Naturally, fun-loving uninhibited Mykonos also lured the gay crowd. The 1970s heralded a flourish of disco and drag queens. Gay bars sprung up in the whitewashed alleys of Hora, where a parade of Eartha Kitt, Barbra Streisand, and Diana Ross impersonators strutted in platform heels. They all vied to be crowned Miss Mykonos, a beauty pageant for drag queens at Piero’s, the most notorious gay bar of them all. The flamboyant owner, Piero Aversa, an Italian artist from New York, chose Mykonos for “its blend of liberal attitudes and puritanical settings”. In an interview with Taki Theodoracopoulos for The Spectator in 1979, Aversa quipped: “When I first went to beautiful Greek islands with my boyfriend, I got stoned. And I don’t mean with pot. By the natives. Not in Mykonos, however.”
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Piero was the ultimate master of ceremonies. He threw Dionysian dinner parties at the Stoupa Mansion (today the Belvedere hotel), and White Parties at Piero’s, where the whole island showed up in extravagant costumes. As Taki Theodoracopoulos wrote: “Like a modern Moses, Piero waved his heavily braceleted arm and thousands of chic gays followed.” But Piero’s jet-setting entourage also included models, actresses, artists and aristocrats. The front row crowd came to decompress at Piero’s, Psarou and Paradise beach after Paris, Milan and New York fashion week. Gaultier, Mugler, Valentino and McQueen were regular fixtures. Pat Cleveland posed for Billy Bo, Greece’s hottest fashion designer, whose boutique was a magnet for androgynous beauties. Grace Jones stalked the dance floors of Remezzo and Nine Muses, legendary nightclubs on the old harbor of Mykonos. The music from Remezzo’s terraces drifted on the sea breeze as the ferry pulled in after midnight: passengers would jump straight off the boat into the club, stumbling out at dawn to eat spaghetti Bolognese at the Yacht Club next door. Nine Muses was an old warehouse with no roof; after working up a sweat on the dance floor, patrons would dive into the harbor to cool off.