30 August 2012

Valenti me

Keni Valenti, aka The Party, brought us up to his Garment District showroom one night in 2011, the year before he packed it all in and moved to Miami to open his Retro Couture gallery, casting off the ash that had ossified the contents of his Ground Zero apartment. I was on the lam from my other life in Ireland, the one where I live in a country cottage on a dirt road with my furniture maker husband, two Akitas and a workshop in the field out back. Twenty years of Prozac had ossified my contents, and, as anyone who eats cereal knows,  contents may settle during shipping. I had left bella Italia for Belfast in 1990, and it was as if I, the prize inside the box, shrouded in plastic and sugar dust, awaited some eager hand to plunge in and grab me.

Brigid Baker, the flim to my flam, planned the heist: jewels everywhere, mugs, stooges and knuckleheads standing guard. All we needed was a getaway car and presto chango, we'd have our beautiful lives back. Keni agreed to supply the disguises, only he didn't know it yet.





Portraits by Keni Valenti


2 comments:

  1. wow. If that's not honesty laid bare, i don't know what is...welcome to the blogosphere Susan and may your blog/poetry/creativity blossom and prosper.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I prefer to dress naked honesty in feathers and frou frou.

    ReplyDelete