On Wednesday evening, Michael Kors and husband Lance Le Pere offered the fashion community an intimate introduction to the American LGBTQ+ Museum, set to open its doors in 2028.
The designer welcomed members of the fashion community to his Madison Avenue boutique after hours for a cocktail party in celebration of the project, which will be part of the New York Historical (formerly the New-York Historical Society) on the Upper West Side. Executive director Ben Garcia and other members from the museum’s team were on hand to discuss the project and extended guests an open invitation to come see the space for themselves ahead of its opening.
Kors and Le Pere reached out to Garcia around two years ago, an ongoing conversation that led to them joining the museum board as trustees.
“They immediately started giving really wonderful advice,” said Garcia. “One of the things that was very memorable was Michael looked at the project and looked at the plans, and he said, ‘This is all amazing, but you need a little sizzle,’” he added. “He was really making the point that we need to make sure this doesn’t become us just talking to ourselves, but that there’s things that everyone can relate to and get excited about.”
Planned opening exhibitions include a history of ballroom, curated by Hilton Als, which will stretch from the 1800s through the release of Madonna’s “Vogue” in 1990. There are also several fashion exhibitions underway, including one dedicated to Rudi Gernreich.
Midway through the event, Kors garnered the crowd’s full attention as he offered a toast to the museum.
“Who says fashion people aren’t social and friendly? In a tornado — with a dust storm,” said Kors, nodding to the sudden downpour and smoky air that arrived late afternoon in the city but hadn’t kept the crowd — which included designers Georgina Chapman, Willy Chavarria, Batsheva Hay, Andrew Kwon, Tanner Richie and Fletcher Kasell and more — from making their way up Madison Avenue.
“This will be America’s first LGBTQ+ museum: it’s crazy that that’s a sentence, that this is the first,” Kors continued. “In my 45 years in business, I have been consistently awed by how the fashion community comes together to support change and protect the creativity and the talent within our community. Now, of course, we know the history of the American fashion industry has been intertwined with the LGBTQ+ community from the very beginning. You can see our shared legacy over the years.”
Kors called out Gernreich, an “original crusader” for LGBTQ rights back in the 1950s, as well as the work of designers Stephen Burrows and Giorgio di Sant’ Angelo during the sexual revolution of the ‘70s, and remembered members of the fashion community who died during the AIDS epidemic of the ‘80s and ‘90s, including Halston, Perry Ellis, Willi Smith and supermodel Gia Carangi.
“ An entire generation, gone,” said Kors. “The American fashion community, though, always knows how to roll up its sleeves,” he added. “Lance and I are so excited that we will now have a museum to tell our community’s story for generations to come.”
