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The Asylum: A collage of couture reminiscences...and hysteria
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The Asylum: A collage of couture reminiscences...and hysteria Hardcover - 2013

by Add Doonan, Simon

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  • Title The Asylum: A collage of couture reminiscences...and hysteria
  • Author Add Doonan, Simon
  • Binding Hardcover
  • Condition New
  • Pages 288
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher Blue Rider Press, New York
  • Date 2013-09-03
  • Bookseller's Inventory # 4JSHAO004CR3
  • ISBN 9780399161896 / 0399161899
  • Weight 0.9 lbs (0.41 kg)
  • Dimensions 8.3 x 5.8 x 1.3 in (21.08 x 14.73 x 3.30 cm)
  • Ages 18 to UP years
  • Grade levels 13 - UP
  • Library of Congress subjects Clothing and dress, Fashion
  • Library of Congress Catalog Number 2013015426
  • Dewey Decimal Code 746.920

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Summary

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.

From the publisher

Simon Doonan is the creative ambassador for Barneys New York and the author of several books, including Gay Men Don’t Get Fat, Wacky Chicks, and Beautiful People (published in the U.S. as Nasty), which became a BBC TV series. Originally from England, he worked on Savile Row, at Maxfield in Los Angeles, and with Diana Vreeland at The Costume Institute of The Metropolitan Museum of Art before becoming the creative director of Barneys New York, where he designed legendary window displays for more than twenty years. In 2009, he designed the holiday decorations for the Obama’s first White House Christmas. Formerly a columnist for The New York Observer, he is now a contributor to Slate.com, and has appeared on Gossip Girl, Iron Chef America, America’s Next Top Model, and elsewhere. Doonan lives in New York with his husband, Jonathan Adler.

Categories

Excerpt

Author's Note

Ah! Fashion.

A nuthouse? A refuge? Or maybe both. Yes, an asylum in both senses of the word. A place where unemployable crazy people are always welcome.

Every seasoned fashion personage has his or her favorite stories of folly, aberration, derangement, kookiness and excess.

These are mine.

In most instances real names are used. I have tweaked the identities of certain individuals to protect their innocence and cherish their fabulosity.

Have I embroidered or embellished? Let me answer that question by quoting Diana Vreeland: “Exaggeration is my only reality.”

—S. D.

Media reviews

“Simon Doonan's hysterical first row, firsthand observations are a must-read for fashionistas and non-fashionsitas alike.”
—Michael Kors  
 
“The fashion world is—in a word—hysterical! Simon Doonan is the one man who sees it and tells it like it (absurdly) is.”
—Marc Jacobs
 
“Simon Doonan is the Bon Qui Qui of Fashion—stirring things up and reminding us to keep a sense of humor.”
—Alexander Wang 
 
“In The Asylum, Simon Doonan's comedic genius explodes out of highbrow shoe boxes.”
—Leandra Medine, author, and blogger of The Man Repeller

“[A] raucous and revelatory essay collection....[Doonan] knows the fashion world inside out....Even readers whose fashion sense is more Gap than GQ will find keen insight and humor in Doonan’s cheeky take on what it means to be chic.”
—Booklist

“The funniest fashion book of all time.”—Lucky Magazine

“These snappy essays find Doonan surprisingly more sincere and charming than ever… A gossipy, voyeuristic and reliably campy romp down the catwalks of the fashion asylum.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Simon Doonan, the creative ambassador for Barney's and Slate columnist, is one of culture writing's funniest voices.”—The New Republic

“Simon Doonan is a legend in the fashion world. Wickedly funny, wildly creative...has an insider's view of global style and its peculiar inhabitants....Indeed, those loony, creative types are what have kept Doonan interested for the decades he's been in the fashion business. And what makes his book so entertaining for the rest of us.”—Suzanne S. Brown, The Denver Post

 

About the author

Simon Doonan is the creative ambassador for Barneys New York and the author of several books, including Gay Men Don t Get Fat, Wacky Chicks, and Beautiful People (published in the U.S. as Nasty), which became a BBC TV series. Originally from England, he worked on Savile Row, at Maxfield in Los Angeles, and with Diana Vreeland at The Costume Institute of The Metropolitan Museum of Art before becoming the creative director of Barneys New York, where he designed legendary window displays for more than twenty years. In 2009, he designed the holiday decorations for the Obama s first White House Christmas. Formerly a columnist for The New York Observer, he is now a contributor to Slate.com, and has appeared on Gossip Girl, Iron Chef America, America s Next Top Model, and elsewhere. Doonan lives in New York with his husband, Jonathan Adler."

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