many.

BB: What did they think? I mean, what were they into?

SS: Spans.

BB: You have a brother, too. Was he interested in fashion?

SS: No, he was always playing sports with his friends.

BB : Did your parents encourage you?

SS: Yes, so in a sense I was lucky, because in that part of the country they really could have been pushing me to go play on the team and they didn't.

BB: Did you finish high school?

SS: I finished high school there and then I went to Rhode Island School of Design. When I went to college, I wasn't interested in fashion anymore--I was interested in art.

BB: So you actually then wanted to be a painter or an artist?

SS: Right, because it was kind of the hippie period around 1971 when I went to college. But late in highschool I had been a hippie, and fashion didn't seem as important.