For the Pittsburgh Opera’s annual fashion fundraiser on March 23, vintage clothing dealer and perennial scene-maker Richard Parsakian of Eons goes gloriously over the top—serving couture-caliber looks, a cast of provocateurs, and drama worthy of the stage.
Inside Richard Parsakian’s Vision for the Pittsburgh Opera’s It’s About Time Fashion Show
It’s a snowy Tuesday morning in the last week of February, and Richard Parsakian is fretting over two garment racks in Eons Fashion Antique, his vintage clothing store in Shadyside. He’s moving outfits, trying to decide which of the pieces he’s pulled from his vast archive—everything from a 1940s monkey-fur bolero jacket to a delicate silk floral-embroidered coat dress dating to the early 1900s—will be featured on the catwalk at the Pittsburgh Opera’s It’s About Time Fashion Show on March 23. He is 77, running on three hours of sleep, the sole creative director overseeing one of the city’s most-anticipated fundraisers, and it’s just four weeks to showtime.
“The runway is in my head when I wake up, and when I try to sleep,” says Parsakian, a self-described insomniac. “It’s a puzzle, but I like puzzles.”
A Long Creative Partnership With Pittsburgh Opera
For Parsakian, whose store turns 40 this year, the event continues a relationship with the Opera that began in 2016, when he designed and sourced costumes for a production about Gertrude Stein, set in 1920s and ’30s Paris. In 2022, he returned to oversee and curate the runway show Diva Dreams and Fashion Queens. This season, with general director Christopher Hahn preparing to step down after two decades, the Opera invited Parsakian back for an encore.
“Richard’s commitment, couture collection, and quirky creativity makes him the perfect partner in producing a high-octane, theatrically charged and intriguingly different event,” says Hahn.
Blending Opera, Performance, and Vintage Fashion
Staged at the Opera’s Strip District headquarters, the event ranks just behind the company’s black-tie gala in fundraising and is expected to bring in about $60,000 to support productions and education programs. The evening blends runway and performance, with the Opera’s resident artists singing arias and Bob Dylan classics while models strut, sashay, and dance down the runway. Parsakian’s concept, inspired in part by the 1992 film Orlando—a story of a gender-fluid immortal noble who moves through centuries and across sexes—travels through time, with hybrid, high-drama looks spanning roughly a century. He is also selecting the music and collaborating with the Opera team on cinematic videos that will play during the show. “It’s storytelling,” he says. “Just without dialogue.”
Parsakian’s biggest difficulty is fit. Vintage clothing was typically made for smaller bodies—especially through the rib cage—and none of the garments can be altered. Because he can’t cut, sew, or hem the fabric, Parsakian has to find models who exactly match each period piece, not the other way around. With the clothes determining the casting, Parsakian relies on his innate ability to visualize structure and proportions. “I see the person, and I just know,” he says. “Or I know it won’t work.”
Inside the Eons Vintage Archive
Nearly everything in the show comes from his warehouse—he won’t divulge the hush-hush location—where he stores more than a thousand pieces collected over four decades. Nothing in the inventory is cataloged or digitized, so Parsakian imagines the runway lineup first, then heads to the warehouse to pull each look. “I can picture where things are,” he says. “It’s like a mental map.”
For the 33 models, Parsakian tapped his far-reaching network: drag performers, artists, longtime customers, and Opera supporters across a range of ages, sizes, and gender expressions. The youngest walker is an 18-year-old from Pittsburgh’s performing arts magnet school, and the show’s closer is a woman Parsakian has dressed since the 1980s. Her finale look, he promises cryptically, will be “big.”
Parsakian arrived in Pittsburgh in 1971 with an architecture degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a placement with VISTA—the stateside version of the Peace Corps—and never left. He opened Eons in 1986 two doors down from its current location, building it into a hybrid retail shop, costume archive, and community room. With thrifting now a TikTok phenomenon and the second-hand retailer Depop having sold to eBay for over $1 billion, Parsakian fills the racks through word-of-mouth. Visiting stylists, filmmakers, and costume designers rely on his inventory and encyclopedic knowledge of fashion history when they’re in town for shoots, while other customers come simply to shop or hang out. Among the local LGBTQIA+ community, his store has long been a place of affirmation and experimentation, where people can try on clothing—and identities—without fear or judgment.
Eons and Parsakian as Pittsburgh LGBTQ+ Icons
Over time, Parsakian has become an icon and patron saint of the city’s queer cultural life, organizing early drag performances, co-publishing one of Pittsburgh’s first gay newspapers, carrying a mammoth 30-by-60-foot Pride flag through the parade for 25 years, and throwing out a first pitch at a Pirates Pride Night. “I’m like Auntie Mame,” says Parsakian. “I just want everyone to have a fabulous time.”
Back at the rack, he pauses at the bolero jacket. Parsakian will likely pair its glossy, jet-black Colobus monkey fur—popularized in the 1930s by designers like Elsa Schiaparelli and now rarely seen outside museum collections—with a red vinyl Versace dress from the 1990s, one of the many cross-era mashups he’s assembling. Further down the rack are looks still in progress, including a patterned Pucci dress, dramatic lime-green velvet bell bottoms from the late 1960s, and a Thierry Mugler blazer with a peplum and sharp shoulders.
Eons opens at noon. Despite the demands of the show, Parsakian is still working six days a week while finalizing what he insists will be his last runway extravaganza. But he notes he’s Armenian, like Cher, who has spent years on farewell tours. Asked if he’s certain this is truly his fashion send-off, Parsakian pauses.
“This is my last show,” he says. “The same way Cher’s is her last show.”
Story by Kathleen Renda
Photography by Laura Petrilla
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