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NASTY PIG New Campaign Celebrates the Revolutionary Brand’s 30-Year Anniversary
For thir ty years, Nasty Pig has been fusing high fashion and streetwear with the collars, harnesses and accoutrements that typify the fetish lifestyle. The menswear line was among the first to pull inspiration from the ar t of Tom of Finland and classic gay adult magazines, as well as the coded signals and counterculture silhouettes associated with the queer community. For Nasty Pig’s summer XXX campaign, celebrating the house’s thir ty-year anniversary, fashion photographer Sam Waxman set out to create visuals that paid homage to NYC’s queer culture from the 90’s to the present. Shot at Sidecar Studio in Long Island City, the black and white Avedonmeets-Mapplethorpe-inspired images rely heavily on movement and attitude and feature pieces that represent Nasty Pig’s impactful history and connection with the kink and fetish communities. “This shoot is inspired by the need to stay loud and bold in our queerness,” Waxman asser ts. “Every model in the campaign is fun, sexy, a little weird, and fiercely individualistic, which embodies so much of the ethos of Nasty Pig from 1994 to present.” Models include Emolsa Haasacha, Eugenio Fernandez, and Tony Voong, along with professional dancers Diego Mugler and Jeffrey Koch and mar tial ar ts practitioner David Alcocer. “The models understood the assignment so clearly,” Waxman continues. “There is beautiful attitude and movement in every corner of these frames.” Getting the perfect shots was a collaborative effor t, he acknowledges. Airik Prince styled the shoot. Production/lighting suppor t is by Austin Ruffer, and movement direction is by Maxwell Haines. Also on hand at the shoot was Nasty Pig CEO David Lauterstein whose lightning bolt of energy made him an excellent hype-man on set. We spoke with Mr. Lauterstein to discuss Nasty Pig’s summer XXX campaign and its first three decades. Congratulations on thirty years of Nasty Pig. Can you take us back to NYC in the nineties? When we founded the brand in 1994, NYC was
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wonderfully sketchy, energetically creative, and incredibly inspiring. You didn’t need tons of money to live here so it allowed for a thriving ar ts and underground club scene. Sound Factory, the afterhours club on West 27th Street, was the center of the world where ballroom girls, designers, hookers, and celebrities danced together from 4am to 2pm the next day. Things were harder to find because we didn’t have the internet. But once you found them, they were accessible to everyone because the scene was so much smaller and welcoming. New York City is still popping. If you truly understand this place, you know she is constantly eating herself alive and regurgitating herself in new ways in new neighborhoods. I absolutely love New York. What comes to mind when you reflect on the three decades that have passed? It’s been the ride of a lifetime! I star ted this business with my first boyfriend who took my virginity. We were still in the throes of the AIDS epidemic in 1994. Frederick and I felt there was a need for a queer brand that spoke to our community in a visual and cultural style that made queer people feel more than understood: empowered. We wanted to reclaim our sexuality and our identity from the stigmas that were unfairly placed upon us. Frederick Kearney is an incredible designer and constructionist, the purest of ar tists. He is the Creative Director of our company and now my husband. So, when I reflect on the past thir ty years of Nasty Pig, I see it as a love story: my love for Frederick, our shared love of fashion, and the love we have for our community. With Frederick as the creative, were you more the business side of the company? I graduated college with a degree in poetry so I had no idea what building a brand meant! The only thing I fully understood was that making a product wasn’t enough; I had to build a world. When we opened the doors of our 68-square-foot store on West 22nd Street, I used every interaction I had with customers to make them feel something. I told stories. I