Simon Doonan

Model

Reading, GB

Simon Doonan is the famed creative director of Barneys New York, a fashion writer for the New York Observer, and a bestselling author. He first became internationally known in the 1970s for his outlandish window designs. Since then, he has enjoyed the spotlight as a style icon, fashion authority, and creator of controversy. Doonan got his start as a window dresser for the famed boutique, Nutters of Saville Row. The buzz he generated was enough to garner him a job offer from Maxfield in Los Angeles. There, Doonan continued with his off-the-wall displays- featuring women in coffins, coyotes stealing babies, and the occasional urinal-  while branching out into set design for film. In 1985, Doonan was summoned to New York City by Diana Vreeland to work on the famed "Costumes of Royal India" show at the Met Costume Institute. The following year, Doonan was hired as Creative Director of Barneys New York. Since then, he's created some of his most infamous window displays, including a yearly Christmastime extravaganza of celebrities in various states of degeneration; Margaret Thatcher as a dominatrix, Dan Quayle as a ventriloquist's dummy, Anne Heche and Ellen DeGeneres erupting from a  volcano. Recently, he decorated the Obama Whitehouse for Christmas- which included ornaments adorned with pictures of famed NYC transvestite, Hedda Lettuce. Since 1999, Doonan has been writing "Simon Says," his style and gossip column for the New York Observer. He is also the best-selling author of five (and counting) books, including Beautiful People, an autobiograpy of his wacky family upbringing, which is now a hit comedy television show on the BBC. He can also be seen frequenting various VH1 anthologies, quipping about culture and style.

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