Bloch returned to Xenon because he wanted to hang out with the cool crowd that populated its dancefloor, including Brooke Shields and Mariel Hemingway.

Xenon was also a favorite hang-out of the Kennedy children, including John F Kennedy Jr and Robert Kennedy’s children, among them RFK Jr.

According to a 1989 New York Magazine profile of JFK Jr, owners Stein and Vanini were considered ‘disco daddies’ by the young members of the Kennedy clan.

Vanini treated them like kings when they came to his Times Square club, considering them ‘the closest thing to royals in America’.

Bloch said: 'I needed a job so Peppo gave me one at the club. He kept coming on to me but he was doing this with all these other guys - I was one of a long list. Some guys that I've met along the way had similar experiences with him.'

Bloch says the rape shaped the direction of his life over the following decade.

He developed a tough exterior and focused on being the 'cool party boy' with an insatiable appetite for alcohol and drugs.

'After that experience with Peppo, a switch got flipped,' Bloch said.

He would head to the East Village to buy drugs with his close friend Gia Carangi, a model in the early Eighties who passed away in 1986 from AIDS complications.

'Gia had famous Vogue and Cosmo covers out at the same time,' the stylist recalled. 'We were leaving in a car service and there were gunshots.

'I looked through a crack in the window as we sped past a bodega and the magazines were there. I thought this was so cool.

'This life was so crazy and I thought it was how it was supposed to be. I was hanging out with Janice Dickinson, having lunch with Bianca Jagger.'

Bloch then took a job as a busboy at Studio 54. He worked alongside fellow teenager, and now world-renowned photographer, David LaChapelle.

The Broadway nightclub attracted the great and good of Hollywood and rock and roll royalty from Mick Jagger and David Bowie to Elizabeth Taylor and Andy Warhol.

'Steve Rubell [Studio 54's owner] was my boss. I got up in the afternoon, got a slice of pizza and went to the club,' Bloch said.

'In the early 80s, a rock and roll vibe became popular – the models Gia and Leslie Winer and David and I had that look.

'My job was to put on skimpy shorts - never skimpy enough for Steve - but he understood that there was an attraction to certain people. He hired you based on your looks and your sexuality.

'I would get there at 10pm, take off my clothes and basically get sexually molested by famous people and plied with liquor, drugs and wild times until 6am.

'Every celebrity in the world came in there, everyone that I had ever seen from my little TV on Long Island. Truman Capote would always put his hands on the bar and rub up against you.

'I've seen everything in that Studio 54 basement – I can't remember most of it but it was things that 19-year-olds should not see. I wasn't ready for it. The things I've seen in Studio 54 – 99 per cent of the population have never seen.'

Bloch was discovered during his days at Studio 54 and started modelling, eventually ending up in Paris in the shows of a young John Galliano and John Paul Gaultier. But the fashion world came with its own array of pitfalls.

Bloch said: 'I was at an agency in Paris when I was booked for a fitting by a man called Cyril at Yves Saint Laurent. It was YSL – it was a big deal.

'Cyril was old and had this tobacco-stained, handlebar moustache. I got there at lunchtime and Cyril had me put on underwear. Then he fidgeted with my butt and d***. He fiddled and touched in a way that was unnecessary.

'I wasn't the "body boy" – so who was hiring me to put on underwear? I was the model in leather jacket and jeans with a cigarette hanging out of my mouth.

'But I had become tougher. I saw a packet of cigarettes on his desk, took one and sat down on the couch in the underwear. My modus operandi was let's hang out – so I don't have to f*** with you.

After the supposed fitting, Bloch returned to his agency and shared what happened.