Each Saturday night time for 5 years within the mid-2000s, New York’s coolest youngsters descended on the Misshapes, a weekly downtown dance get together. Come Monday morning, the remainder of the world would go surfing to their desktops to search out out who confirmed up and what they wore. The Misshapes was floor zero for what the Web now calls “indie sleaze”—a communion of in-the-know editors, fashions, and anybody who regarded good in skinny denims, thrift retailer finds, and much and many American Attire. On the heart of all of it had been the DJs Leigh Lezark, Geordon Nicol, and Greg Krelenstein, the titular hosts, who spun a mixture of indie, dance, electro, and pop. Because the get together’s profile grew, so did theirs. Quickly the Misshapes had been being flown to carry out at Versace events. Karl Lagerfeld made Lezark a Chanel muse and solid her as Coco herself in a brief movie. Vogue collaborations, one-off occasions, and a ebook adopted. However the weekly occasion stays on the core of their fantasy. “You knew one thing was going to occur each time,” Nicol remembers. “You simply didn’t know what it was going to be. Should you didn’t come that week, what did you miss?”
Krelenstein, Nicol, and Lezark turned buddies after seeing each other out on the similar golf equipment. “There wasn’t something that was satisfying what we wished to see in nightlife,” says Nicol. Finally, they moved in collectively and threw a New 12 months’s Eve home get together, which turned the precursor to the primary official Misshapes just a few weeks later, in early 2004. “It wasn’t a homosexual get together; it was blended,” says Krelenstein. “Folks felt open to precise themselves, they usually felt welcome in that house.”
Lezark and Nicol in 2004.
Courtesy of Geordon Nicol.
The Misshapes took over a shuttered bar within the West Village, and phrase unfold shortly. DJs on the time had been nonetheless sometimes vinyl purists, however the Misshapes let buddies spin music off CDs. “We had been inviting individuals to DJ who weren’t conventional DJs. We had been asking singers of bands or fashions,” says Nicol. “It was extra about who you had been and in case you had nice style in music.”
Lezark and Nicol in Hong Kong, circa 2005.
Courtesy of Geordon Nicol.
The style world shortly caught on, and the trio discovered themselves being flown across the globe to DJ. Calvin Klein invited the Misshapes to play gigs in Milan and Hong Kong.
Sophia Lamar, a celebration visitor, Dev Hynes, Madonna, Michael Stipe, Beth Ditto, Hedi Slimane, Telfar Clemens, and a dressed-to-the-nines drag queen.
Courtesy of Geordon Nicol.
“You know the way New York is: It’s such a melting pot of individuals from all these totally different artistic worlds coming collectively and searching for a great night time out,” says Nicol. Impressed by a espresso desk ebook about Fruits journal, a home photographer snapped pictures of partygoers. The group posted the pictures on-line, hoping that attendees would use them of their Myspace profiles, however youngsters throughout the globe quickly began poring over the galleries for model inspiration. Blogs like Gawker additionally recurrently trolled the pictures, which had been ultimately compiled within the 2007 ebook Misshapes. “It was one of the best press ever; that’s how we all the time seen issues,” says Lezark. “Allow them to speak about us, allow them to preserve saying our title.”
Slimane and Ono at Misshapes in 2004.
Courtesy of Geordon Nicol.
The designer Hedi Slimane was one thing of a Misshapes common. “He DJ’ed fairly ceaselessly, and one night time he stated that his buddy was going to come back DJ with him,” says Nicol. “Yeah, his buddy was Yoko Ono,” provides Lezark. “That’s the type of shock that you simply’d anticipate there,” says Nicol.
Nicol says attending the CFDA Vogue Awards in 2006 was a “made it” second. “We met Anna Wintour, and it felt very like, ‘Oh, we’re crossing over not directly,’ ” he says. As for why the Web nonetheless appears riveted by the “indie sleaze” second, Krelenstein hazards a guess: “It actually was extraordinarily genuine—the best way that we dressed, the best way that we partied, the best way that we went out. I feel there’s clearly slightly little bit of a nostalgia for that.”
“We’ve all had totally different jobs over time,” says Nicol. “However we’d all the time had this understanding that it’s all the time the three of us, it doesn’t matter what.” Right here, the trio poses with (from left) Kevin Tekinel, who’s now W’s artistic director at massive; singer Sky Ferreira; and designer Olivier Theyskens after DJing a profit at photographer Steven Klein’s residence, in Bridgehampton, in 2011.
Finally, the group discovered themselves not simply DJing the afterparties but in addition being escorted into VIP sections and sitting entrance row at exhibits. “The best way that we had been dwelling, it didn’t appear out of the bizarre at the moment,” says Lezark, seen right here in 2014 with Rihanna at a Balmain get together in Paris.
Karl Lagerfeld, a music fanatic and eager observer of youth tradition, enlisted Lezark as an official Chanel ambassador. “He had a whole bunch of iPods stuffed with unreleased music you could possibly solely discover on Myspace. He wished to know what was happening and had this wonderful capacity to make you are feeling like an important particular person within the room,” Lezark says. “He was the type of mentor I by no means knew that I wanted, and he was all the time very, very supportive of all of us. A few of my greatest reminiscences in trend are with him.”
Lezark as Lucy Westenra, Krelenstein as a ’90s raver, and Nicol as Darth Maul.
Courtesy of Geordon Nicol.
After the unique Misshapes get together got here to an finish, in 2008, the gang nonetheless placed on occasional occasions. “All of this stuff come right down to the query ‘Is it going to be enjoyable for us?’ And Halloween is all the time enjoyable. It’s form of turn out to be a convention for us,” says Nicol. Over time, their Halloween bashes have featured a efficiency by Azealia Banks, throughout which mannequin Cara Delevingne joined her onstage; drag stars akin to Violet Chachki and Gottmik; and a cameo by The Actual Housewives of New York Metropolis’s Ramona Singer.
“That was Tom Ford,” says Lezark of the costume she wore to the CR Vogue E book Gala in 2014. “They despatched it in a single day from London in a field that was greater than me. It obtained misplaced within the Parisian mailing system for half a day.”
Whereas in Paris for Vogue Week in 2010, the group obtained invited to a masquerade ball thrown by French Vogue however didn’t have any masks to put on. Zac Posen got here by way of on the final second. “I feel his sister made my masks,” says Lezark, pictured on the occasion with designer Jeremy Scott.
Madonna famously made a shock look throughout a Misshapes get together again in 2005, and she or he carried out in 2021 when Nicol, Lezark, and Krelenstein threw a Delight bash that additionally served because the post-lockdown reopening of Growth, the membership atop the West Village Customary Excessive Line lodge. “Nobody feels extra like New York than Madonna,” says Nicol. “We simply pitched it to her, and she or he beloved the sensation of having the ability to reopen the town and to say, ‘Hey, we’re again from this depressing place!’ ”
DJ Honey Dijon and Greg Krelenstein.
Ricardo Gomes, Courtesy of Geordon Nicol.
Madonna performs at Growth on the Customary Excessive Line lodge in 2021.
Filmmaker Gordon von Steiner and designers Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez, all on the Delight occasion at Growth.
The trio nonetheless throws an annual Delight profit. The 2019 occasion featured RuPaul’s Drag Race queens and the solid of Pose. “It’s a great excuse to get all people collectively,” says Nicol. “We all know that our buddies will likely be within the metropolis throughout these occasions.”
Although the group has by no means revived the unique Misshapes get together, in the summertime of 2017 they started internet hosting Linda on the Public Lodge. “The idea was very totally different,” says Nicol. “It was very a lot only a summer season get together rooftop type of disco home pop.” Will they ever return to a weekly schedule? “You by no means know what’s going to occur,” says Lezark.
