Word: doonan
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...fashion: comfortable yet tasteless. But with the flippy new styles sported at Wimbledon last week by the physically gifted (Anna Kournikova, center), the athletically gifted (Serena Williams, left) and virtual unknowns (Asa Svensson) alike, the skirt-shorts combo may be back. "I think it's cute," says Simon Doonan, creative director of Barneys and a noted style sultan. "I could see Carrie Bradshaw wearing one in Sex and the City with a pair of Blahniks." Kournikova's Adidas skort is already in stores ($45). Be warned, though: the new styles are low-slung with a very short skirt covering slightly...
...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...