Photo: Antonio Lopez, Pat Cleveland, Paris (Blue Water Series), 1975. Copyright, 2012, The Estate of Antonio Lopez and Juan Ramos. From Antonio Lopez 1970: Sex Fashion & Disco, a film by James Crump.
Photo: Antonio Lopez, Corey Tippin and Donna Jordan, Saint-Tropez, 1970. Photograph by Juan Ramos. © Copyright The Estate of Antonio Lopez and Juan Ramos, 2012. From Antonio Lopez 1970: Sex Fashion & Disco, a film by James Crump.
Deep in the mountains of Puerto Rico lies Utuado, built by Spanish imperialists nearly 300 years ago. It is here that Antonio Lopez (1943–1987) was born. The son of a father who crafted mannequins and a mother who made dresses, Lopez was a child prodigy who began to sketch at the age of two, revealing a gift that would revolutionise the fashion industry and prefigure the times in which we currently live.
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At the age of seven, Lopez and his family moved to New York City, where he grew up living a double life, making mannequins with his father but playing with dolls out of sight. His burgeoning bisexuality would soon drive a wedge between Lopez and his family, inspiring him to create his own centered in his artist studio at Carnegie Hall.
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As the civil rights, women’s rights, and gay rights movements made space for those who had been previously marginalized by the mainstream, Lopez and his creative partner Juan Ramos (1942–1995) introduced goddess-like visions of his muses to the world in the pages of Vogue, WWD, and The New York Times. His discoveries, known as “Antonio’s Girls” included Grace Jones, Pat Cleveland, Cathee Dahmen, Tina Chow, Jessica Lange, Jerry Hall and Warhol Superstars Donna Jordan, Jane Forth and Patti D’Arbanville – women who not merely beautiful but were extraordinary characters and artists in their own right.
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In celebration of his glorious career, Antonio Lopez 1970: Sex Fashion & Disco, a film by James Crump, will make its world premiere at the BFI London Film Festival on October 12. The documentary charts Lopez’s rise from the streets of the Bronx to the pinnacle of the Parisian demimonde. As the dominant fashion illustrator of the late 1960s and 70s, Lopez arrived on the scene just as ready-to-wear came into existence, bringing his distinctive Afro-Latinx sensibilities into the mix.
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Antonio Lopez 1970 brings us back to a pivotal period in fashion history when the aristocratic hierarchy of the couture houses was falling away. In its place, Lopez emerged with a vision so modern that he was boldly ahead of his time – James Crump reflects on the ways in which Lopez’s Afro-Latinx roots transformed the fashion industry.
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Photo: Eija Vehka Ajo, Juan Ramos, Jacques de Bascher, Karl Lagerfeld and Antonio Lopez, Paris, 1973. From Antonio Lopez 1970: Sex Fashion & Disco, a film by James Crump.