We’ve never needed a brand like Heatherette more than we do now.
Heatherette was pure fun-fueled fantasy on the runway, cooked up by two club kids with a dream. Richie Rich and Traver Rains founded the pink, super kawaii-ified, tiara-topped label in 1999, beginning with leather t-shirts and quirky accessories. It wasn’t long before the inimitable stylist Patricia Field (of Sex and the City and later, Ugly Betty fame) and her team spotted the work and ordered 20 leather t-shirts for the legendary namesake downtown boutique. They sold out quickly, because Patricia Field’s early stores were iconic. Amanda Lepore reportedly worked the makeup counter, Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat apparently spent time there and even contributed by painting murals on some of the walls, and it was a haven for gaudy maximalist eccentric jewelry and kitschy cool finishing touches like tutus. So naturally, Heatherette felt at home there.
The Heatherette aesthetic pulled from the fun underground underbelly of early 2000s club kid culture in New York City, with a hyper-girlish spin. Think: cotton candy pink, clouds of sparkle and fairytale realness turned all the way up. It was girlhood-coded before anyone even used that term to describe fashion. Think: eclectic visions taken from the childhood imagination and expanded and contorted into New York City nightlife, with bold colors, blinged out textures and a sea of references to the DIY culture that those club kids owned during the Y2K era. The aforementioned leather t-shirts attracted the attention of the rapper Foxy Brown, who asked Heatherette to design a custom outfit for her to wear to the MTV Video Music Awards, followed by Gwen Stefani who wore one of their tops in Entertainment Weekly, and eventually, Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and the City.
Things got really interesting when Heatherette made its New York Fashion Week runway debut in 2001. It may have been short-lived since the label closed in 2008, but there were no expenses spared when it came to going all out in the most over-the-top way possible. Glitter, sequins, pink, and camp references galore! In less than a decade, the label seamlessly made history with its pop culture celebrity moments. Take, for instance, the spring 2005 show wherein Amanda Lepore walked the catwalk while tossing rose petals, followed by Naomi Campbell in a silver metallic star cut-out mini dress. Before Kim Kardashian was a major reality television star, she was walking the Heatherette runway. Anna Nicole Smith also graced the Heatherette catwalk in a Marilyn Monroe inspired get-up. Jersey Shore’s Jenni “JWoww” Farley also walked a show. The mood was fully camp, embracing the unexpected and mixing the downtown queer club scene with future It-girls and the next generation of icons. Paris Hilton often walked the shows–her first time modeling the runway was in fact for Heatherette. The ultra-feminine, campy pink aesthetic perfectly suited her.
You can see the camp ironic spirit of Heatherette today in brands like Abra, Pipenco, Vaquera, Vetements and early Demna’s Balenciaga. After all, before Balenciaga did a Hello Kitty collaboration, Heatherette did it first in 2002, via plastic fantastic handbags and spectacular dresses, including one hand-embroidered Hello Kitty gown with thousands of rhinestones and real peacock feathers and another one covered in plushies that would later grace the Costume Institute’s Camp: Notes on Fashion exhibition. Paris Hilton walked the Heatherette runway in a rhinestone-studded Hello Kitty tiara and ruffled mini dress alongside her dog in 2003. Heatherette’s magic culminated in a 2008 MAC Cosmetics collaboration, lensed by David LaChapelle starring Amanda Lepore. Shortly after, the brand shut down due to financial issues.
Richie Rich are Traver Rains are still around today and each have several different creative projects–but none so iconic as the original Heatherette. “The fashion scene in New York was fairly corporate and boring when we started showing,” Rains once told i-D. “People were really wanting something crazy to mix it up.” Around the same time we also had Jeremy Scott and The Blonds to change fashion as we know it, injecting color, maximalism and fun as a rejection to all the beige.
In 2026, fashion needs a brand like Heatherette to shake it to its core. Who will come save us?
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