In the late ’60s, the rock hall replaced the discotheque as as the prime area for innovative fashion display. “In fashion terms a Fillmore East opening night deserves as much coverage as the Philharmonic Galanosed Galas,” claimed the Village Voice shortly after the rock auditorium opened in March 1968. “It’s a scene-making pageant whether they’re seeing Lenny at Lincoln Center or Jimi at the Fillmore.” In 1968, Bill Graham…tied together the pageantry in the audience with the fireworks on stage when he organized a mini fashion happening during an interval in the evening’s mixed bill. Unheralded, Barbara Mott, wife of designer Michael Mott, zoomed up the center aisle of the rock palace on an enormous Harley Davidson. Dressed in Mott’s black leather bra top and miniskirt pegged with hobnail studs, she tore up a ramp to the stage and parked her vehicle to the accompaniment of a cannonade of cheers from the Fillmore’s audience.

Image and text from Radical Rags by Joel Lobenthal