Amanda Lepore
Still ♡s
New York
Alex Frank joins the icon in her East Side apartment to talk nightlife, fashion, and why she likes the city more than ever.
- By: Alex Frank
- Photographed by: Morgan Maher
You catch a whiff of her before you see her, as the velvet scent of her Elizabeth Taylor White Diamonds wafts all the way down the hallway to the small elevator that opens onto the lobby of her floor. Amanda Lepore’s apartment—the space in which she transforms into the glittering celebrity we see on red carpets and club openings, with corsets and high heels and wigs and accessories that she bejewels herself —is just a tiny studio, decorated with Marilyn Monroe photos and animal prints. “Cheetah is my black,” she’ll tell me. When I arrive to meet her at 10 PM, she is dolled up in pasties and purple fur to head out to a party at midnight. She invites me to sit on her bed for our conversation, which, even though it’s small, takes up about a third of the room as stacks of Christian Louboutin boxes teeter precariously on the edges. It feels like the kind of grimy-glamorous New York existence you’d only hear about in oral histories of old-school Manhattan.
Lepore became famous in the ’90s, one of the early trans celebrities to receive attention from the national media. She had an infamously specific look that was instantly recognizable: as a walking, winking Jessica Rabbit, with that exaggerated silhouette borrowed from Pamela Anderson and Jayne Mansfield. She was never exactly a household name; like the best New York icons, she was publicly available but more privately adored, almost like an inside secret only cool city kids (and those who aspired to be cool city kids) were in on.
Her journey up the ladder rungs of downtown New York society is a classic one. A young girl flees a New Jersey childhood too limited for her dreams and makes it to Manhattan. She quickly found herself part of an epoch, as a go-go dancer in the Club Kid days of the early-to-mid-’90s, a moment in time now nostalgized over almost as much as CBGB’s or the Studio 54 era. The Club Kid circus—the big mega dance floors of places like the old Limelight, with nightlife stars in wild costumes trying to out-weird one another—had a ringleader in party promoter Michael Alig, who would also eventually be its downfall after pleading guilty to manslaughter in 1997 for the killing of fellow Club Kid Andre “Angel” Melendez amidst some drug-fueled insanity. That story was told in the 2003 Macaulay Culkin cult film Party Monster, in which Lepore has a small role.
Though the Club Kid days died there, Lepore’s stardom was already ascendant. A friendship and creative partnership with vaunted pop-art photographer David LaChapelle minted her fame; she was his muse throughout the late ’90s and early 2000s, and they made memorable images together, including one in which she’s snorting diamonds like cocaine and another in which she does an exaggerated take on Warhol’s “Marilyn” screenprint. But she never left the grittiness of downtown nightlife behind, either—her primary gig continues to be hosting parties and, indeed, her “apartment” is actually a small room in a faded, inexpensive East Side hotel with a gruff doorman where she doesn’t even have her own bathroom; she shares a communal one on the floor. “The hotel is really good about cleaning it,” she says of the common space. “I like that I don’t have to ever worry about it being dirty.”
Lepore is what can be called a New York original—a Fran Lebowitz, Patti Smith, Candy Darling–type figure who is so singular and synonymous with the city they themselves become like a little Chrysler Building in the mind’s eye. When I started coming to New York in the mid-2000s, the first time I saw Amanda out at a club was like some kind of mikvah—I had, as they say, arrived.
Perhaps in Warholian homage to the coy 1950s starlets she loves, she’s soft-spoken and enigmatic in conversation, never revealing too much and always maintaining a veneer of politeness and poise. Even demure, there’s something thrilling about being in her presence. If sometimes it feels like there are fewer and fewer New York originals as the city becomes overrun by Sweetgreens and Blank Street Coffees, she believes—and embodies—that there’s no need to romanticize years gone by. To her, New York is always what you make of it.
Alex Frank
Amanda Lepore
Everyone in New York who spends considerable years here always seems to say, “My New York was better back then, when I was 22!” But do you think New York goes through good periods and bad periods? Or it’s just a matter of how you perceive it?
I think it’s how you perceive it. I mean, there’s always something good going on. It has changed, but I’m more disciplined, so I like it better now than when it was a free-for-all.
What do you mean by disciplined?
Well, I always took care of myself. And I guess when I first got hormones too, they told me, “They’re not going to work if you drink or do drugs or anything. They don’t work.” But that worked in my favor because then I would never do them.
When you say New York was more of a free-for-all then—what’s changed?
Definitely with drugs—there was a certain point in New York when it was really rampant. They would have dinner parties and just serve drugs. That’s not something that would go on now. And I think also people film everything, so everyone is more paranoid.
What was your entry into nightlife?
My old roommate took me to Limelight and then I got immediately hired to go-go dance on Wednesdays for Disco 2000. And then the next week I got hired at a different club. And then I was on The Joan Rivers Show, I think, the third week.
That legendary episode when she had all the Club Kids on and interviewed them. What was that like?
I was kind of scared, but Michael [Alig] told me what to say.
What did he tell you?
Just to say that you’re a man’s fantasy of the ideal woman. And you never work.
So he was almost Warhol-y in his own kind of way, orchestrating everything behind the scenes?
Kind of, yeah. I mean, he was really good in the beginning. He didn’t do drugs. He used to fake being drunk. And he was really good at putting his parties together.
What happens to people like him when they get caught up in the mess of nightlife?
In his case, I think he just tried to be on top of trends and stuff. The “heroin chic” thing came in so he thought it was cool to do drugs at that point. Everything had to be the latest with him.
When everything went down with him, did it scare you in terms of being in nightlife?
Yeah.
What was going through your mind?
Well, there were these rumors that he killed somebody. I didn’t think it was true. They had been filming a movie, too, and I thought it was maybe a publicity stunt. That [club owner and promoter] Peter Gatien had hid Angel some place and then he would just reappear when the movie came out. I thought that it was a trick.
Did you stay away from the clubs when you found out what really happened?
I was still there because it was my only job at the time, but then there were more of the cops and the crackdown. So after that, nobody was really coming to the parties—it would just be us. Waiting to get paid was almost like waiting at a welfare office.
Michael died in 2020, but did you stay in contact with him at all when he got out of prison on parole in 2014?
I didn’t because I couldn’t really handle it. He would be around because he started parties again. And he wanted to get in touch with me. I would say hello and everything. But I didn’t want to get involved. I don’t know—morally, it was a lot to handle.
When I see you now, you always seem so confident in a club setting. Were you confident in the early days too?
I was really shy when I first started. It helped a lot that I was dancing in the cages at Limelight.
Cages made you feel confident?
Well, you would just be in your own world. Because they would put you up in the cage so nobody could go near you or touch you or talk to you. It was just visual.
You also worked as a dominatrix, right?
I did. Just a few years. I hated it, but it was a lot of money and it was safe. It wasn’t a health risk. You wouldn’t really have sex with them. Or you could order them around. I mean, if you wanted to jerk them off or something, you could, but if you didn’t want to touch them, you could just boss them around. When I was a dominatrix, they didn’t want me to tell people I was a transsexual because you would make more money then. I would go to great lengths and say that I was going to college and had a daughter.
What was childhood in New Jersey like?
It wasn’t good for me because I was harassed as a kid and made fun of. I didn’t really have any friends.
Almost everyone queer has a moment when they realize they’re different from the other kids in school—when was yours?
Well, I always felt I was a girl. I thought it was just a mistake.
How’d you come up with the name Amanda Lepore?
Lepore is my father’s name. And, with Amanda—my real name was Armand. I wanted it to be natural, kind of, so I just dropped the R and added an A and it was Amanda.
Is politics something that interests you? There’s been a lot of upsetting developments in the news of late.
I pay attention a little bit, but I can’t talk about it so much.
Are you surprised by how central the debate about trans kids has become to the national conversation?
Well, I think it’s a real shame because I meet a lot of the younger girls. Sometimes they’re having it a lot easier than in my day. I love to hear it. I don’t want people to keep on suffering just because I did. Girls whose parents helped them transition and everything—that’s really beautiful to hear. I would have loved that. And it just seems a shame for that to be taken away from people.
Can you remember what your first definition of glamour was?
I guess looking at old movie stars that weren’t really in my generation. People my mother would like. I was always drawn to the blonde ones.
If you have an appearance like tonight, how long does it take to get ready?
I give myself eight hours, but that’s with everything. Doing my hair, taking a shower, eating breakfast. I’ll stretch a little bit.
What takes the most time?
Eye makeup.
If you’re running to the bodega, are you doing full glam just to go out?
No. In the daytime or if I’m going on a plane or something, I just do skin care and lipstick.
With a dress like what you’re wearing now, will you have a tailor make that for you?
Yeah. And then, lately, I will usually buy new lingerie sets because I just had my breasts bigger.
Just recently?
Last year with the Balenciaga money [Laughs].
Right, you were asked to walk the runway for Balenciaga’s SS24 show.
That wouldn’t have happened years ago.
You mean because fashion has caught up to what you’re doing?
I think so. I think so.
What celebrity have you been most excited to meet throughout the years?
Mamie Van Doren.
What did you two talk about?
Nothing really. I remember she did tell me, though, “Amanda: You’ve just got to sell what you’ve got.”
What’s the best night you’ve ever had out in New York?
I always have a good time. I never have a bad time. I like people. I like to make people feel comfortable. And I definitely love dressing up. I guess I’m just an old school Club Kid.
Alex Frank is a freelance writer and editor living in Manhattan, covering music, style, and culture. He has contributed to VOGUE, Pitchfork, ELLE, i-D, New York Magazine, The New York Times, and GQ. His profiles and interviews include Lana Del Rey, Nicki Minaj, Dolly Parton, Mariah Carey, SZA, and many others.
- By: Alex Frank
- Photographed by: Morgan Maher
- Talent: Amanda Lepore
- Creative Direction: Samantha Adler
- Makeup: Esteban Martinez
- Production: The Avenue Production
- Casting: Papergirl
- Production Assistant: Marco Miccolis
- Date: March 3, 2025
