The New York Times covered the underground scene as a fashion story.

Evidence

On the show’s second weekend, which advertised a family-friendly Saturday matinee for “Teenage Tot and Tillie Dropout,” the New York Times sent thirty-one-year-old reporter Marylin Bender to investigate Warhol’s latest stunt under the rubric food/fashion/family/furnishing. Taking her mandate to cover the new couture, Bender wryly noted that “black tie and long chiffon or black jeans and not-recently-washed sweaters seem equally appropriate for participating in the ‘total art form’ that Mr. Warhol has been presenting for the last ten evenings” and briefly profiled the chanteuse. (“ ‘Modeling is such a dull job,’ Nico said, tossing her flaxen mane.”) — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 860

Categorization

• SEED: Mainstream press first processed the avant-garde through the consumer/fashion rubric — a usable case for how media framing softened the underground for gentrification.
• XREF: Bears directly on readings about how avant-gardes are co-opted and repackaged by mainstream institutions before real estate displaces them.