 First edition (US) | |
| Author | Dana Thomas |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Subject | Luxury goods, Fashion |
| Genre | Non-fiction |
| Published | 2015 (Penguin Press) |
| Media type | Print, e-book |
| Pages | 432 pages |
| ISBN | 1-594-204942 |
Gods and Kings: The Rise and Fall of Alexander McQueen and John Galliano is a 2015 book by Paris-based American journalist Dana Thomas. [1]
Gods and Kings: The Rise and Fall of Alexander McQueen and John Galliano is a double biography on the lives of two heralded British fashion designers, Alexander McQueen and John Galliano.
Critical reception for Gods and Kings has been positive. [2] [3] The New York Times wrote that "Ms. Thomas has produced a slightly seedy-feeling but, yes, addictive biography of two outsize personalities who seem less the gods or kings of her title than Captain Hook and Peter Pan." [4] In contrast, The Guardian heavily criticized the book for offering an uneven portrayal of McQueen and Galliano, stating that "to read her brass-tacks account, you’d get the impression that Galliano’s career has been fail after fail. She implicates the “gushing” fashion press in praising his work – we’re an easy bunch to disparage – yet she seems more or less blind to the meaning and emotion others may have felt at Galliano’s or McQueen’s shows." [5]
Lee Alexander McQueen was a British fashion designer and couturier. He founded his own Alexander McQueen label in 1992, and was chief designer at Givenchy from 1996 to 2001. His achievements in fashion earned him four British Designer of the Year awards, as well as the Council of Fashion Designers of America International Designer of the Year award in 2003. McQueen died by suicide in 2010 at the age of 40, at his home in Mayfair, London, shortly after the death of his mother.
John Charles Galliano,, is a British fashion designer born in Gibraltar. He was the creative director of his eponymous label John Galliano and French fashion houses Givenchy and Dior. Since 2014, Galliano has been the creative director of Paris-based fashion house Maison Margiela. Galliano has been named British Designer of the Year four times. In a 2004 poll for the BBC, he was named the fifth most influential person in British culture.
A crinoline is a stiff or structured petticoat designed to hold out a skirt, popular at various times since the mid-19th century. Originally, crinoline described a stiff fabric made of horsehair ("crin") and cotton or linen which was used to make underskirts and as a dress lining. The term crin or crinoline continues to be applied to a nylon stiffening tape used for interfacing and lining hemlines in the 21st century.
Dana Thomas is a fashion and culture journalist and author based in Paris. Her books include Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster, Gods and Kings: The Rise and Fall of Alexander McQueen and John Galliano and Fashionopolis: The Price of Fast Fashion and the Future of Clothes. She also wrote the script for Salvatore Ferragamo: The Shoemaker of Dreams, a feature-length documentary directed by award-winning Italian filmmaker Luca Guadagnino. It had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival on September 5, 2020. She hosts The Green Dream podcast on all things sustainable.
Gods and Kings may refer to:
AngloMania: Tradition and Transgression in British Fashion was an exhibition curated by Andrew Bolton at the Metropolitan Museum of Art that ran from May 3 to September 4, 2006. The exhibition featured fashion from throughout Europe in the eighteenth-century that was influenced directly by British attitudes, ideas, and trends. However, these were not accurate depictions of British fashion, but idealized depictions of "a nation's notorious vanity, a romance with itself, and the eccentric desire of English designers to re-establish the establishment." The exhibit is composed of nine "theatrical installations containing clothed mannequins and paintings" that contrasted historical and modern aspects of fashion.
It's a Jungle Out There is the tenth collection of the British fashion designer Alexander McQueen, and the first one released after his debut as the creative director of the French haute couture house Givenchy. The collection was presented at the Borough Market in February 1997 and it featured a total of 75 looks inspired by Thomson's gazelle. Fur, silk, leather and acid-washed denim were used for the confection of the garments; additionally, some of the pieces featured antlers and taxidermy crocodile heads, human hair and iron jewellery. Acclaimed by the press, this collection restated McQueen as one of the leading figures in fashion after his highly criticized debut with Givenchy. In 2011, several pieces were displayed in the exhibition dedicated to the designer's career, Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and, in 2015, at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
The Widows of Culloden is the twenty-eighth collection by British fashion designer Alexander McQueen, made for the Autumn/Winter 2006 season of his eponymous fashion house. It was inspired by his Scottish ancestry and is regarded as one of his most autobiographical collections. It is named for the widows of the Battle of Culloden (1746), often seen as a major conflict between Scotland and England. Widows makes extensive use of the McQueen family tartan and traditional gamekeeper's tweeds, as well as other elements taken from Highland dress. Historical elements reflected the fashion of the late Victorian era and the 1950s.
The Dance of the Twisted Bull is the nineteenth collection by British designer Alexander McQueen for his eponymous fashion house. Twisted Bull was inspired by Spanish culture and art, especially the traditional clothing worn for flamenco dancing and bullfighting. In McQueen's typical fashion, the collection included sharp tailoring and historicist elements and emphasised femininity and sexuality.
The Birds is the fifth collection by British designer Alexander McQueen for his eponymous fashion house. The Birds was inspired by ornithology, the study of birds, and the 1963 Alfred Hitchcock film The Birds, for which it was named. Typically for McQueen in the early stages of his career, the collection centred around sharply tailored garments and emphasised female sexuality. McQueen had no financial backing, so the collection was created on a minimal budget.
Neptune is the twenty-seventh collection by British designer Alexander McQueen for his eponymous fashion house. It took inspiration from classical Greek clothing, 1980s fashion, and the work of artists influential in that decade. The runway show was staged during Paris Fashion Week on 7 October 2005 at the industrial warehouse of the Imprimerie Nationale. Two main phases were presented, with 56 looks total: the first phase comprised monochrome black clothing, while the second featured a white, green, and gold palette. The collection's clothing and runway show both lacked McQueen's signature theatricality, and critical reception at launch and in retrospect was negative. Items from Neptune appeared in the 2022 exhibition Lee Alexander McQueen: Mind, Mythos, Muse.
Taxi Driver is the second collection by the British designer Alexander McQueen for his eponymous fashion house. It was named after the 1976 film Taxi Driver, and his father, a London taxicab driver. McQueen developed the collection following his 1992 graduation from Central Saint Martins art school. At the time he was unemployed and seeking a job in the fashion industry; although he was reluctant to launch his own company, he worked on designs to pass the time. The collection included experimental techniques and silhouettes, most notably the bumster trouser, whose extremely low waist exposed the top of the intergluteal cleft.
Irere was the twenty-first collection by British fashion designer Alexander McQueen for his eponymous fashion house. Irere was inspired by imagery from the Age of Discovery and from the people and animals of the Amazon rainforest. Its title is claimed to mean 'transformation' in an unspecified Indigenous Amazonian language. The collection comprised three distinct concepts presented as a narrative sequence: shipwrecked pirates, menacing conquistadors, and tropical birds. McQueen described the collection as an effort to present a more mature point of view and surprise viewers with bold colours.
The oyster dress is a high fashion gown created by British fashion designer Alexander McQueen for his Spring/Summer 2003 collection Irere. McQueen's design is a one-shouldered dress in bias-cut beige silk chiffon with a boned upper body and a full-length skirt consisting of hundreds of individual circles of organza sewn in dense layers to the base fabric, resembling an oyster shell. According to McQueen, the gown took a month's work for three people, who cut and assembled all the pieces individually. In addition to the original beige dress, a version with a red bodice and the ruffled skirt in rainbow colours was also created. The beige and red versions appeared in the Irere runway show, and were photographed for magazines to promote the collection.
Jack the Ripper Stalks His Victims is the first collection by British designer Alexander McQueen, produced as the thesis collection for his master's degree in fashion at Central Saint Martins (CSM) art school. The collection's narrative was inspired by the victims of 19th-century London serial killer Jack the Ripper, with aesthetic inspiration from the fashion, erotica, and prostitution practices of the Victorian era. The collection was presented on the runway at London Fashion Week on 16 March 1992, as the second-to-last of the CSM graduate collections. Editor Isabella Blow was fascinated by the runway show and insisted on purchasing the entire collection, later becoming McQueen's friend and muse.
The Rise and Fall of is an English snowclone popularly used in titles of works. Examples of its usage include:
The Hunger is the seventh collection by British designer Alexander McQueen for his eponymous fashion house. The collection was primarily inspired by The Hunger, a 1983 erotic horror film about vampires. McQueen had limited financial backing, so the collection was created on a minimal budget. Typically for McQueen in the early stages of his career, the collection centred around sharply tailored garments and emphasised female sexuality. It was his first collection to include menswear.
Pantheon ad Lucem is the twenty-fourth collection by British designer Alexander McQueen for his eponymous fashion house. It was inspired by Ancient Greek garments and science fiction films including 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and Star Wars (1977). The collection focused on sleek draped, wrapped, or tied jersey designs in light and neutral colours, with some eveningwear in darker colours. Contrasting the slimline items were heavier garments including tweed suits and fur coats. McQueen expressed his fascination with altering the silhouette, emphasising the hips to a degree that was uncommon for him.
The Girl Who Lived in the Tree is the thirty-second collection by British fashion designer Alexander McQueen, made for the Autumn/Winter 2008 season of his eponymous fashion house. The primary inspirations were British culture and national symbols, particularly the British monarchy, as well as the clothing of India during the British Raj. The collection was presented as a fairy tale about a feral girl who lived in a tree before falling in love with a prince and descending to earth to become a princess, and the runway show was divided into two phases to represent this narrative. In the first phase, the ensembles were all in black and white, with most looks having a slim, tailored silhouette. The clothing from the second half was richly coloured, with luxurious materials and embellishments, representing the girl's transformation into a princess.