Top designer Dennis Basso recalled at a Fashion Group luncheon at Le Cirque on Thursday how he was once mistaken for Bill Clinton and almost assassinated.
Basso, who was getting a White House tour in 1994 after holding a successful Clinton fund-raiser, was on the steps when he was shot at.
“All of a sudden we hear pop, pop, pop, and I go, oh, someone is shooting firecrackers,” he said. “Hundreds of Secret Service dragged us backwards . . . they put us in a holding room, there was pandemonium . . . they question us, they take our camera.”
Basso says he wasn’t frazzled at first, going back to the hotel and ordering room service.
He became alarmed when a news report said the man, who was 300 yards away on Pennsylvania Avenue, had thought he was Clinton.
“I am wearing a navy suit, I’m tall, he’s tall, white hair, white hair, he’s a big guy.” Basso was then interviewed by the State Department. “It’s very scary to be caught up in this thing . . . They ask you the same question 10 times, all different.”
The furrier attended the gunman’s trial, where there was “a blow-up of me and a blow-up of the president at 300 yards . . . we really do look like the same person.”