An exciting addition to fashion history.
An exposé of the underrated designer who helped shape 20th-century European aesthetics.
In his debut work of nonfiction, Australian journalist Richardson explores the life of Tommy Nutter (1943-1992), the British designer who contributed greatly to the unique fashion sense of 1960s England. Mapping out Nutter’s life from beginning to end, the author capitalizes on the moments in his subject’s life that caused significant ripples in society. “His life vividly personalized forty years of critical gay history,” writes Richardson. “From the underground queer clubs of Soho to the unbridled freedom of New York bathhouses to the terrifying nightmare of AIDS—Tommy was there, both witness and participant.” It’s as if Nutter had his pulse on nearly every significant moment of the era. After enrolling at a technical college, Nutter quickly started identifying aesthetic deficiencies in culture; three years later he began working his first tailoring job. What followed was a series of interactions with some of the biggest names of the time: John Lennon and the rest of the Beatles, Yoko Ono, Elton John, David Hockney, Andy Warhol, and many others. His cuts were intricately detailed, progressively modern, and inclusive. Refreshingly, Richardson has created a work that is surprisingly unpretentious; the author looks at Nutter’s life with impressive objectivity, zeroing in on significant episodes and leaving the rest on the cutting-room floor. The author also gives close attention to Tommy’s relationship with his brother, David, providing plenty of room for the telling of both brothers’ lives and experiences. “David adored all this flagrant insolence,” writes Richardson. “While hardly a hippie himself, he appreciated anything that agitated for a more open-minded conversation by treating alternative lifestyles as legitimate sources of joy.” Such were the Nutter brothers: insatiably open to the world and its opportunities and able to systematically make a splash along their way.
An exciting addition to fashion history.Pub Date: May 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-451-49646-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Crown Archetype
Review Posted Online: Feb. 4, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
PROFILES
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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