ANDY WARHOL: “Paraphernalia opened late in ’65, and another trend started – stores opening late in the morning, even noontime, and staying open till maybe ten at night. Paraphernalia sometimes stayed open till two in the morning. You’d go in and try on things and ‘Get Off My Cloud’ would be playing – you’d be buying the clothes in the same atmosphere you’d probably be wearing them in. And the salespeople in the little boutiques were always so hip and relaxed, as if the stores were just another room in their apartment – they’d sit around, read magazines, watch TV, smoke dope.”
BILLY NAME: “John had this quiet presence, very black and elegant. John was special. John had the same beauty as Nico, and he was even quieter. Nico sometimes would become outspoken. John and Nico were so beautiful together because John had this spirit in him that was so hauntingly primitive. As much as I enjoyed Lou’s presence for his joyousness, his playfulness, his exuberance, you really felt special about John’s presence, like a black pearl that had come to stay with you for a while.”
NAT FINKELSTEIN: "We staged a party in a fishbowl, a store window on Madison Avenue. Crowds gathered... the idea was that everybody who saw the party would buy clothes there. The girls showed the new fashion while they were dancing to the Velvet's music."
JOHN CALE: “Andy had sort of a good way of picking out situations for us to appear in. He would almost invent places for us to play.”
BETSEY JOHNSON: “I don’t remember that the party was for me or anything like that – my memory is the good, the bad, and the ugly. In those days, I’d be at work by 8:30 after being up all night at Max’s Kansas City or wherever, flying around on those pills that were supposed to help you lose weight. We didn’t know. I do remember that most of the Velvet Underground were staying in my hotel room in Boston that night, and I remember falling in love with John Cale. None of us thought any of this was a big deal at the time; it was just what we were doing. We were so young. It made perfect sense that a band like them would play a boutique. They were playing shows like this all the time around New York and Boston and Philadelphia. When I was designing these black canvas suits for the band, John told me, ‘Do the clothes so my hands can be on fire when I play.’ I loved that. And Lou Reed always said I cut a tight crotch.”
BETSEY JOHNSON: “You’d spray the clothes with Windex rather than dry-clean. We were into plastic flash synthetics that looked like synthetics. It was ‘Hey, your dress looks like my shower curtain!’ The newer it was , the weirder – the better.”
BETSEY JOHNSON: “All the clothes at Paraphernalia were experimental. Always changing. It had nothing to do with the customer. It had everything to do with the time, the moment. We were giving the customer something brand new, something that she didn’t have a clue she wanted. It was all very spaceship. ‘What would you wear on the moon?’ That was the big question of the Sixties.”
