Forever 21 opened its four-story Times Square store last night — all 121 dressing rooms of it — with a party D.J.’ed by Sophomore designer Chrissie Miller. Artist Ryan McGinley took photos of his friends, the Virgins, who played in the store’s lower level. The handsome McGinley, just back from the first of two summer road trips on which he shoots young, pretty, naked people for his shows at Team Gallery, said he’s been considering working on a feature film for a while. “I’m gearing up towards [a feature film], I’m not there yet. I’m not a writer, but I would write something with somebody. I’ve been looking at a lot of scripts, but nothing has popped out to me. There’s been a lot of people out there who really want me to make one, but right now I’ve been helping Donald [of the Virgins] write their second album,” he said. “Just offering moral support. I could be their producer.” Yesterday, McGinley premiered a short film with model Carolyn Murphy online, in which she kisses a dog. “I threw a fishbowl at her head, it’s in slow motion. But no animals or models got hurt,” he explained.
Meanwhile, Miller, a longtime New York scenester and a close friend of controversial photographer Terry Richardson (her BFF and co-D.J., the beautiful but press-shy Jen Brill, is Richardson’s ex-girlfriend), had some candid advice for the ailing American Apparel. “[The brand] needs a new thing,” she admitted. “It’s getting old. The Terry Richardson rip-off photos? Seriously. Get a new photographer! Switch it up. Enough with the white wall.”
She continued, “In one way it’s cool to stay consistent, but it was really a moment. It was, like, the 2000s? It’s now ‘Turn of the Century,’–looking, I guess.” She added she’s still tight with Richardson, who this year weathered a scandal involving allegations of sexual misconduct on his shoots. “He’s fine. I’m sure he’ll be all right. I feel like girls have been saying that his whole career,” she said. “He actually just shot my mom [famed astrologer Susan Miller], and he was awesome.”
