Gods and Kings: The Rise and Fall of Alexander McQueen and John Galliano - Hardcover

Thomas, Dana

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1594204942 ISBN 13: 9781594204944

Publisher: Penguin Press, 2015

Synopsis

More than two decades ago, John Galliano and Alexander McQueen arrived on the fashions scene when the business was in an artistic and economic rut. Both wanted to revolutionize fashion in a way no one had in decades. They shook the establishment out of its bourgeois, minimalist stupor with daring, sexy designs. They turned out landmark collections in mesmerizing, theatrical shows that retailers and critics still gush about and designers continue to reference.

Their approach to fashion was wildly different—Galliano began as an illustrator, McQueen as a Savile Row tailor. Galliano led the way with his sensual bias-cut gowns and his voluptuous hourglass tailoring, which he presented in romantic storybook-like settings. McQueen, though nearly ten years younger than Galliano, was a brilliant technician and a visionary artist who brought a new reality to fashion, as well as an otherworldly beauty. For his first official collection at the tender age of twenty-three, McQueen did what few in fashion ever achieve: he invented a new silhouette, the Bumster.

They had similar backgrounds: sensitive, shy gay men raised in tough London neighborhoods, their love of fashion nurtured by their doting mothers. Both struggled to get their businesses off the ground, despite early critical success. But by 1997, each had landed a job as creative director for couture houses owned by French tycoon Bernard Arnault, chairman of LVMH.
 
Galliano’s and McQueen’s work for Dior and Givenchy and beyond not only influenced fashion; their distinct styles were also reflected across the media landscape. With their help, luxury fashion evolved from a clutch of small, family-owned businesses into a $280 billion-a-year global corporate industry. Executives pushed the designers to meet increasingly rapid deadlines. For both Galliano and McQueen, the pace was unsustainable. In 2010, McQueen took his own life three weeks before his womens' wear show.

The same week that Galliano was fired, Forbes named Arnault the fourth richest man in the world. Two months later, Kate Middleton wore a McQueen wedding gown, instantly making the house the world’s most famous fashion brand, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art opened a wildly successful McQueen retrospective, cosponsored by the corporate owners of the McQueen brand. The corporations had won and the artists had lost.

In her groundbreaking work Gods and Kings, acclaimed journalist Dana Thomas tells the true story of McQueen and Galliano. In so doing, she reveals the revolution in high fashion in the last two decades—and the price it demanded of the very ones who saved it.

About this title

Review:

An Amazon Best Book of the Month for February 2015: Gods and Kings is by no means the first book written about Alexander McQueen, John Galliano, and the fashion industry at a pivotal moment, but author Dana Thomas puts an original spin on the story of two icons of cutting-edge couture. Both rose from humble beginnings to worldwide acclaim, and Thomas gives readers a front row seat to each man’s dramatic rise and tragic undoing. McQueen and Galliano were visionaries and revolutionaries but ultimately their greatest passion also exacted the highest price--McQueen’s suicide in 2010 and Galliano’s alcohol abuse that cost him his career and reputation which he is still fighting to regain. High drama, high fashion, high stakes, and high tragedy-- Gods and Kings is a compulsive read. --Seira Wilson

About the Author:

Dana Thomas is the author of the New York Times bestseller Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster. She began her career writing for the “Style” section of The Washington Post, and for fifteen years she served as the European cultural and fashion correspondent for Newsweek in Paris. She is currently a contributing editor for T: The New York Times Style Magazine and has written for The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, and the Financial Times in London. She lives in Paris.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Press
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1594204942
• ISBN 13: 9781594204944
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 432