Disco, Candy and Luck at Studio 54

As music executive David Geffen writes in the tome-like coffee table book that accompanies Matt Tyrnauer’s new documentary, “Studio 54,” the New York nightclub that opened in 1977 “came after birth control and before AIDS. It really was the pinnacle of a sexual revolution in which people were open and free.” Studio 54, burning bright in its heady era of drugs and disco, before creators Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager were charged with tax evasion, broke all of the rules while setting new standards for nightlife expectation. It granted ordinary people the chance of rubbing shoulders (or what else…) with world-famous icons, a rarified intimacy for those deemed cool enough to be chosen from the crowd and whisked behind the velvet ropes, long before you could follow celebrity lives online. 

On Saturday, Oct. 27 at The Moviehouse in Millerton, American designers Richard Lambertson and Barry Kieselstein-Cord will present Matt Tyrnauer’s documentary “Studio 54” and following the screening will share memories of their own dance floor dalliances in a Q&A moderated by Jonathan Bee.

Lambertson founded Lambertson Truex leather accessory design with Jonathan Truex in 1998, now with a new office in Sharon., Conn. Previously he designed for Gucci, Bergdorf Goodman, Geoffrey Beene and the Tiffany & Co. leather collection. However, there is an early, additional job on his resume. 

Alexander Wilburn: I read you were a production assistant at Studio 54, is that right?

Richard Lambertson: No, Jonathan Bee gave me this grand title of “Steve Rubell’s personal assistant.”

AW: But it’s not true?

RL: Basically, I was his personal assistant. But I worked 6 p.m. to midnight. I was the nightshift. In those days there were no cellphones, and people didn’t even have phones in their cars so much. It was my second job, I worked at Saks in visual merchandizing during the day.

AW: What year was this?

RL: I moved to New York in September of ’77 from Providence, Rhode Island. I went to Brown and RISD (Rhode Island School of Design) and blah blah blah.

AW: Wait — which one?

RL: I went to all of them simultaneously. But I left Rhode Island when I was 26 and moved to New York. I got a job in visual merchandizing at Saks. I was horrified because I was making so little money. Before that I was running a restaurant for these fabulous lesbians in Providence and I was making tips every night. At Saks, after I saw my first paycheck I had to immediately look for a second job. I became friends with a girl who worked in PR at Saks and she had this job at Studio 54 at night. We worked at 50th and Fifth Avenue and I’d walk to Tenth Avenue — it was a really bad area — and I’d punch in at Studio and work until midnight taking phone messages for Steve. 

AW: So your job there sounds pretty mundane?

RL: I took messages. I spoke every night with Carmen D’Alessio, who was the Studio 54 PR director. She was very glamorous. “Ok, Richard, who’s on the list tonight? … This one’s coming with this one, and oh, I can’t stand this one…” So I would make the list for her while she gave me little bits of dirt. My final job of the night was typing it up on this old typewriter.

AW: And then did you really go home, or would you stay?

RL: Well… I had this little office at Saks Fifth Avenue on the fourth floor, which was the couture floor. I would leave a change of clothes there, go to Studio all night and go back to my office in the morning. I had a little settee in there and I would sleep and …

AW: …Wake up and do it all again?

RL: I was not a big “party boy.” But I did go to a lot of parties, and if I came on the weekends I also got in because I knew the staff. 

AW: What were you wearing?

RL: I was into vintage at the time, old vintage suits. The ‘70s were kind of inspired by the ‘20s and the ‘30s. I wore big peak lapel jackets and really tight black jeans with cowboy boots. Oh god knows … It was a pretty wild time. I had this night life, and this whole other job. 

AW: And then it ended?

RL: And then it ended. I got a new job at Bergdorf Goodman that was more money and more responsibility, so I couldn’t stay out all night anymore. 

AW: What were the nights you really remember from your time at Studio?

RL: They had all these Broadway people doing the sets, and Robert Isabell decorated for a Valentine’s Day or a New Year’s Eve party. Isabell was the most talented person in New York, he did all the most amazing parties. He did the Met Gala. One that was really memorable for me was when Studio had this eight-foot, heart-shaped candy box that was filled with Mars bars and Hershey’s chocolate bars… just filled and everyone was on drugs and stoned and grabbing candy. The floor was covered in those little white sugar hearts. The one’s that say “kiss me,” or “U R Mine.” “They lined the entire floor in the hearts. Then at New Year’s the floor had a foot of paper confetti on it, which scared the hell out of me because everyone was smoking cigarettes and the confetti was ankle deep. And at the end of the Valentine’s night, the sugar hearts were so crushed, the powder was everywhere, and everyone looked like they were doing cocaine. Their nostrils were covered in white from breathing in the sugar in the air. 

AW: But that brief era came to a close.

RL: There was the AIDS crisis and all those brilliant people that were doing these parties and the florists and decorators and designers… I used to go to all the fashion shows, Halston, Geoffrey Beene, Steven Burrows. I’d see the people I would later see at Studio. Andy Warhol sitting with Liza Minelli, Diana Vreeland sitting at the end of the runaway at Halston and then they’d all be at Studio. I used to hang out in the balcony over the dance floor, because it was like an old theater, and Andy Warhol and Truman Capote would lean on the balcony and people watch. But I didn’t tell anyone I worked there. 

AW: You didn’t want to have to get people in.

RL: Exactly. When I look at my days at that period of time, I was pretty lucky. Years later, when I would go back to RISD and talk, students would ask, “How did you get your job?” I would always say, “Luck.” I just went and said, “I want to work here.” I thought, “How hard can it be?” Really, that was my attitude. I had no idea what I was walking into, and then it turned out to be the most interesting place in New York, and I was working in the middle of it.

This interview has been edited. “Studio 54” will play at The Moviehouse in Millerton on Sat. Oct. 27 at 9 p.m., followed by a Q&A with Barry Cord and Richard Lamberston moderated by Jonathan Bee, followed by drinks and dancing at Studio “52” - 52 Main St., Millerton, NY.