'Fashionistas' closes

Tonight after a nearly four-year run "The Fashionistas" will give its final performance in Vegas. The show will be remembered by me and many others as perhaps the best erotic show to have ever run on the Strip.

Not that I will be there to see one of my favorite shows one final time. Vegas is a city where the now always trumps honoring the past. I will be watching Bette Midler's new show at Caesars tonight.

Last night, I had dinner with "Fashionistas" creator John Stagliano. I first met Stagliano months before his show opened in 2004. In fact, I spent those months behind the scene skeptically documenting Stagliano's efforts to launch "Fashionistas" for a cover story in Las Vegas Weekly. I was skeptical, because Stagliano is a multimillionaire pornographer (owner of the company Evil Angel) who had no background in Vegas production shows. Oh actually, he told me that back in the '70s he failed an audition to be a dancer at a show at the Stardust. He went on to become a Chippendale dancer. And from there he entered pornography, being credited with being the founder of a genre called gonzo. Stagliano's Vegas show was built around the plot and title of his most famous pornographic movie. The original adult film version of "The Fashionistas" is over four hours long, and Stagliano's Vegas production is an erotic modernist dance interpretation of the film, with no dialogue and a soundtrack that ranges from Tool to Madonna to original music. The show turned out to garner wonderful reviews, but it could never support itself without Stagliano using money he earned from the day job.

So, I asked Stagliano about what lessons he learned and what he was taking away from his time as a Vegas show producer:

"I've learned that you have to careful with your money here because you can lose it pretty quickly. Actually, I think you were the first one to warn me about that and at the time I didn't believe you. Now I understand that was absolutely true. What you don't see from outside Vegas is that the money inside the casino system is much different than the money outside the casino system. It is much more competitive and difficult outside a casino."

I easily resisted telling Staglino, "I told you so." But what he meant is that is that I had warned him that being inside a casino and supported by the casino with advertising and promotion was key to most shows' success on the Strip.

But getting helped by the profits from gambling for some shows also makes things very difficult for independent shows like "Fashionistas." The worst challenge Stagliano's show faced was not that he was a pornographer, but that "Fashionistas" was not even located inside a casino. The show is performed at Krave, a nightclub attached to a mall connected to Planet Hollywood. Yet Krave is built so as not to be connected to the mall or Planet Hollywood. Krave is only accessible by entering from the street on Harmon. The reason that is the case is that the space was built to suit people with no understanding of Vegas. The space was created to be the short-lived Blue Note jazz club, which wanted that level of independence from the casino and mall property. But tourists who come to Vegas like being in casinos and mostly do not choose to walk out on side streets. That was a huge error by the club and, as a result, the Blue Note become the first of many projects to fail in that space. Stagliano's longevity was a tribute to both the quality of the show and the amount of money he was willing to commit from his own fortune.

Before leaving Vegas, Stagliano got one final gift Wednesday night: Steve Wynn came to see "Fashionistas." "It was so exciting that he came to my show," Stagliano said. The reason Wynn came to the show is revealing. Stagliano's casting was as fantastic as everything else about "The Fashionistas," and Wynn has hired one of the show's stars to assume a key role in his resort's "Le Reve" production show.

As for Stagliano, he is not entirely finished with Vegas despite closing "Fashionistas." "I know so much more now than I did when we opened. I now have an idea that mixes technology and music and dancers into a nightclub attraction. I hope to take a couple months off and then come back to Vegas and see if I can get clubs interested."

(Photo by Sarah Gerke)