Word: doonan
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First of all, there is an Absolut Doonan. It is a bouteille collective of grotesque mannequins, in homage to Barney's New York's celebrity window dresser. Point is, he's made it. He's an Absolut ad. Next of all, there is an Doonan Absolut. It is a window display staging the making of vodka by scantily-clad mannequins in a gleaming factory cell. Point is, Absolut's made it. It's in a Doonan window. Everybody's happy, fame stacks on fame, cash registers go manic, and my heart is racing-take me to this high-speed, brite...
...like this. There might be your requisite trendoids, your sprinkle of window dresser aspirants, your misguided cultural studies concentrator who wants to derive a thesis on window displays, but the real readers-and lovers-of this book will be your drab, gray non-aesthete nobodies of life. For them, Doonan, with the aid of 200 full color illustrations and a glossary of exotic terms like "whomp" and "nelly," whips up in print the sort of kinky, macabre fairealism which has made his name in Madison Avenue windows. It is a big-money, high-luxury alternate reality stripped of those issues...
Born in 1952 in Reading, England, Simon Doonan began trimming windows on London's Savile Row. Really, Doonan began by hanging out with lunatic relations and dressing up like the queen. This set the stage for his mod-chic and poofy youth, during which period he had time and opportunity to establish his signature punkcore and camp aesthetic. It was clear he would never sell insurance. Although, give him a window, some marabou and froufrou, and he could probably sell it by the box. Give him stuffed cats, trash cans, smashed televisions, 15,000 Q-tips, and he could become...
Leaping the Atlantic in the '70s, Doonan ventured into the continent that was to prove his postmodern paradise. There was a stint doing the storefronts of avant-garde Maxfield in L.A. and a collaboration with the legendary Diana Vreeland at the Costume Institute of the Met. Then in 1986, his notoriety well-established, Doonan was snatched by Barney's New York, where he has graduated from window dresser to creative director. His justification for being is in creating windows which inhabit the realm somewhere "beyond the valley of gorgeousity...
...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...