In the early ’80s, the embodiments of downtown N.Y.C. culture Cookie Mueller and Glenn O’Brien co-wrote the play “Drugs,” a tragicomedy about two roommates and life-altering substances through the decades. It never made it to the stage, becoming part of that era’s blurry subcultural lore, although its existence was mentioned in the 2014 Mueller biography “Edgewise.” T’s senior art director and a co-founder of the Kingsboro Press, Daniel Wagner, took note. “In the grand scheme of things, Cookie doesn’t have a lot of longer works published,” he says. Along with Seth Zucker of For the Common Good (a like-minded independent publishing practice) and Kingsboro’s other co-founder, Megan Plunkett, he tracked down the manuscript. “We thought it would be exciting to read, since she’s such a evocative writer, and exciting to resurface, because she’s such a beloved underground figure,” Wagner says.
The trio received the text and a foreword from O’Brien, reformatted it, designed a cover and produced a limited run of 500 copies. Then in October 2016, half a year before he died, O’Brien assembled a cast to read “Drugs” at Anthology Film Archives on the Bowery; O’Brien narrated and the director Josh Safdie, the artists Dustin Yellin and Jonah Freeman and the actress Hailey Gates were among the players. “We also did a couple of book fairs and it was sold in a few shops,” Wagner adds. “Then, it was gone.”
Not for good, though. Raf Simons somehow came across the book and contacted Wagner and co. this past fall, asking to collaborate. Simons was drawn to the graphic look of the cover and the shock of its two color-ways, bright orange and yellow, and he also counts himself as a fan of both Mueller and O’Brien. Last night, the designer’s iteration of “Drugs” walked the runway during his fall/winter 2018 men’s wear show, called “Youth in Motion.” Models wore sleeveless and deconstructed hoodies bearing the play’s name and authors, and a selection of pants, scarves and jackets incorporated patches that riffed on the original design. “It’s exciting to see the book take on a life outside the play,” says Wagner, who was in attendance. “And we are huge fans of Raf’s work, so it was an honor.”