Her Saturday Night Ride Is a Muscle Car
Architectural designer Denise Ip only recently began her love affair with cars, and her heart belongs to her 1969 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme 442. It was one of those love-at-first-sight things. “It wasn’t rational. I just knew I had to have it,” the 24-year-old says. It was a Sunday. “I was driving through the hills in Silver Lake, and I saw it parked by the side of the road. I don’t even remember whether I knocked on the door or the guy who owned it was standing outside. The guy was trying to sell it. He wanted $2,500. I ran to the bank the next day.”
Ip, born in Brooklyn and reared in Hong Kong, admits she’s become something of a motor head. “This car got me into cars. You know, if you’re going to restore something, you want to do it the right way. I haven’t done anything yet; I’m waiting for money.” Still, the car is her ultimate accessory. “I still have a RAV4,” she says. “My dependable car. This is my Saturday night-Sunday afternoon car.”
The car also fits Ip’s penchant for finding just the right accessory to put a playfully ironic, slightly subversive twist on an otherwise straight-ahead designer look. Her wearing a Harry Potter T-shirt with Helmut Lang shoes is pure Denise Ip. “I just bought a great bangle from Daniel Swarovski, the younger line of Swarovski, and I bought some little cheap things in Hawaii--flowers for your hair that look great,” she says. Ip’s uniform for weekdays consists of “black pants and some funky graphic T-shirts from MOCA” paired with purple Jil Sanders-designed Pumas or Adidas martial arts shoes. But when it’s time to go out, “I love Cacharel, Miu Miu, Marc Jacobs, Margiela, Agnes B. I have a beautiful pair of Helmut Langs with ankle straps and a pair of Sergio Rossi’s--same look, only more S-M.” She laughs.
“I used to be all about safety, but I can see where people become addicted to velocity,” Ip says. She’s never tested it, but she says she likes knowing her car can do a 12-second quarter mile. “Every time I pull up to an intersection, if there’s a guy next to me, he will start revving his car,” she says. “They always want to race.”
