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Written as a kind of fashion manifesto — a call to quirkiness, if you will — it's a 200-plus-page romp, chock-full of interviews with glamorous eccentrics such as Tilda Swinton and Isabel Toledo, who help him dole out advice on rethinking a wardrobe, learning to express the inner you and embracing the fact that the world doesn't always approve.
Which is really what Doonan is all about. When he was growing up in Reading, England, his schizophrenic grandmother moved in with him and his parents following a lobotomy. Then came his uncle, Ken, who was afflicted with the same disorder. Doonan and his sister, Shelagh, called their grandmother "Narg" (Gran spelled backwards), a fitting metaphor for the upside down, topsy-turvy way young Simon came to see the world. "Freaky" and "demented," became "fabulous" and "original." "Simple" and "understated," became "dull as a Dead Sea Scroll."
After fifth grade, Doonan failed his 11-plus, a standardized test in England that determined where you went to school. "It was an exam which decided whether you're going to get a first-class ticket in life or a job in the factory, and I managed to fail it," he recalls. "So all my friends went off to the good school, and I went to a place where the girls became typists and the boys became sheet metal workers. The day I failed it, my parents didn't say anything. In a way, it was very sweet and diplomatic of them, but it almost made it worse, because it was so terrible they weren't even talking about it. And it also made me very resilient, and eager to claw my way towards some glamour and fabulousness."
Though he practically crawled out of the womb totally, obviously gay — "I was flitting around the house like a Russian ballerina" — no one seemed to care. "I think my parents were just glad I wasn't a schizophrenic," he says.
At age 21, Doonan and a friend moved to London, and he got his first window-dressing job — at the decidedly untrendy, fusty store Aquascutum on Regent Street. It wasn't thrilling work, he says. "That's where the queen got her Balmoral tweedy looks."
Which is really what Doonan is all about. When he was growing up in Reading, England, his schizophrenic grandmother moved in with him and his parents following a lobotomy. Then came his uncle, Ken, who was afflicted with the same disorder. Doonan and his sister, Shelagh, called their grandmother "Narg" (Gran spelled backwards), a fitting metaphor for the upside down, topsy-turvy way young Simon came to see the world. "Freaky" and "demented," became "fabulous" and "original." "Simple" and "understated," became "dull as a Dead Sea Scroll."
After fifth grade, Doonan failed his 11-plus, a standardized test in England that determined where you went to school. "It was an exam which decided whether you're going to get a first-class ticket in life or a job in the factory, and I managed to fail it," he recalls. "So all my friends went off to the good school, and I went to a place where the girls became typists and the boys became sheet metal workers. The day I failed it, my parents didn't say anything. In a way, it was very sweet and diplomatic of them, but it almost made it worse, because it was so terrible they weren't even talking about it. And it also made me very resilient, and eager to claw my way towards some glamour and fabulousness."
Though he practically crawled out of the womb totally, obviously gay — "I was flitting around the house like a Russian ballerina" — no one seemed to care. "I think my parents were just glad I wasn't a schizophrenic," he says.
At age 21, Doonan and a friend moved to London, and he got his first window-dressing job — at the decidedly untrendy, fusty store Aquascutum on Regent Street. It wasn't thrilling work, he says. "That's where the queen got her Balmoral tweedy looks."
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