The buzz created by the hardcover of this engaging, tart, saucy, and very frank memoir (Liz Smith) ran from a first serial in W to an Absolut Doonan ad to Hollywood film rights. For twenty years Simon Doonan, the creator of the hottest window displays in the world at Barney's New York, has collaborated with the biggest names in fashion and the most notorious names in art. Whether he's making fun of blondes, sending up Sigmund Freud, or creating caricatures of celebrities, his work has been fearless and entertaining kitsch. Confessions of a Window Dresser illustrates his work in glorious full-color photographs and wickedly witty commentary on the trends and people of the fashion and entertainment world. Here's a dazzling gift of glamour, laughter, and fashion history.
After nearly a lifetime spent in the Industry, author and fashion insider Simon Doonan is ready to let you in on a little secret: his peers in this multibillion-dollar industry are just as nutty as the denizens of your local loony bin. In The Asylum, an unabashedly hilarious collection of autobiographical essays, Doonan, the creative ambassador for Barneys New York, tells the real-life stories of glamorous madness and stylish insanity. Doonan has witnessed models unable to work for fear of ghosts, gone deep-sea fishing with a couturier pal and his jailbird companion, and watched Anna Wintour remain perfectly calm while the ceiling fell—literally—in the middle of Fashion Week. Once you start looking, he says, you’ll notice telltale signs of lunacy everywhere. Style insiders see patterns and trends in everything; they suffer from outsize personality disorders and delusions of grandeur; and of course, they have a predilection for theatrical makeup and artfully destroyed clothing. No one is more suited to the asylum than the truly die-hard fashionista—after all, eccentricity and extremism are the foundations of great style. With his gimlet eye for the absurd and a love for eccentricity, Doonan’s personal and professional stories never fail to entertain. “The David Sedaris of the style universe” (The Boston Globe) gives us the scoop on the kooky, cutthroat—but always fabulous—fashion world, and proves himself one of the sharpest humorists writing today.
An intimate look at America's child beauty pagaents. The vibrant portraits of these young contestants twist notions of sexuality and identity, exposing a new perspective on a uniquely American subculture. High Glitz is a subgenre of pagaents characterised by couture costumes,glamour make-up, elaborate hair styles and even dental veneers. The girls are spray-tanned, made-up and groomed to glossy perfection. Anderson captures the results of this time-consuming and often unnerving endeavour in exquisite detail.
Glamorous eccentrics are irresistible people. They are irreverent, occasionally impertinent, a tad mysterious, charming, often self-invented, good at applying eyeliner, and above all nonconformist. They are a fabulous confection of style, self-empowerment, and black patent sling backs. Everyone wants to be one, but how? Ubiquitous style guru Simon Doonan has the answer. By no means a typical how-to manual, Eccentric Glamour is a mixture of cultural commentary and personal disclosure, generously seasoned with gushings of wildly dictatorial, provocative, and reckless style advice. Through cautionary tales and inspirational examples, Doonan shows how to develop your own brand of eccentric glamour -- by magnifying everything that is already unique and idiosyncratic about you. In these comic essays, interspersed with one-on-one interviews with some of the world's most glamorous eccentrics (including Iman, Lucy Liu, Tilda Swinton, Malcolm Gladwell, and many more), Simon Doonan offers the women of America an alternative to the cheapness and tackiness that currently pass for personal style. Eccentric Glamour is intended as an antidote to the epidemic of slutty dressing and porno-chic that has taken over since the arrival of Paris Hilton and Anna Nicole Smith (may she rest in peace). While the typical TV boobs 'n' Botox makeovers force every woman to look the same, the transformations this book strives to inspire are the very opposite. Dressing like a ho is not just bad taste but boring! In Simon Doonan's book, conformity is the only crime and dressing down the only faux pas. Eccentric Glamour is every woman's birthright. SO SAY NO TO HO!...and yes to ECCENTRIC GLAMOUR!
A wickedly funny memoir with echoes of David Sedaris and Augusten Burroughs, Beautiful People (originally published in hardcover as Nasty) is now a BBC comedy hit series from the producer of Ab Fab and The Office. Proclaimed "the most brilliant, brash thing in type" by Liz Smith, Simon Doonan's saucy prose has established him as an emerging star among literary humorists. In this break-through memoir, reminiscent of both Sedaris and Burroughs, he revisits the landscape of his youth, and displays the irresistible charm that earned him his dedicated audience. Long before he became a celebrity in his own right--as the author of best-selling books, as the style arbiter of VH1 and America's Top Model, and the marketing genius behind Barney's New York--Simon Doonan was a "scabby knee'd troll" in Reading, England. In Beautiful People, Doonan returns to the working-class neighborhood of his youth, and chronicles the misadventures of the Doonan clan in all their wacky glory. Readers meet his mother Betty, whose gravity-defying, peroxide hairdo signified her natural glamour; his father Terry, an amateur vintner who turned parsnips into the legendary Chateau Doonan; his grandfather D.C., a hard-drinking betting man who plotted to win his fortune by turning Simon into a jockey; and his demented grandma Narg and schizophrenic Uncle Ken, both of whom lived upstairs. Fearing he would fall victim to the insanity that runs in his family, or, worse, the banality of suburban life, Doonan decamps with his flamboyant best-friend Biddie to London, where they hope to find the Beautiful People, that elusive clan who luxuriate on floor pillows and amuse each other with bon mots. Throughout the memoir--in essays about family holidays, the tart who lived next door, his first job--Doonan continues his bumbling pursuit of the fabulous life, only to learn, in the end, that perhaps the Beautiful People were the ones he left behind.
Upcycle Your Secondhand Bargains into Stunning Statement Pieces Full of inspiring ideas for seasoned refurbishers and the know-how to get anyone started, Amazing Furniture Makeovers helps you give your antique pieces new life without losing any of their vintage charm. Jen Crider, founder of Girl in the Garage, breaks down everything you need to know about furniture makeovers—from basic chair reupholstery to remaking coffee tables into benches. There won’t be an article of furniture you can’t make more beautiful, functional, and personal. This book makes it easy to transform whatever old or wobbly furniture you have into something better than new. Each chapter walks you through unique projects to illustrate Jen’s straightforward approach to furniture styling and repair, and these techniques can be used on a variety of pieces. Learn to decoupage a bookcase with maps for a classy look. Transfer original images onto large-scale furniture for a style all your own. Dress up an end table with a distressed paint job to add farmhouse flair to any room. Every new technique will give you the confidence you need to get remarkable results on your first makeover—and every makeover after.
Whenever you hear the prevalent wailing blues harmonica in commercials, film soundtracks or at a blues club, you are experiencing the legacy of the master harmonica player, Little Walter. Immensely popular in his lifetime, Little Walter had fourteen Top 10 hits on the R&B charts, and he was also the first Chicago blues musician to play at the Apollo. Ray Charles and B.B. King, great blues artists in their own right, were honored to sit in with his band. However, at the age of 37, he lay in a pauper's grave in Chicago. This book will tell the story of a man whose music, life and struggles continue to resonate to this day.
Author Simon Doonan has two passions in life: Fashion and Football. At one time these two obsessions would have made very strange bedfellows. But times have changed: football and fashion have fallen in love. The unapologetic and unbridled style choices of today's soccer stars offer a fascinating window into the heart of the game. Looking at the beautiful game through the lens of style, Doonan entertainingly explores the magic and madness of this unique culture. Charting football style from its very beginnings, he pays homage to the great style icons of the game, from George Best to David Beckham, before turning his gaze to the hair, the tattoos and the cars, not to mention those other style icons of the game: the fans, the managers and, of course, the WAGs. A laugh-out-loud read for even the most fickle football fan or fashionista.
