Surrender Dorothy!
“Surrender anything is exquisite": Ruby McCollister's latest act.
It’s difficult not to muse-ify Ruby McCollister. Downtown New York’s best-kept secret (though not for long), she was once my assistant and collaborator for Tragedy Oil. More importantly, she’s a brilliant actress, comedienne, designer, connector of rogue geniuses, supreme conversationalist, and, secretly, a design and business strategist. That last one caught me off guard, but that’s Ruby: her sheer range of expertise, intuition, and tenacity is limitless. Who knew one person could truly excel across all these categories? I didn’t!
There’s much to say about Ruby, but you should know she’s usually somehow behind any actual avant-garde thing happening in New York or LA. She worked for Special Offer and helped with Charlie XCX’s Brat campaign as well as the ID Magazine rebrand. You may have seen her in the beloved cult web series, Zhe Zhe (with Leah Victoria Hennessy, also a part of Surrender Dorothy and Ruby’s frequent collaborator), or Curb Your Enthusiasm, Search Party, Messy, The Scary of Sixty-First, The African Desperate, The French Italian, and more. Admittedly, whenever I’m down and/or missing her, I’ll just go on her Instagram and watch her comedy videos to cheer myself up. It’s the only thing I truly enjoy about Instagram. Ruby is a once-in-a-lifetime person, and I’m not even sure what I mean by that, except that I’ve thought it over and over again about her.
Real ones know she’s about to blow up (catch her starring in John Early’s new movie). But today I’m writing about her latest endeavor: a store, with an actual storefront. And of course, if you know Ruby, you know it’s not just a store. It’s an entire world. Enter Surrender Dorothy.
Surrender Dorothy opens Sunday, September 28, with a public reception from 5–8pm at 13 West 17th Street, NY, NY.
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Marissa: What is Surrender Dorothy?
Ruby: Well, I’m doing Surrender Dorothy with Leah Hennessy and Arabella Aldrich. Those are my longest-standing friends, though I have many long-standing friends. I’ve known Leah my whole life, and Arabella since I was 14. Arabella is an amazing costume designer and stylist and collector. Leah is a director and a musician and a writer. I’m an actress and just like a fucking whatever, like impresario dilettante.
M: Why did you name it Surrender Dorothy?
R: I didn’t name it. Leah named it, and Arabella and I loved it. Leah is a huge Wizard of Oz nerd and loved all the books. I just loved the film. I have an affinity with Judy Garland, specifically, and her life work, and Arabella also loved The Wizard of Oz. I feel like there’s not a person alive in America currently that doesn’t have some feeling about The Wizard of Oz, some memory about the Wizard of Oz. It is like, the most universal experience of art. Possibly. I have huge theories about the Wizard of Oz that I will not be speaking about here: about American art and the Native American, but I digress. Basically, Leah suggested it’s what the Wicked Witch of the West writes in the sky to threaten Dorothy as she’s going down the yellow brick road and when she brought this up, I sort of hesitated, because I wanted it to be a little funnier, because I’m always like, cheekier and weirder. Then it sort of settled. And I was like, actually, it’s exquisite. Saying Surrender Anything is sort of exquisite. Then after Leah suggested it, she was reading Salman Rushdie and in the book he’s talking about like alt 1960s London and in it there was a cool shop called Surrender Dorothy. It was sort of like, Oh, we have to do it, like this is destiny. You know, you flip open a page and there’s a store called Surrender Dorothy.
M: What is your relationship to the space itself — 13 West 17th St.?
R: Well, it’s in a building on 13 West 17th street that was purchased in the 60s by a Shakespearean, a famous and very respected Shakespearean and Broadway actor, John Cullum and his wife, Emily Frankel. They’ve owned the building since 1968. Emily’s no longer alive. She was a dancer, and they sort of created this space in this building for artists to live in. John’s still alive. He lives on the top floor. But I got the space from my amazing mentor, actress Shereen Mitchell, an actress and amazing designer who had an atelier in this space for many years and she decided to close it down and mainly focus on acting again. She gave us the space. It’s a very like, enchanted building. It’s a very cozy, very affectionate building, and it sort of brings you back to a New York that you didn’t realize existed still, that largely doesn’t, and that is an extinct New York. That is also why we made the store.
M: What led you to open it?
R: This project was sort of a grief project for all three of us. We’ve all lost parents recently, more or less recently. I don’t even know if we should mention the grief part yet, but I would like to eventually. I just think we all had this feeling of wanting to put something beautiful out in the world that we thought was missing, that hearkened back to stores that we loved in New York. Like Alice in the Underground, or Screaming Mimi’s. Bess was also an amazing store. And then there was like, stores in London in the 70s that we never got to see, like Biba. We were just like, what if instead of making something chic or fashionable, we made something splendid and fantastical that would be beautiful, but maybe not trendy, and see how people responded? Because we think possibly that is something that people are unconsciously yearning for and not realizing.
M: What will you sell?
R: We sell a lot of different things. A lot of things have been hand curated by Arabella. A lot of the designers are from Belgium and France and England and friends of hers. But also like designers and collectors such as David Moses, Mati Hayes will be in the store. Zoe Whelan, also Mondo Mondo jewelry and Marissa Zappas perfume. There’s also Column de Humaire, which is a Parisian jewelry line. There’s Ellen Poppy Hill, who’s an exciting, up and coming designer. Whitney Mallett’s The Whitney Review. There’s so many designers, but, but I think the through line is sort of like splendidness, a splendor.
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Opening Reception: Sunday, September 28th 5-8pm. 13 West 17th St!
