Champagne Supernovas

August 18, 2014
Like the life of a partier, this book from Callahan (Poker Face: The Rise and Rise of Lady Gaga) starts out terrifically exciting and fun but then turns repetitive and ultimately depressing. True, Kate Moss is a cool girl with a great look, and Marc Jacobs is a cool guy with a great eye. And while no one would ever accuse Lee Alexander McQueen of being cool—“He was self-conscious about his weight. He hated his face, and for the first few years of his career would only be photographed with his head wrapped in cling film or gaffer’s tape”—he was brilliant, at first. But then he too gets boring, repetitive, and very, very depressed. Ultimately, these three (along with Miuccia Prada and Consuelo Castiglioni, and others) do change the look of pop culture, from the glamazon to the waif, from hair metal to grunge, from Versace to Versus. In the meantime, they all consume loads of coke, heroin, and sex. Perhaps it’s a testament to Kate Moss’s ineffable style, but her chapters are the strongest, while Jacobs’s battles with fashion’s corporate overseers are the least interesting. The sections on the self-destructive McQueen simply feel ominous. Still, this book works as a fun, if cautionary, read about some of the folks who changed fashion in the 1990s. Readers will wonder when a similar trio will arrive to save us all from the Kardashians.

August 1, 2014

Callahan (Poker Face) surfs the wave of Nineties nostalgia with this dishy account of the backgrounds and careers of three of that decade's most influential fashion personalities--Alexander McQueen, Kate Moss, and Marc Jacobs--as well as the people who supported and worked alongside them: Isabella Blow, Corinne Day, and Kim Gordon, among others. The author covers the rise of heroin chic and the popular backlash against it, as well as the principals' own struggles with drugs and alcohol, risky sexual behavior, and mental illness. McQueen's tale is particularly tragic; he committed suicide in 2010. All is not darkness, however; Callahan spends plenty of time discussing capital-F Fashion--the designers' inspirations, their well-known collections and runway shows, behind-the-scenes looks at modeling and running a fashion business, and the celebrities and It Girls who gravitated to McQueen's and Jacobs's work. The book might be a little intense for casual lovers of fashion who may wonder if it's even possible to make clothing without indulging in frequent orgies. But readers with a serious interest in creative work and the toll it takes on those who practice it will be fascinated. VERDICT Recommended for all public libraries and for academic libraries where there are fashion or pop culture programs.--Stephanie Klose, Library Journal

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2014
In her examination of fashion as social science and food for thought, journalist Callahan looks at the world of fashion in the 1990s via three (the three, according to her) iconoclastic personae of the decade: unconventional, mold-breaking supermodel Kate Moss; precocious, sly, and (then) frequently struggling renegade designer Marc Jacobs; and, perhaps most enigmatic of the lot, the late brilliant and troubled Alexander McQueen, who embraced a rebellious, often controversial image. Callahan rotates chapters among these three icons, charting their at-times-dazzling trajectories and placing them contextually, sympathetically in a scene often cutthroat and heartless, ridiculous in its excesses, and, quite often, to some, all the more alluring for them. With evocative imagery and glamorous name-droppingperhaps inevitable, in this arenaCallahan reveals a pre-Internet, frequently drug- and drink-fueled '90s fashion industry, the era responsible for heroin chic, grunge, and so many other trends, via her three conduits. As a creative chronology with insider-feel appeal, this book is candy for fashion and pop-culture devotees.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)