In the 1980s Koos van den Akker made a ream of resplendent patchwork sweaters for Bill Cosby that cemented his style in the fashion world. I’ve always liked his style, so to pay homage to him I drew his face, based on a portrait from an article we ran on him in 09′, complete with daggers of creativity entering his skull, and released it haphazardly into the ether that is the internet. A couple of months later I got a message on my YouTube from the actual Koos asking if he could use the image. “Of course,” I said, “I did it in your honor, do what you will with it, fine sir.” The reply was something I wasn’t expecting: “That’s so sweet of you, you didn’t ask for a penny. Hey, in return, do you want to come to New York for a month and work with me in my studio? You can even stay in my spare 5th Ave apartment.”
Fuckadoodledoo, a toss up between staying in Amsterdam aka greysville amidst a broken relationship and an apartment that smells of fecal matter or jetting off to new horizons full of pastrami sandwiches and scantily clad fashion models. I left pretty hastily.
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When I met Koos for the first time he showed me the apartment, which has views of Rockefeller Center outside the window, and then turned to me and said, “Now, no fucking around, ’cause we don’t fucking know each other.” Fair enough, I thought, confused but congenial. I went to his studio most days, and at first it was like a grandpa/grandson situation, but after all the filthy comments he made about fucking guys and his no-bullshit attitude regarding social conduct I realized he’s the coolest 70-year-old mother nature ever plopped out.
I ended up organizing a rooftop fashion shoot with Koos’s clothing for his new site, and even designing my own clothes that he made bespoke, no matter how weird. All this time he was taking me out to meals and giving me cool books or taking me to Fire Island (the gay island). Hold on a second, gay island? Was he trying to turn me? This was too good to be true, where’s the catch? Was he pruning me for something sordid? Had I unwittingly flown to the other side of the earth to be his patsy? No, as it turns out. I really did just get massively fucking lucky with no hint of a sexual favor as reciprocation. Nice one.
Fire Island
So what should you learn from my experience? Just that you should arbitrarily draw any celeb from any magazine and wait for a serendipitous email asking if you’d like to be lavished in a foreign land, easy fucking peasy.
