Walt Cassidy—AKA Waltpaper—Publishes His New York: Club Kids Book and Collaborates With Opening Ceremony
Walt Cassidy out multi-hyphenates just about everyone. The New York–based Cassidy is a jeweler, artist, and former Club Kid who went by the moniker Waltpaper back in the ’90s. Cassidy is able to add further hyphens to the list now that he is an author—his book, New York: Club Kids, is published at the end of this month—and a designer, with the collaboration, Opening Ceremony x New York: Club Kids by Waltpaper, launching November 15. (Incidentally, he also has a collaboration with MAC debuting around the same time, likewise tied to his book.)
Cassidy’s capsule for OC riffs on his past in all its glorious DIY, make-your-dreams-come-true authenticity, but with the vantage point of how the era might resonate today. New York: Club Kids is a brilliant I-was-there chronicle of the glorious, gaudy, and gorgeous creatures who stalked the New York nights of the ’90s, an oddly touching and affecting remembrance of both youthful knowingness and innocence. His OC collection, meanwhile, pushes that time period into today by using new graphic motifs by artists who once designed club logos—most iconically on a lunchbox, which many Club Kids toted as if it were the downtown Birkin—or by isolating the iconic portrait of a twizzle-haired teenaged Cassidy on a hooded sweatshirt.
Opening Ceremony’s Humberto Leon jumped at the chance to collaborate with Walt Cassidy because, he says, “[The] era was beautiful, exciting, adventurous, [and had] some of the most renegade parties. It was one of the most modern ways of life and thinking, [one] that I believe we have yet to wholly catch on to. The individuality and freedom of expression [of the time] still feel fresh and new. The looks that happened and [were] documented in Walt’s incredible book will go down in history.” That past is something that Cassidy experienced at its most vivid, but as the following conversation with him reveals, he’s able to look back without ever getting trapped there.
Walt, tell me about how the collection for OC came together.
Humberto Leon from Opening Ceremony came to know about my book through our mutual friend Chloë Sevigny, and approached me about hosting a launch event at the store. After sharing the book with him, we decided that it would be fun to design a couple garments inspired by my tales of the Club Kids. Then, after starting work on the OC capsule, I joined forces with Christian Mitchell and MAC Pro to curate a special seven-piece makeup set of Club Kid essentials, which will also be available at the launch.
How did you decide what the collection should include?\
For the book, the capsule collection, and the MAC kit, I worked extensively with artists Dolphina Jones and Gregory Homs, both of whom are largely responsible for creating the imagery of the mega clubs that thrived in New York City from the late ’80s throughout the ’90s. We also incorporated photographic content by Tina Paul and Michael Fazakerley.
For New York: Club Kids by Waltpaper, I was committed to bringing the elemental content of the ’90s, the details, images, and history, full circle into a present-day context. My agenda with this mini-capsule collection, like the book, was to activate new inspiration, and not just replicate and archive the past.
A good example of this is the new Opening Ceremony logo that we created, hand drawn by Dolphina Jones and inspired by her original logo design for Disco 2000, the flagship Club Kid party at Limelight. Additionally, we established a signature Club Kid pattern, reminiscent of a field of bursting flashbulbs. An early version of this print was used on the first edition of Club Kid trading cards, produced in 1990. We used this graphic for a long-sleeve shirt, a lunchbox, and the package design for the Waltpaper x MAC Pro face kit.