Word: doonan
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Doonan comes across at the start as being tastelessly self-important. Dig: "What kind of neurotic, exhibitionist psychopathology made me choose a career cavorting around arranging merchandise and props in full view of the rest of humanity?" You enter the book with a decided intention to dislike him. But give yourself about five pages, and you will be more than won over, you will want to intern for him-for free. In an atmosphere rife with political correctness, Doonan never veers from the unapologetic identity of, as he puts it confidently, "a pansy." The difficulty of being...
...flippant glibness. Under his literate, articulate mode of referential expression, there is genuine heart for goodness and sincere adulation for genius. Even though he describes his work as camp/kitsch/pastiche-and yes, it looks it, when it does not look like the apocalypse-there is much that is life-affirming about Doonan which denies the emotional death of kitsch...
...enough of this pseudo-intellectualism. That's just the sort of trap which Doonan side-steps. His writing is anecdotal and utterly charming, and the occasional simile-that-tried only adds to the authenticity of the book. Doonan name-drops like a crazed jetbomber, but you have to realize that these people are really his friends. If Doonan makes much of himself, it is only because everyone else in the world has and is qualified by the fact that he is also ever-ready to be self-critical. Today, after 25 years, millions of fashion windows, messy windows, live windows...
...Doonan is with Barney's still and couldn't kiss enough ass, but the "inordinate amount of complimentary text," he leads us to believe, is more a function of the "fabulousness" of Barney's on every scale than his need to stay on the payroll. In an aside, Doonan alerts us to the impending effusive text, and writes, "This disclaimer... is designed to forewarn critics and urbane sophisticates who are not used to people saying nice things." Before you can even say anything smartass, you snap your jaws shut in shame...
...just a window dresser's manual; we come away with wonderful wisdoms for living today's life rightly. Ultimately, this is a book of the lives of people who dare and try and do. From Barney Pressman to Rei Kawabuko (of Comme Des Garcons) to his own grandmother, Doonan barrels through a life of extraordinary somebodies, from whom he rubs off a heady, giddy, and invincible euphoria which is both playfully irreverent as well as healthily capitalistic...