Vollbracht ‘Designs’ Portraits of Film Stars
Michaele Vollbracht--top New York fashion designer, illustrator, fine artist and “star struck” film fan--says he’s based his whole career around the fantasy of the movies. As he puts it: “I see the world in cinematic frames.”
Now he’s based a book of caricatures on those fantasies, with drawings as diverse as the people he has known (or dreamed of knowing).
Called “Nothing Sacred” (Elliott Graphics: $50), the coffeetable book is a collection of 97 portraits--icons, if you will--of the heroes and heroines who have somehow figured in Vollbracht’s life, with brief accompanying text by the artist/designer.
The front cover more or less explains the title. It is an illustration of Marilyn Monroe that Vollbracht did some time ago, to which he has recently added a handlebar mustache. The back cover features Joan Crawford clutching a butcher knife, plus a snippet of text that reads: “The first time I saw Joan Crawford she was seated at her makeup table applying spit-cake mascara with a toothbrush to her formidable eyebrows. The last time I saw Joan Crawford she was in a brass urn . . . .”
Between the covers, Vollbracht has skewered such fashion greats as Bill Blass, Calvin Klein, Pauline Trigere, James Galanos and Diana Vreeland. And he covers such Hollywood legends as Marlene Dietrich, Hedy Lamarr, Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn, Greta Garbo, Mae West, Joan Crawford and Judy Garland.
Vollbracht, whose designs have been sold at most of the country’s finest stores, launched the book in Los Angeles at a Sunday-night dinner at Spago, co-hosted by Elizabeth Taylor and Joan Rivers. Both have worn his designs and both are caricatured in his book. (The evening was for the benefit of the Inter-Council Agency for Child Abuse and Neglect.) On Monday, he autographed books at Neiman-Marcus in Beverly Hills.
Some of his more irreverent portraits include one of Johnny Carson, whose head is collaged onto an American Gothic-style painting, with the wife done in triplicate to represent Carson’s marital record. (Carson’s third ex-wife, Joanna, was Vollbracht’s partner in his New York dress-design business). There’s a portrait of Coco Chanel wearing a blouse in a swastika print and a double portrait of Mae West and John Lennon with each asking: “Is that a gun in your pocket . . . ?”
Other illustrated anecdotes focus on: Stalking the elusive Garbo in New York and Diana Vreeland’s decision not to use a mural Vollbracht created especially for one of her fashion installations at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Vollbracht first acquired his own place in the fame game when he illustrated a series of “glamour faces” on 8 million Bloomingdale’s shopping bags back in 1975. In 1978, he switched to fashion design, where he was able to meld his two passions, fashion and art. He became known for the graphics with which he decorated his fantasy evening dresses and fashion’s coveted Coty Award in 1980.
There is a section in the book called “Dinosaurs,” which features people he sees as survivors. He cites Elizabeth Taylor as the youngest and the last one. “After her, that kind of celebrity, fame and glamour will be over,” he says.
Vollbracht also believes that the glamour that once came out of Hollywood has been passed on to the fashion industry.
“I was talking to an editor of Vogue recently, and we were trying to name new, young, glamour girls,” he says.
“There was dead silence. We went on to glamorous men and out came Dustin Hoffman, Sean Penn, Matt Dillon. It’s the men now who have whatever Hollywood glamour is left,” he says.
“The fashion world is where the real glamour is these days. When people talk about ‘Dynasty,’ they’re talking about the clothes.”
