Rufus Wainwright Does MoMA

Bella Freud, Rufus Wainwright and Larissa

Dressed in a J.C. de Castelbajac-designed black suit embroidered with silver guitars and crowns, Rufus Wainwright cut a sparkling swath through the business suits and mutedly artsy ensembles of MoMA patrons at Tuesday night’s opening of “Lucian Freud: The Painter’s Etchings.”

Wainwright told me he was there to support the artist’s daughter, his “very good friend” fashion designer Bella Freud, who was sporting one of her own designs, a black jumpsuit over a black-and-white shirt printed with stars. The two spent part of the evening chatting with an octogenarian woman in a delicate flapper dress in front of a wall of Lucian’s portraits of Bella. Bella explained that Larissa (I didn’t catch her last name) designed costumes for musicians, earning her the moniker “the Coco Chanel of rock ‘n roll.”

When I asked Wainwright if any artists had painted a likeness of him, he laughed. “Yes, but mostly fans from Minnesota—more like folk art,” he said.

Photo by Scott Rudd courtesy of MoMA