Wilson ably and unsparingly portrays the heady, competitive, solipsistic world that celebrated, and ultimately doomed,...
The astonishing creations and tormented life of British fashion designer Alexander McQueen (1969-2010).
During his 18-year career, McQueen rose to the pinnacle of international couture, mounting shows that were notably surreal, shocking, and outrageous. Journalist Wilson (Mad Girl’s Love Song: Sylvia Plath and Life Before Ted, 2013, etc.), draws on interviews with the designer’s friends, family, lovers, and co-workers, as well as published sources, to produce a richly detailed life of a man hailed as a genius whose suicide shocked the fashion world. Sexually abused as a child and bullied by classmates because he was gay, McQueen came to the fashion industry defiant and rebellious. After serving as an apprentice to Savile Row tailors, he enrolled at the respected Central Saint Martins art school, culminating his degree with a collection called “Jack the Ripper Stalks His Victims.” Wealthy fashionista Isabella Blow was in the audience, mesmerized by McQueen’s audacity. A black coat with blood-red lining containing human hair seemed to her “the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.” She became a champion and patron of a man who determinedly honed his image as a misfit. Wearing low-slung jeans and old lumberjack shirts, he was, as Plum Sykes said, “smelly and sweaty and grubby,” and—until he underwent gastric band surgery—overweight. Insecure, emotionally fragile, and yearning for romance, he failed to sustain relationships; one man after another left him, overwhelmed by his jealousy, paranoia, and need to control. Drugs and alcohol became his defense against loneliness and stress, and his cocaine addiction intensified after he became creative director at Givenchy, contracted to produce six shows yearly. Each, one boyfriend noted, could not be just “a normal catwalk show, it had to be amazing.” The author details not only the designer’s “stunningly beautiful and deeply unsettling” fashions, but also what McQueen and everyone else wore on every occasion.
Wilson ably and unsparingly portrays the heady, competitive, solipsistic world that celebrated, and ultimately doomed, McQueen.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4767-7673-6
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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