Philipp Plein takes NY Fashion Week on snowy spaceship ride

Provocateur Philipp Plein descended on New York Fashion Week with a giant spaceship, silvery rock formations and Migos lighting up the crowd Saturday night as fake snow fell and covered the floor of a huge industrial space at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

A model wears fashion from the Philipp Plein collection during Fashion Week in New York, Saturday, Feb. 10, 2018. (AP Photo/Craig Ruttle)

And there were clothes. Skiwear mostly, lots emblazoned with Plein's name, skulls and crossbones and some Playboy logos.

The show roared to life with a couple of motorcycle riders and a space utility vehicle that plowed through Plein's fake wall of rocks. Later came a schmoozy transformer (big person in costume) who greeted Irina Shayk as she slinked out of the ship in a black bodysuit emblazoned with "I Love You Philipp Plein."

A model wears fashion from the Philipp Plein collection during Fashion Week in New York, Saturday, Feb. 10, 2018. (AP Photo/Craig Ruttle)

Transformer plus Victoria's Secret model Shayk walked around the snow and Transformer chatted up some of Plein's front row guests. Also, a man with two prosthetic athletic legs ran laps around the cavernous runway at some point.

The German designer who calls New York home is known for splashy shows — and splashy clothes. In September, the rapper Future performed while models walked and Dita Von Teese did a strip tease in a giant martini glass filled with liquid at the famed Hammerstein Ballroom.

A model wears fashion from the Philipp Plein collection during Fashion Week in New York, Saturday, Feb. 10, 2018. (AP Photo/Craig Ruttle)

This time around, Plein's crowd slogged through a persistent rain to Brooklyn for his spectacle, which started about an hour late, leaving guests to take as many fake snow and space rock selfies as any one human could possibly need.

Spaceship PP (Plein's logo with the first P reversed) was the true star of the show, making its way down from the ceiling with jets smoking, lights flashing and really, really loud sound effects.

A model wears fashion from the Philipp Plein collection during Fashion Week in New York, Saturday, Feb. 10, 2018. (AP Photo/Craig Ruttle)

Once Plein's models, both men and women, strutted in his array of puffers, fuzzy coats and red sweaters, he parked them under his mother ship. They got to dance there at the end as after-party guests took their turn in the soggy line outside for the bonus round.

A model, walking through a snow scene created for the show, wears fashion from the Philipp Plein collection during Fashion Week in New York, Saturday, Feb. 10, 2018. (AP Photo/Craig Ruttle)

A model wears fashion from the Philipp Plein collection during Fashion Week in New York, Saturday, Feb. 10, 2018. (AP Photo/Craig Ruttle)

A model wears fashion from the Philipp Plein collection during Fashion Week in New York, Saturday, Feb. 10, 2018. (AP Photo/Craig Ruttle)

A model, stepping from a spaceship like stage feature, wears fashion from the Philipp Plein collection during Fashion Week in New York, Saturday, Feb. 10, 2018. (AP Photo/Craig Ruttle)

A model pauses backstage before modeling fashions of the Philipp Plein collection during Fashion Week in New York, Saturday, Feb. 10, 2018. (AP Photo/Craig Ruttle)

A model wears fashion from the Philipp Plein collection during Fashion Week in New York, Saturday, Feb. 10, 2018. (AP Photo/Craig Ruttle)

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Bob Weir, the guitarist and singer who as an essential member of the Grateful Dead helped found the sound of the San Francisco counterculture of the 1960s and kept it alive through decades of endless tours and marathon jams, has died. He was 78.

Weir’s death was announced Saturday in a statement on his Instagram page.

“It is with profound sadness that we share the passing of Bobby Weir,” a statement on his Instagram posted Saturday said. “He transitioned peacefully, surrounded by loved ones, after courageously beating cancer as only Bobby could. Unfortunately, he succumbed to underlying lung issues.”

Weir joined the Grateful Dead — originally the Warlocks — in 1965 in San Francisco at just 17 years old. He would spend the next 30 years playing on endless tours with the Grateful Dead alongside fellow singer and guitarist Jerry Garcia, who died in 1995.

Weir wrote or co-wrote and sang lead vocals on Dead classics including “Sugar Magnolia,” “One More Saturday Night” and “Mexicali Blues.”

After Garcia’s death, he would be the Dead's most recognizable face. In the decades since, he kept playing with other projects that kept alive the band's music and legendary fan base, including Dead & Company.

“For over sixty years, Bobby took to the road,” the Instagram statement said. "A guitarist, vocalist, storyteller, and founding member of the Grateful Dead. Bobby will forever be a guiding force whose unique artistry reshaped American music.”

Weir’s death leaves drummer Bill Kreutzmann as the only surviving original member. Founding bassist Phil Lesh died in 2024. The band's other drummer, Mickey Hart, practically an original member since joining in 1967, is also alive at 82. The fifth founding member, Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, died in 1973.

Dead and Company played a series of concerts for the Grateful Dead’s 60th anniversary in July at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, drawing some 60,000 fans a day for three days.

Born in San Francisco and raised in nearby Atherton, Weir was the Dead's youngest member and looked like a fresh-faced high-schooler in its early years. He was generally less shaggy than the rest of the band, but he had a long beard like Garcia’s in later years.

The band would survive long past the hippie moment of its birth, with its ultra-devoted fans known as Deadheads often following them on the road in a virtually non-stop tour that persisted despite decades of music and culture shifting around them.

“Longevity was never a major concern of ours,” Weir said when the Dead got the Grammys’ MusiCares Person of the Year honor last year. “Spreading joy through the music was all we ever really had in mind, and we got plenty of that done.”

Ubiquitous bumper stickers and T-shirts showed the band's skull logo, the dancing, colored bears that served as their other symbol, and signature phrases like “ain't no time to hate” and “not all who wander are lost.”

The Dead won few actual Grammys during their career — they were always a little too esoteric — getting only a lifetime achievement award in 2007 and the best music film award in 2018.

Just as rare were hit pop singles. “Touch of Grey,” the 1987 song that brought a big surge in the aging band's popularity, was their only Billboard Top 10 hit.

But in 2024, they set a record for all artists with their 59th album in Billboard's Top 40. Forty-one of those came since 2012, thanks to the popularity of the series of archival albums compiled by David Lemieux.

Their music — called acid rock at its inception — would pull in blues, jazz, country, folk and psychedelia in long improvisational jams at their concerts.

“I venture to say they are the great American band,” TV personality and devoted Deadhead Andy Cohen said as host of the MusiCares event. “What a wonder they are.”

FILE - Bob Weir plays guitar with his band The Dead, formerly the Grateful Dead, at the Forum in the Inglewood section of Los Angeles, Calif. on Saturday May 9, 2009. (AP Photo/Richard Vogel,File)

FILE - This undated file photo shows members of the Grateful Dead band, from left to right, Mickey Hart, Phil Lesh, Jerry Garcia, Brent Mydland, Bill Kreutzmann, and Bob Weir. (AP Photo/File)

FILE - Kennedy Center Honors recipients from left; filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola, the legendary American rock band the Grateful Dead band members Mickey Hart, Bill Kreutzmann Bob Weir and blues rock singer-songwriter and guitarist Bonnie Raitt, applaud at at the 2024 Kennedy Center Honors reception in the East Room of the White House, Sunday, Dec. 8, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta,File)

FILE - Bob Weir arrives at Willie Nelson 90, celebrating the singer's 90th birthday on Saturday, April 29, 2023, at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles. (Photo by Allison Dinner/Invision/AP,File)

FILE - Bob Weir of Dead & Company performs at Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival on Sunday, June 12, 2016, in Manchester, Tenn. (Photo by Amy Harris/Invision/AP,File)