The Wonderful World of Bobby Breslau

It’s not necessarily that Bobby Breslau has been forgotten; he was loved and remembered by those who knew him; but like many men lost to the AIDS crisis he’s faded from public awareness. This might have to do with the company he kept; despite his singular talents I had to excavate him from the stories of Halston, Stephen Burrows, and Keith Haring. All cultural giants who benefited from the support and creative input of Bobby, who was happy to let others shine; according to Haring’s journal. Considering himself a sculptor whose medium was leather Bobby created works that were as practical as the BigPouch bag that helped cement Halston’s hold on the seventies fashion and as fantastical as the sculptures and pillows that furnished Bobby’s East Village apartment. Described by Issey Miyake as a ‘tropical star wars’ and covered for the New York Times writer Suzanne Slesin in 1981 and later published in her book his home was a showcase of Bobby’s skill and creativity, filled with a menagerie of brightly coloured leather creatures and furniture. Six years after its initial publication he was dead.

Spending time immersed in seventies fashion and culture history requires a robust double think. Alongside the intoxicating and hedonistic glamour is a yawning gap in place of a generation of young creatives cut down by AIDS. Bobby’s work and life have previously been celebrated by the AIDS Memorial; Couture Pattern Museum and Laura Mclaw Helms. As someone who is so influenced by the culture of the time I similarly feel a responsibility to keep these names alive.

Details are scarce to none about Bobby’s early life. According to the bio in the back of Suzanne Slesin’s interiors book Bobby’s was born in 1942. His childhood was spent in a Brooklyn tenement: raised by father Herman, a naturalised Russian Jewish immigrant, and WWII vet who worked as a travelling watch salesman (shout out to my dad for helping me read the 1950 US census) and homemaker mother Florence, a naturalised Polish Jew. He had a little brother Martin, four years younger, who passed away in 1989 just two years after Bobby. All four family members are buried together in a Jewish cemetery and both brothers are mentioned in the parent’s obituaries which gives me hope they were on good terms.

He studied graphic and package design at New York Community College, and by 1969 he had given up his designing job to work with Stephen Burrows in the ‘O’ Boutique on Park Avenue South. Within months of opening Stephen’s colourful and flamboyant garments were featured regularly in the press.

The ‘O’ Boutique was such a success Stephen’s operation was poached by Geraldine Stutz, president of department store Henry Bendel. Stephen Burrows World opened in 19873  on Bendel’s third floor. In The Fashionable Mind, Kennedy Fraser devotes a chapter to ‘Burrows’ World at Bendel’s’ where ‘skeletal salesgirls may be seen chatting with ethereal customers’ and you can buy nail-studded gaucho suits to match the black nail studded walls.

At this time Stephen and Bobby lived and worked together, sharing a seven-bedroom apartment in the East Village. The décor of the residence was covered in the April 1972 issue of WWD article ‘Burrows: I am growing more’ which delved into the private world of Stephen and ‘his assistant and closest friend Bobby Breslau’. Their clique of bright young things included Elsa Peretti, Halston, Joe Eula, Pat Cleveland, and Joel Schumaker. Stephen and Bobby were clearly very close during this time, which might explain why the authorship of many of the fabulous leather pieces attributed to the brand is…thorny. There are multiple sources attributing Bobby as the leather maker for Stephen Burrows, and many cite Stephen. It’s probably safe to say that living and working together resulted in a similar style as well as projects made collaboratively between the pair. Looking at Bobby’s later work it’s clear he maintained and evolved upon these earlier projects stylistically. Certainly, Stephen and Bobby shared a similar outlook and language – both spoke separately of their love of the ‘sensuality’ of clothing and their desire to make glamorous Hollywood films. They remained close; Bobby gave a dinner in 1977 to celebrate Stephen Burrows’s return to Henri Bendel after leaving his Seventh Avenue backer.

The first public appearance of Bobby’s legendary ‘pouch’ bag was the 1973 Resort show for Stephen Burrows; his first with Seventh Avenue backers and Bobby’s last with Stephen. ‘When Stephen moved to 7the Avenue I decided it was time to go out on my own’ he told Genevieve Buck of the Chicago Tribune in 1976. One example of the blurred lines in this collaboration is the pouch bag attributed to Stephen Burrows held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which is extremely similar to the bags that become Bobby’s hallmark, and which were carried in the show. Getty Images has an extensive collection of photographs from the show. 

Having already made his signature soft, unconstructed pouch bags as personal gifts for Elsa Peretti and Carol Channing; Halston requested he make bags for the label. Initially, the bags were custom ordered, with Bobby making them all by hand in his apartment. He had at least two creation myths for the bag; one being a puzzle bag brought by Elsa Perretti from Japan, and the second being a fortuitous accident when the designer Fernando Sanchez mistook a pillow Bobby had made for a bag. ‘So I put a strap on it’ he told Suzanne Slesin, in the earlier mentioned New York Times article. Slesin comments, ‘The resulting unconstructed bag became the handbag of the 1970s.

The bags first appeared in Halston’s 1974 resort show, but really picks up traction after being paired with Halston’s abbreviated minidress the ‘skimp’; featured on the November 4 1974 cover of WWD.

A week later in the 15 November issue, it was highlighted as one of the ‘Big Looks’ in accessories, amusingly called ‘The Santa Sack’. After this point Bobby’s bags took high fashion and the mass market. Halston’s well-oiled Seventh Avenue production stemming from the Norton Simon buyout coupled with the syndicated news meant mainstream America was familiar with Bobby and his bags. Variations of the news story covering the Halston bag appeared in local and regional papers coast to coast. Bobby was hailed the ‘Father of the Unconstructed Bag’ while the pouch became ‘one of the most copied bags today’. Over the next few years, Bobby’s squishy bags were a staple in fashion editorials and Bobby was a fixture in the social pages. An example of Bobby’s uncredited work is the 1975 ‘Marlo’s Corner’ pattern of 1975 McCall’s licensed and had use of Halston’s patterns, so they used Bobby’s bag design for Halston, which was uncredited, and presumably, he received no payment.

In 1976, Andrew Geller, a well-established but fusty shoe manufacturer began to modernise its image. Having produced both Geoffrey Beene and Calvin Klein shoes under license, and working with avant-garde photographer Deborah Turbeville to film an ad Breslau seemed a good fit for the fledgling stable. Andrew manufacturing a branch of Geller would produce Bobby Breslau bags. However, this whole process is murky. The trade publication ‘The Fashion Calendar’  still in existence, lists weekly fashion events; mainly in New York. In the years following 1976 ‘Andrew Geller Shoes’ appears multiple times following the proposed collaboration. Events promoting Geoffrey Beene and Calvin Klein appear repeatedly. Bobby Breslau is never mentioned; although there are references to ‘handbags’, ‘leather accessories’, and even ‘Andrew Geller handbags’. I personally have never seen a Bobby Breslau label and would love to know if these existed. Calvin Klein would later sue Andrew Manufacturing for breach of contract.  In 1982 Andrew Geller appeared in the press talking about their first handbag licensing, which finally came to fruition in 1985, by which point Bobby Breslau had long moved on.

One collaboration that DID happen was between Breslau and mesh manufacturers Whiting & Davis. This was such a success that I’ll be devoting my next post to the designers who worked with Whiting & Davis during the seventies. It might be a coincidence, but Breslau’s work with the company happened around the same time Stephen Burrows was producing incredible slithery gold mesh outfits by Whiting & Davis. This was followed by Breslau designing bags for Neiman Marcus, Cul-de-Sac at Bloomingdale’s, and Saks Fifth Avenue. In 1981 a buyer for Chicago’s Ultimo says she’s bought ‘an enormous order of bags and scarves by Bobby Breslau’. Whether Bobby was making these all himself, the scarves and hair ties are his main output, featuring regularly through the early eighties. Harpers Bazaar liked his multi-coloured scarf so much that it featured it two months in a row – inside the March 1983 issue and on the April cover.  He also produced two ‘Bobby Breslau’ handbag patterns for Vogue Patterns in 1979, which are highly collectible today. 

In the early eighties, Bobby had gravitated towards the Art scene, which had many crossovers with the fashion scene. He met Keith Haring at the New York dance club and gay history landmark Paradise Garage, and would become a close confidant and friend; eventually managing Haring’s Pop Shop when it opened in 1986. According to Haring’s journals, Breslau had been part of the NY scene since the sixties and knew everyone. The Peech Boys, a house music collective made up of Paradise Garage regulars included Bobby in the collage of scene members on the back of their album ‘Life is Something Special. Haring wrote he was a ‘guiding light behind the Pop Shop’ devoting multiple passages to Breslau and his role not just in Haring’s life, but that of others. ‘He was quick to suggest available opportunities and options and offer confidence for any projects you were considering. He made this his role in life and never complained. At the same time, he was an extraordinary artist and craftsman himself’ (Keith Haring journals).

It’s clear from researching Bobby he was well-loved, dynamic, and a pleasure to be with. A picture comes across as a man who worked and played hard but kept his integrity and moral compass and this endeared him to his friends. In January 1987 Keith Haring writes, ‘Just after the exhibit is installed (in December 1986), Bobby Breslau, our good friend and general supervisor gets sick. He develops a lung problem. Finally, he goes to the hospital, and within a week, he’s dead.’ (bio p169)

Bobby Breslau died of complications from AIDS aged 44 in 1989. Later that year Elsa Peretti told Andre Leon Talley in Vanity Fair that Bobby had saved her, rescuing her from bad situations and poor decisions; “If it wasn’t for him I’d probably be dead’. This article, in which Andre writes of ‘the belated Bobby Breslau’ is the only mention of his death I could find on contemporary media.

Somewhere between the magic of his output and the high regard his friends have for him lives the legend of Bobby Breslau. I have a small collection of his handbags, some from the early handmade days at Halston, a few mass-produced. They are treasures, a small piece of the man who created them. Upon coming back to New York in October 1987 Keith Haring mourns the closure of Paradise Garage. ‘Maybe Paradise Garage has moved to Heaven…so Bobby can go there now. That would be nice’. I hope so, too.