One of New York City’s First IRL Gatherings Raised Funds for the Black Trans Community 

With a militant eye for facial coverings and social distancing, restaurateur James Gardner opened the gates to his 24,000-square-foot outdoor eatery, Gitano Garden of Love, in downtown Manhattan last night. “We feel our role is to help New York have fun again, but in a safe way,” he told us as a select group of 100 socially distanced and seated guests entered the space, aglow in the sunset. “I’m a member of the LGBTQ community, and the Black trans community is our family. They fought for many of the rights that we have, so tonight is about celebrating, supporting, and giving back to them.”

Greeting guests was a mural emblazoned with the words “B.Trans.L.M.,” a work by Connie Girl, the artist and celebrated nightlife fixture of New York’s 1990s club scene. Fleming cohosted the evening, wearing an Oleg Cassini corset adorned with lavender crystals sourced from a thrift store on Second Avenue and a mask by David Dalrymple. “I’m hoping that it will get us to think about ourselves and our rhetoric,” Fleming told Vogue of the work, which features a diverse range of people and personalities to form the letters. “Today it’s them, tomorrow it’s you, so I wanted to convey that an attack on one is an attack on all of us.”

In typical fashion, she brought out all of her loyal revelers, including costume designer Patricia Field, who was perhaps better known by the crowd for her boutique of club-ready wares than her role as the costume designer for Sex and the City. “When this whole thing started, I listened to Dr. Fauci, who said, ‘The best thing you can do is to go home and stay there,’ so that’s what I did,” she said, speaking through her leopard mask. “I’m out tonight for the first time in many months, and when they invited me, I said, ‘I have to go for Connie,’ and while I don’t have a crystal ball, I want positivity to come from all of this.”

Joining later in the evening was Pose star Dominique Jackson, who was met with applause and flashbulbs as her lithe frame sauntered through the entrance. After situating herself in a corner banquette, she offered us her equally optimistic outlook. “I think we’ll start appreciating each other more and the time we spend together,” she told Vogue. “And apart from dealing with this pandemic is also the reality of what we’ve been talking about and dealing with for many, many years, which is trans lives, especially Black trans lives, not mattering. The barbaric murders that we have faced and the brutality the Black trans community faced was totally ignored. But when people were sitting in their homes, they had no choice but to pay attention to the media and realize we weren’t just making noise. So we have to use this time to look out for each other, and realize a lot of us are going through very similar things.”

With proceeds from the evening going to the Marsha P. Johnson Institute (a charity named after drag queen and activist Marsha P. Johnson supporting Black transgender people) and Destination Tomorrow (a Bronx-based center benefiting the LGBTQ community), guests including Jason Wu, model and Madonna progeny Lourdes “Lola” Leon, and DJs Leigh Lezark and Geordon Nicol of the Misshapes ordered up the Tulum-inspired eatery’s mezcal margaritas and bites. All the while the attended respected the city’s safety regulations—proof that New Yorkers are still capable of having a good time, in the name of a good cause, in our current times.