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

Interview, May, 2004 by Berry Berenson

BB: Had you followed fashion up through the late '60s--people like Twiggy?

SS: Yes, through my New York publication reading.

BB: What happened in Rhode Island?

SS: I stayed three months. Then I got a job in New York during the winter session, so I didn't have to stay in Rhode Island. I didn't like it there.

BB: Had you always wanted to go to New York?

SS: Yes. I used to go there in the summers when I was a teenager.

BB: With your family?

SS: Once when I was about ten with my family, and then after that I went and stayed with this friend of mine, Adele, and her son. I'd go there for a month every summer.

BB: When you came to New York, where did you work?

SS: I went to work with Leo Narducci, a designer who I'd worked with when I was 16 one summer in New York. And I got permission to leave school since I got a job with him in the city, which was fine with me because I wanted to he away from Rhode Island.

BB: So you left completely after that?

SS: Not until I got the job with Halston. Leo called up a designer named George Halley and said my stuff looked like Halston and had I ever met him, and I said no, but that I had admired him and thought Halston's stuff was great at that point. So I of went up there and Halston hired me. He asked me about college and I said I didn't like it and he said, "Oh. well, I need an I assistant. Why don't you just come to work here?" So I quit school and went to New York.

BB : How long did you work with Halston?

SS: Almost three years.

BB: Did you do drawings for him that he used?

SS: I would just sketch everything that was being made for the collections.

BB: What made you decide to stop working there?

SS: I got to the point where I was sick of fashion again, like I was at the end of high school. I wanted to do art, but then I got the job with Halston which I thought I couldn't pass up--that chance to, learn from him. But after the time there I'd had it with fashion again, so I left to go to architecture school in a summer course at Harvard, which didn't last very long.

BB: And you stayed there for the entire summer?

SS: No, for about a week.

BB: How come you didn't like the school situation? Was it just too restricting?

SS: I don't know, but the technical things, like the architecture class.... Math was always a problem.

BB : Didn't you start painting fabrics with graphics at Ore: time?

SS: Yes, after Harvard I went away for a while and I came back to New York that fall and started doing color Xeroxes. Actually, at first it was black-and-white Xerox. And then I would do these sort of photo drawings, I'd photograph people and make black-and-white Xeroxes and draw on top of them. I just really wanted to do art, except when I was taking those photographs of people I would make the clothes that I would photograph them in so I could control the whole thing. The photograph, the clothes, the sets--this was about 1974, and I started hanging out with my friend Richard Sold, who was playing in a band with Patti Smith. I was like a groupie, always liked rock and roll, but then I was really close to it, which was a lot of fun for me. Then I moved down to the Bowery to this building where Debbie Harry lived. It was there that I started combining some clothes for her and continued doing the art and photography.