She's terribly demure in person, but that hasn't stopped Brigitte Stepputtis (pictured at left), head of Vivienne Westwood's couture operations, from sending Pamela Anderson down the runway with her perky bum popping out, or featuring a pair of resin and blown-glass crotchless panties as part of "Hard / Soft," a new show at the National Arts Club she co-curated. Fresh on the heels of Westwood's show in Paris on Friday (the site of the aforementioned derriere display), Stepputtis sat down for a surprisingly yummy lunch at the NAC in Gramercy Park and chatted about the exhibit, which is the first of a three-part "Pop Icon Series" that taps guest co-curators from the worlds of fashion, music and film. 
Although Hard / Soft features solely female artists, Stepputtis says that wasn't the original intention. In fact, she and collaborator Stacy Engman, NAC's contemporary art chair, started off by reviewing all the recent major art/fashion collaborations, "like Murakami and Marc Jacobs, Tom Sachs and Karl Lagerfeld—as well as art works of the designers themselves, such as those by Helmut Lang," she says. "But in the end, none of them were right for this space." What was right (in addition to Saarinen's Mother, E.V. Day's panties installation) was the in-your-face You Should Have Loved ME (above) scrawled in fluorescent light by Tracy Emin; Amie Dicke's Inhale, a scorched satin bedsheet vaguely reminiscent of an altarpiece; and She Just Might Be The One Who Saves Us All (below), a ghoulish gal smeared on canvas in acrylics by Katherine Bernhardt.
A major art buff, Stepputtis, a German based in London, also runs an edgy design company called Showroom Dummies with Brit artist Abigail Lane. And her ties to NAC are both personal and professional. After meeting Engman at the Venice Biennale a few years back, the pair have become fast friends.
From top: She Just Might Be The One Who Saves Us All and E.V. Day's Saarinen's Mother.Photos: Ben Gabbe
