Dianne Brill, a Nineteen Eighties ‘It Woman,’ Makes a Splashy Return

When Dianne Brill arrived on the Soho Grand Resort for her 66th birthday celebration on Saturday evening, she did so with the identical sense of spectacle that made her an icon of Manhattan nightlife within the Nineteen Eighties.

Individuals stopped and stared as she stepped out of a black S.U.V. Standing 6-foot-3 in white platform boots, Ms. Brill was sporting a silver satin wraparound costume and holding a glittering wand in a single hand. Her hair was large and blonde, and she or he wore a giant necklace that learn “B-R-I-L-L.”

“I’m again,” she stated. “Perhaps not everybody is aware of it but, however I’m, and that’s why I’m having this birthday celebration. To indicate everybody I’m again.”

The occasion was billed as “One in a Brillion.” The costume code on the invitation was “Strictly Brill,” that means the sort of factor Ms. Brill might need worn at nightclubs like Space and Danceteria 4 many years in the past.

She got here to New York at age 22 from the suburbs of Tampa, Fla. Quickly she seized the mantle as soon as occupied by Edie Sedgwick and Bianca Jagger as downtown’s reigning “It” Woman. She additionally grew to become a muse to Andy Warhol, who as soon as said, “When you had been at a celebration and Dianne Brill was there, you knew you had been on the proper occasion.”

Her answering machine overflowed with messages from Mick Jagger, Sting, Keith Haring, Grace Jones and Jerry Corridor. She labored as a runway mannequin for Thierry Mugler and Jean Paul Gaultier, and she or he designed males’s put on for Prince and Duran Duran.

The tabloids referred to as her the Queen of the Evening, and she or he was the uncommon creature of downtown to cross over into the mainstream. In 1985, Individuals ran a function on her, and she or he was a visitor on “Late Evening with David Letterman.”

However beneath the party-girl exterior was a budding entrepreneur. Even when she was out until 4:30 a.m. on the Palladium and the Pyramid Membership, she caught to 3 guidelines: “no medicine, no booze, no weekend gallivanting.” And towards the tip of her time on the scene, she printed a e book, “Boobs, Boys and Excessive Heels: Or Methods to Get Wearing Simply Beneath Six Hours.”

Within the mid-Nineties she married Peter Voelkle, a German kids’s tv producer, and moved with him to Europe to begin a household. She stored an condominium within the East Village, although she has lived primarily in Zurich for the final three many years, elevating three kids, as she ran a cosmetics line that offered merchandise like Dianne Brill Eau de Parfum.

Now that the children are grown, Ms. Brill is again. Her previous haunts like Mudd Membership are lengthy gone, however she has taken a liking to the Polo Bar and the Nines.

“I do know New York has modified,” she stated. “However ever since I got here again, I’m assembly individuals who have that very same scent I smelled once I first acquired right here, again once I was only a lady from Tampa, who was uninterested in sitting round within the mall ready for one thing to occur to her.”

“I had a nine-year reign as Queen of the Evening, and that’s a very long time,” she added. “There are It Women who don’t adapt. They get bitter they will’t keep the eye. However I did adapt. For me, being Queen of the Evening is a frame of mind.”

Early Saturday evening, Ms. Brill’s buddies gathered at a protracted desk in a non-public room on the SoHo Grand for an intimate dinner. They reminisced about how they used to examine her downtown exploits in Web page Six and Interview Journal and the way encountering her at golf equipment was akin to sighting a Hollywood movie star.

“Thanks, all, for making me really feel just like the lady of the hour,” she stated, after she blew out the candles on her birthday muffins. “As a result of I’ve been lacking that feeling.”

Ms. Brill’s buddies mirrored on the distinct breed of movie star she as soon as embodied, with folks calling out to her from taxi cabs, although she was little recognized exterior the town.

“I don’t assume that sort of downtown movie star exists as we speak,” Jean-Marc Houmard, a co-owner of Indochine, stated. “I nonetheless keep in mind assembly her as a younger man. She complimented my jacket, and I used to be like, Oh my god, Dianne Brill simply complimented my jacket!”

“When she comes into Indochine now, younger folks won’t know who she is, however they’re intrigued,” he continued. “All of them ask me, ‘Who is that?’ Individuals nonetheless wish to know who she is. And that’s what being an It Woman is admittedly about.”

The designer Jill Stuart additionally weighed in on Ms. Brill’s legacy.

“She was the Queen of the Evening, and everybody knew her,” Ms. Stuart stated. “However she continues to be the Queen of the Evening, as a result of that character is inside Dianne wherever she goes.”

Kyle Stuart, a 27-year-old music supervisor who befriended Ms. Brill at Growth Growth Room throughout a Satisfaction Month occasion, evaluated her from a extra historic perspective.

“There’s an ephemeral high quality to being an It Woman,” he stated. “From Chloë Sevigny to Amanda Lepore, there’ll at all times be one other one, and there’s something bittersweet about that. However to me, Dianne is eternal. She’s the unique queen.”

It was practically midnight when the rowdy occasion began within the resort’s nightlife venue, Membership Room. A D.J. duo blasted George Michael and Duran Duran, as buddies previous and new danced on couches. One man wore a large Brill Field costume, and a lady wore a ponytail-like adornment that evoked a vinyl outfit Ms. Brill wore within the Nineteen Eighties.

The dance flooring was crowded with folks she knew from many years in the past, together with a crop of youthful followers who’ve change into smitten with Ms. Brill extra lately.

“I met her one evening, and rapidly I’m speaking to her about my breakup,” Olivia LaRossa, 27, stated. “She gave me motherly recommendation. We talked for 45 minutes. Solely after did I study she partied with Warhol. She’s change into a nightlife godmother to me and my buddies.”

At 2 a.m., Ms. Brill was nonetheless posing for selfies together with her followers.

“One among my guidelines is to at all times go away on the peak of the occasion,” she stated. “However not tonight. Tonight I is perhaps the final one out of right here. As a result of I haven’t felt this fashion in a very long time.”

Ms. Brill was then distracted by somebody — a younger lady with platinum blonde hair swaying alone on the dance flooring.

“Her,” Ms. Brill stated. “She has it.”