Amanda Lepore (New Jersey, no date of birth that she wanted to make public) needs little introduction and she seems to be the first to know. In the conversation he is brief, dropping short sentences and sentences that, one would say, end with ellipses, perhaps aware that anyone can autofill those data because his biography speaks for itself. Or aware that, as Gersham Bulkeley wrote in the seventeenth century to the delight of a million mug and T-shirt makers in the twenty-first, his actions speak louder than his words. Lepore, indeed, is self-explanatory. Not even by her actions: even sitting in a room, in silence, she would be pure narrative. She owns an extreme physique that she has turned into her trademark and also into militancy: the huge and pointed breasts, the endless lips, the kilometric eyelashes, the unfathomable hair and the minimal waist and nose, as if Marilyn Monroe had been reborn turned into a comic book heroine only for adults. And she has managed to make that extreme aspect a recognizable icon at the level of an Elvis, a Madonna or an Audrey: her face has been in Swatch watches, in t-shirts, in video clips, in Armani campaigns (next to Ryan Phillippe, he much more naked than her) and in dolls; and her name in perfumes and makeup collections.
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In mid-July he appeared as a big star of the IQONICA party, at the Barcelona venue Razzmatazz, where he sang two of his hits, Champagne and My Pussy. 50% electroclash, 50% Debbie Harry and 0% imposture. IQONICA is a traveling party organized by Barry Brandon, promoter of the queer scene who wanted, with these parties, "to bring to the physical world what exists inside my brain," he explains. "This is how I want to see the world, a demonstration of self-expression that does not ask for forgiveness and that we mix with some ways to show the magic and beauty of the queer community. In short, freedom. A space where people just come to be themselves." Javier Estalella, DJ, booking director and music supervisor of Razzmatazz, believes that ICONIQA "is dissidence and queer excellence, it is a unique celebration. Exactly what this city needed. It had been a long time since I had experienced anything like this." Whoever missed it will have a new opportunity on October 15.
Amanda Lepore poses in the Razzmatazz room in Barcelona with the drag Hungry, another of the stars who performed at the ICONIQA party.
The most intriguing thing is: how can someone like Lepore, who has been in it for decades and who has seen scenes, trends and parties of the Manhattan night come and go, continue to find the night challenging? "I don't really consider the night a challenge, I still consider it fun," the model and singer explains to ICON. "There are always new, creative people on the scene. It's always fun. The night never goes out of style." Of course, he concedes that there have been substantial changes in it. "Especially because of social media. Now absolutely everything ends up posted on the Internet. The good part is that it allows more immediate access to the club scene, everyone can enjoy it everywhere."
Lepore arrived on the New York night scene, like many kids clubs of her era, fleeing a miserable life (in her case, as she told in her memoir Doll Parts, of a jealous and controlling husband). And she had previously come to him fleeing an unhappy childhood as a transsexual girl in a complicated home (her mother died when she was a teenager, with her father she did not have a relationship again after her mother's funeral). "When I had surgery it was the happiest moment of my life," he recalls. "He was finally living in the body I had always known I should live in." This is why Lepore is activism, because society has not allowed him to stop being one. Decades after its transformation and its success there are still, for example, former presidents of the government in Spain who assure that trans lives do not matter to anyone. "Today we need more support than ever among our community," he says. In an era in which issues such as trans rights open cracks even within the LGTBQI collective, which has historically been a pineapple, Lepore recalls that "everyone has their struggles and people, simply, should be more understanding and have more compassion."
A moment of the performance of Amanda Lepore at the ICONIQA party held at the Razzmatazz room in Barcelona.Pedro Quintana
With classic diva manners, Lepore says he loves Barcelona and he loves Spain. "The people here are so beautiful and so welcoming!" You can see his influences, a way of speaking and moving that drinks from the stars of yesterday. "I'm hugely influenced by the old glamour of Hollywood. I look at those blonde sex bombs of golden Hollywood and incorporate their character into my own style." What he has not taken from them is the character of impossible muse that some could presuppose by their appearance. "What most often surprises people about me is how close I am close, accessible. I guess they don't expect that." In fact, if in a small turn of events Amanda Lepore were not today the biggest star of the underground, she assures that she would be "either a makeup artist or a hairdresser". It makes sense: to follow the tradition of those who inspire her, her age is a secret and, kindly, she refuses to answer a question that has to do with how age is faced in the night scene in a world that seems to be increasingly ageist and replace her idols with a younger one as soon as the viewer blinks. In spite of everything, she resists. What is left for someone who has apparently achieved everything he could achieve in his radius of action? His answer is, indeed, plain: "I still need to buy a house."
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