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FALLEN FASHION GODS BY ERICA MOODY
Veteran journalist and former Washington Post style reporter Dana Thomas has penned a biography chronicling the lives and careers of two legendary couturiers. “Gods and Kings: The Rise and Fall of Alexander McQueen and John Galliano” posits that the changing climate of an increasingly corporate high fashion industry led to the tragic downfall of both designers. >>
to me. I understood everything, including his suicide. WL: How did that make you understand
his suicide? DT Because he didn’t like taking pills. He didn’t like doing the regime. HIV is a very manageable disease but you have to manage it, and he could barely manage himself. I think that deep down inside he saw it as a terminal disease. He once said to a friend, “Gays don’t do old well.” And looking back at him, you could never imagine him as an old man.
WASHINGTON LIFE: How did the idea for
this book emerge? DANA THOMAS When Galliano imploded, I wrote a piece about him for the Washington Post and [included] a paragraph about other designers’ crack-ups in recent years, most notably McQueen’s, and I thought, there’s something bigger here. This isn’t just about one guy mixing pills and booze and getting sloppy at a café. There’s something more going on. And I came up with this theory, this argument that they were victims of the war between art and commerce that had been going on in the age of globalization. Commerce had needed art to get to where it was going but sucked it dry along the way and left the artists f lailing, overworked and depressed. WL: What do you think needs to change
DA NA T H O M AS P H OTO BY FE L I P M OT WA RY B O O K I MAG E CO URT E SY P E N GU I N P R E S S
in the fashion industry? DT The business model needs to be reinvented somehow. The shows now last 12 minutes. In the old days they lasted two hours. It was an event. These days, nobody’s even taking in what they’re seeing. They’re just Instagramming it and moving on. And nobody is writing proper commentary on fashion anymore, except for Robin Givhan, Vanessa Friedman and Booth Moore. WL: What surprised you the most when writing this book?
WA S H I N G T O N L I F E
Dana Thomas
DT How hands on both
designers were in the beginning, and how hands off they became at the end. I also didn’t realize the degree of paranoia that McQueen was suffering because of his drug issues. WL: There is so much research that went
into “Gods and Kings.” How long did it take you to write? DT I thought it would take a year, but it took four. To really understand them, I really had to know them. And there was a moment, with both of them, when I reached a point where I thought I might know them better than they know themselves, because I’m actually taking the time and ref lecting about who they are. Then I realized that’s what biographers do. It was like a light went off. With McQueen, this moment was when I discovered he was HIV positive. It took two years of reporting before someone told me. And then within two hours I had the whole story. Suddenly, the last ten years of his career became so clear
| M A R C H | washingtonlife.com
WL: You write about similarities in the fates of both designers, but what do you think their differences are? DT John Galliano was all about beauty. McQueen had a far deeper thing going on. His shows were part of a bigger statement. McQueen was an extremely democratic designer. He wanted to reach as many people as possible. I’m surprised he never did a collaboration collection with Target or H&M. He was from the working class and proud of it. Galliano, on the other hand, was all about exclusivity. WL: Did Galliano and McQueen ever know each other? DT Not really. Galliano went through life with blinders on, just racing ahead. McQueen was always chasing Galliano. There came a point when McQueen passed Galliano, creatively and technically, and Galliano acknowledged it to a mutual friend. He said, “I think he’s passed me by.” McQueen is like the talented little brother who got overlooked and then suddenly came into his own.
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