‘Look at the bunny bags!” designer Betsey Johnson exclaims to her longtime assistant as she looks over her new accessories for spring. The 70-year-old bounds around her new 37th Street workspace — imagine Santa’s workshop on acid — in sparkly red sneakers, her signature bright-red lipstick, a bold red-and-yellow rugby shirt of her own design and tight capri jeans. As she admires the two flat, rabbit-shaped satchels, one with a blue bow adorning its neck, it seems clear that her company’s recent bankruptcy has registered as a mere blip on her creative radar. “You know what I like to say,” she explains, when asked about her financial woes. “That line from the ‘Dangerous Liaisons’ movie: ‘It’s out of my control.’ ”
In April, her eponymous, 34-year-old company filed for Chapter 11, citing poor sales, forcing all 63 of her pink-and-black boutiques across the country to close and leaving her rabid, sparkle-loving fans in mourning. Racked.com reported the four Manhattan stores being liquidated down to the mannequins and fixtures, with devotees braving monster lines to snatch up the last bits of Betsey.
The fashion-istas needn’t have fretted.
The platinum-extensioned designer is re-emerging in myriad ways in the coming months with a new dress line and a retrospective of her work at Fashion Week, a reality show for the Style Network, an ongoing, strengthened partnership with Steve Madden (who acquired her trademark in 2010) and a host of new licensees to help her carry out her
mad-hatter ideas. “I’m happier being creative consultant rather than being salaried head designer,” she says. “I’m much happier now.”
In August, she announced her new dress line, which has the backing of the Levy Group and will be available at Nordstrom and Macy’s later this month, with an exuberant press release that declared, “I’m back!!! Doin’ my dress thing.”
Priced at $99 to $249 (as opposed to her previous, less-commercial price point of $500 to $600), the frocks will debut Tuesday at Espace as part of a runway retrospective of Johnson’s career in fashion. “I wanted a birthday party,” she says of the greatest-hits show, which will have some future projects mixed in. “It’s very special because I’ve turned 70, and it marks 47 years of work in this industry.”
After graduating from Syracuse University in 1964, Johnson got her start in fashion by winning a contest to be a guest editor at Mademoiselle magazine. The following year, she started as an in-house designer at Paraphernalia, the famed mod boutique on 67th Street and Madison Avenue, where all the hottest Youthquaker style icons, like Edie Sedgwick and Wendy Wasserstein, went to shop for miniskirts and vinyl dresses. In 1969, she opened her own boutique on the Upper East Side, Betsey Bunky Nini, and Edie Sedgwick was her house model.
She went on to work for the rock ’n’ roll Alley Cat label and win a Coty American Fashion Award at 28. In 1978, she formed her own label, Betsey Johnson Punk, with her friend Chantal Bacon. Through the decades, she’s been known for both her outrageous fashions and equally colorful personality. In May 2011, she walked the red carpet for the New York City Ballet’s swanky spring gala for the “Seven Deadly Sins” dragging a tattooed, wild-haired employee on a leash.
In preparation for the retrospective, the racks at her studio are stuffed with designs from just about every part of her career, from a mustard-yellow jacket she did for Paraphernalia to a poufy white dress splattered with blue and purple that Katy Perry wore to the 2011 People’s Choice Awards.
Johnson put out a call on Facebook, looking for people who had and would loan her older pieces for the show. The rugby shirt she was wearing had arrived in a box earlier that day. Some past clients are even sending her old designs to keep. “A lady today, oh my God, she sent me a dress of the first collection in 1978. From the Betsey Johnson ‘Punk’ label,” she says. “No note.”
Despite all the old duds, Johnson still has passion for the future. In addition to bunny bags, snakes are a current focus for her upcoming designs. Bending over the accessories table, she loops a yellow-and-green sparkly snake around an ankle, saying “I’m so glad ankle bracelets are coming back.” Then, she drapes a pink one around her neck, closing it by clasping its jaw to its tail and fastening a third snake around her wrist. She leans back onto one hip and snarls slightly, taking on the persona of one of her customers. “So this girl,” she says, snapping out of character but holding the pose, “she’s all about her snakes, not much else really.”
Johnson herself has plenty else happening. She’s currently shooting her reality show, “Betsey + Lulu,” with her 37-year-old daughter Lulu, who is starting her own design business. Mom and daughter live in the same apartment building. “[It’ll show] our lives, our work, our friends, our private lives, s - - t like that,” she says of the show, which debuts in January. “I think it’s going to be pretty interesting.”
Between Fashion Week and then, she’ll be keeping busy. “We’re going to grow the licensing, hopefully into children’s wear, active wear, menswear,” she says. “It’s great. At 70 — finally — I’m in the place I want to be.”
smcclear@nypost.com