{"id":357,"date":"2016-03-13T16:26:00","date_gmt":"2016-03-13T16:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinnamonstudio.com\/blog\/2016\/03\/13\/gods-and-kings-mcqueen-and-galliano-2\/"},"modified":"2016-03-13T16:26:00","modified_gmt":"2016-03-13T16:26:00","slug":"gods-and-kings-mcqueen-and-galliano-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cinnamonstudio.com\/blog\/2016\/03\/gods-and-kings-mcqueen-and-galliano-2.html","title":{"rendered":"Gods and Kings – McQueen and Galliano"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\nGalliano and McQueen<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\nThis is one of the best biographies I have read in a long
\nwhile.  The story of two young British
\ndesigners who rose from humble beginnings to become major forces in the
\nrevolution of fashion in the last decades of the 20thC is told by fashion
\nwriter, Dana Thomas.<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\n
<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Gods and Kings – The Rise and Fall of Alexander McQueen and John Galliano,
 Dana Thomas,
 Penhguin Press, New York, 2015<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\nThe major fashion houses, Dior, YSL, Givenchy were
\nrelatively small, privately- owned couture operations. The changing dynamics of
\nmass marketing and branding resulted in the inevitable entrance of the \u201cmen of
\nhigh finance\u201d.  These entrepreneurs  were money men, not fashion men.  By combining small fashion houses under  one umbrella, their power proved to be
\ninsurmountable.   They retained the
\nfamous labels, moved into the ready-to-wear markets and encouraged designers to
\nretain their brand names, not only on clothing but branching into accessories
\nand cosmetics.<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\nThis is the story of the transformation of couture into mass
\nproduced, affordable fashions.  The
\njourney takes the reader into the culture of the period, from the seedy gay
\nbars to the fashion runways.  Travelers
\nin this journey included the rich and famous, the shakers and movers, and the
\nup-and-coming celebrities such as Boy George and Madonna.<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\nThe meteoric rise the these young designers, who were only a
\nfew years off the dole, was so astonishing that they were referred to as the
\n\u201cKings \u201d.  Reveling in their fame, they
\ncould not imagine their catastrophic demise at the hands of the \u201cGods\u201d, the men
\nof power and finance.  As Thomas notes,
\ntheir problem was recreating fantastic, complicated designs, which would be
\nable to be manufactured on a large scale. 
\nThey believed in their own \u201cmyth\u201d.  <\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\nAlso by Dana Thomas: Deluxe: How Luxury Lost  Its Lusture<\/u><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Galliano and McQueen This is one of the best biographies I have read in a long while.  The story of two young British designers who rose from humble beginnings to become major forces in the revolution of fashion in the last decades of the 20thC is told by fashion writer, Dana Thomas. Gods and Kings…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cinnamonstudio.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cinnamonstudio.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cinnamonstudio.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cinnamonstudio.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cinnamonstudio.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cinnamonstudio.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cinnamonstudio.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cinnamonstudio.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cinnamonstudio.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}