Radioactive Flesh

We sat down with Bartholomew Dougherty, New York City style icon, DJ, and designer on the rise to chat about his new label Radioactive Flesh, a collection of fresh and robustly androgynous pieces, all of which are one of a kind. He also shares his secrets about astronomy and moving to Paris.

AVANT: A Google search of ‘radioactive flesh’ pulls up dark imagery of the last days, vintage studded jackets, lies, deceit, ‘hardcore’, and finally, a scientific article by Time Magazine reporting on the discovery of radioactivity in flesh through a microscope. Besides inspiring the name of your label, how has science inspired your sense of fashion?

BD: Well, according to some scientists, the human body has an energy field that projects from it 60 feet in every direction. Not to mention, the laws of physics as we know them right now are being shattered by certain groups within the scientific community. People are approaching fields of hyper-dimensional physics as though its not science fiction. It’s been said that the predominant laws governing Tibet are those of magic, both black and white, and I think this applies to most of the Eastern world, where there’s no clear delineation between science and science fiction. This has all sort of inspired my work.

AVANT: How did you come up with the name of your label?

BD: It comes from Luis Buñuel’s short, Simon of the Desert, the story of an ascetic that lives in the desert, praying ceaselessly as a devotee of the lord. He lives at the top of a crude wooden structure, where he’s sent food and drink, however, he hallucinates from time to time. Often visions of the devil come to him in the form of a beautiful women, tempting him out of the garden, so to speak. Some time passes and an airplane cuts across the sky above the people of the desert, an alien object amidst the ancient land. Automatically the scenery shifts to that of a 1960s discotheque, where Simon and the devil sit at a banquette enjoying a drink, the revellers dancing around them convulsively, as though in pain. Simon turns to the devil and asks what they call this dance. She responds, “it is called Radioactive Flesh. It is the final dance.”

AVANT: What initially turned your thoughts to clothing?

BD: I really love clothes, I always knew that I could create something beautiful.

AVANT: When did you start creating beautiful things?

BD: When I was a boy, I just made myself bleached jeans and jackets and studded jackets, and everything that you see in SoHo on the street right now. I wore those to high school or punk rock shows in Boston and New York City. It just so happens that what I made as a boy is not only acceptable within the setting of the modern metropolis, but a bit desirable within certain sets.

AVANT: Would you say you were ahead of the times?

BD: Sure, yeah, absolutely.

AVANT: Word on the street is you spend some nights on the roof of your apartment in Chinatown looking through a telescope. Are you stargazing or are you searching for something?

BD: There is something out there, but generally I look at the moon or see if there are any planets that are visible using the telescope. I saw this planet a couple of weeks ago that I thought was Venus. We used a friend’s iPhone– it has this application on it–you point it at the sky and it tells you what you are looking at. It was Altaire– the name of the star. Through the telescope, it was so bright it looked like the sun, like a tiny, white sun.

AVANT: What is this is application?

BD: It’s called Starmap and it costs $12, well worth the investment.

AVANT: You are bidding farewell to the Chinatown apartment and taking off to Paris this week. What inspired the move?

BD: Recent legislation has that been put into place concerning the swine flu pandemic that isn’t really a pandemic and isn’t really killing any of the population. The fact that CBS and Fox have both announced that the most massive vaccination in human history is going to take place this month doesn’t really bode too well for me or the rest of the populace that need not be inoculated, as no one is sick. Not to mention, I’ve felt like I’ve belonged in Paris for a while, but I just never made it there. I figure this is as good a time as any, and I’m terrified of martial law.

AVANT: Do you plan on reintroducing Parisians to Italo Disco?

BD: Under the pseudonym of DJ Popular, I plan on reintroducing the whole of Europe to Italo Disco and the majesty of soul.

AVANT: You say, “the last days call for leather.” What do you think is unique about our generation?

BD: I think we’re living in the darkest part of the darkest period of any earth cycle. We’re at the end of this 13,000 year cycle, what the Hindus refer to as the Kali Yuga, the age of hypocrisy and discontent. If you look around, things just really need to become less immoral and less corrupt, and we have to start being kinder to one another. We can’t continue giving Nobel Peace Prizes to warmongers like Barack Obama. I believe the science that we are approaching and the way people are going to be looking at things in the next couple of years, even, is going to be drastically different from the way we do right now. It’s like we’re at the precipice of something, the likes of which nobody could have any idea. The house of cards has just got to topple first, which will undoubtedly be quite a mess.

AVANT: So, you’ll be in Paris through all of this?

TT: I have no idea. I’d like to go to Egypt.

Radioactive Flesh can be found in Seven New York, and very soon at Collette in Paris. His one of a kind pieces can also be bought online radioactiveflesh.us.