The Asylum: A collage of couture reminiscences...and hysteria
“Ah! Fashion. A nuthouse? A refuge? Or maybe both,” muses Doonan in the introduction to this raucous and revelatory essay collection. “Yes, an asylum,” he goes on to explain, “in both senses of the word. A place where unemployable crazy people are always welcome.” Doonan, who designed window displays for Barneys New York before becoming the elegant retailer’s Creative Ambassador, knows the fashion world inside out. Here he opines on the trends (and tics) that make it tick, from an obsession with “raw” food diets to astonishingly dumb models (like the one who, when overhearing a conversation about Marie Antoinette, asked which agency she was with). Doonan especially enjoys dishing on fashion’s plethora of prickly personalities, from brilliant, dark-hearted designer Diana Vreeland (“Exaggeration is my only reality”) to infamous Vogue editor Anna Wintour, whose sinister behaviors are the basis for the Meryl Streep character in The Devil Wears Prada. Even readers whose fashion sense is more Gap than GQ will find keen insight and humor in Doonan’s cheeky take on what it means to be chic. --Allison Block