Simon Doonan
Beautiful People
This paperback issue of Simon Doonan’s hilarious memoirs was first published in 2005 as Nasty – My Family and Other Glamorous Varmints. This was a) a reference to Gerald Durrell’s classic My Family and Other Animals; b) affectionately insulting towards Doonan’s own family; and c) potentially confusing – what are varmints? (ANS: vermin, and not, as I thought, an archaic form of ‘valiant’).
The original title isn’t
lasting the pace. It has now been rebranded as Beautiful People, which
is less original, almost generic in fact, but more accurate. It
suggests that the book is wry, knowing, camp and jolly and it is, in
fact, wry, knowing, camp and jolly.
I’ve read reviews suggesting that Doonan had a nasty childhood. Since
he had an admittedly tough but basically wonderful, rip-roaring,
working-class 1950s childhood where everything, including his
grandmother’s schizophrenia and their lodger’s blindness, was
hilarious, this proves that a) some critics don’t read the book and b)
a title is very important in setting the tone! (Especially for lazy
readers.)
So this is a memoir about little Simon’s obsessive search for the
‘Beautiful People,’ a grail search undertaken by gay working-class
boys, then and now. At the end of the book he charitably writes – in
Dorothy’s words – that the Beautiful People were “no further than my
own back yard.” But since he lives in New York and has a very fab
lifestyle, I don’t think he means it.
Doonan first became famous for his window-dressing at Barneys in New
York, and he’s still the store’s creative designer (ie window-dresser).
He looks like an upbeat NYC version of Joel McCrea’s impresario in
Cabaret, but he writes like Noel Coward. All society, froth, wit and
biting lines. His column for the New York Observer is called, very
predictably, ‘Simon Says.’
One of the things Simon Says is that
handbags today resemble “metallic elephant scrotums.” So you see, he is
a very intelligent and a very witty man. All this wit and intelligence
is displayed in the book, which you should read ahead of the BBC Two
series this autumn.
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