December 10–17, 1998

book quarterly

King of Pane

Simon Doonan, legendary window dresser and brand new author, reveals the tricks of the trade.

by Neil Gladstone

		Obsessive Abandon: Doonan has created fantastical windows for the last 25 years.

Simon Doonan isn't exactly counting the days until Christmas. For him, the yuletide season began last August when he started constructing the Christmas window displays for Barneys New York. Actually, the holiday season is always on Doonan's mind, because his Christmas windows are usually his biggest production of the year and like many things in this window dresser's life, a bit of an obsession.

Macy's doll-driven Christmas windows may be a more traditional tourist attraction, but in the last several years Doonan's explosive, kitschy and crass storefront dioramas have caused a major stir. These cheeky visions seem more like installation pieces than merchandising, perhaps because the design often upstages the products.

In 1990, Doonan depicted Jesse Helms as "Censor Clause" reading a Robert Mapplethorpe book. After Magic Johnson went public with his HIV-positive status, a mannequin of the basketball star appeared in Barneys' window, standing next to a Christmas tree with condom ornaments. Then there was "The Great Queens of England"—a salute to Boy George, Quentin Crisp, Alexander McQueen, Manolo Blahnik and John Galliano. What was Barneys selling in these windows? Who knows. Did they attract people to the store? You bet.

It's hardly surprising that Doonan's Warhol window (which portrayed the pop artist surrounded by Russell Wright china, Brillo boxes and cookie jars) was included in the recent "Warhol Look" show at the Whitney Museum. Doonan considers Warhol the patron saint of window design and shares a similar passion for celebrities and image repetition. More recently, New York's Municipal Art Society commissioned Doonan to create an installation piece for its gallery. (He plans to dramatize the "havoc and dementia" of the display department by piling up mannequins, wigs and paint cans.)

Though this untrained craftsman hates to call himself an artist, putting together the new book Confessions of a Window Dresser (Penguin Studio, $40) forced him to reconsider his body of work.

"It was a very big deal for me," admits Doonan, 46, on the phone from Barneys LA. "The only other writing I'd done before was advertising copy." At first, he didn't think the book would be much more than a coffeetable collection of the "demented flights of fancy" he's created over the past 25 years. Then he showed the publisher his introduction, which details all the things he loves about an unglamorous, underappreciated profession: "The paradox of my window dressing career is that success came to me by pursuing, with gusto, a reviled and effeminate career."

His first chapter was so well received that the editor asked the self-deprecating bloke from Reading, England, to write as much as possible about himself and his profession.

"The publisher told me 'You're a writer,'" remembers Doonan, who always struggled in school. "I said, 'Holy shit, who knew?'"

The finished text is filled with so many giddy anecdotes that several production companies are vying for the movie rights to Confessions and a deal is almost assured.

"My first choice to play me would be Linda Hunt," jokes the 5'5" Doonan. (Hervé Villechaize is the other choice, but he'd be much harder to get at this point.)

Why is a window dresser's life worth examining? For starters, Doonan's dry wit makes Rhoda seem like just another bore in a headscarf.

"At age three I created my first window display by flinging my mother's cone-shaped brassieres out the window and watching them fall onto the trees below," writes Doonan. "The best part was watching her retrieve them."

		Joy in Repetition: For Doonan, a little obsession goes a long way.

Aware of his sexual orientation at a young age, his parents did little to discourage his "swishiness." During childhood, Doonan was enamored of The Avengers' Emma Peel and dumbfounded by the allure of droopy hippie clothing. Always a bit of a mod, he embraced the barbarous punk aesthetic. 1977 wasn't only the year that the Sex Pistols released their first album; it was also when Doonan hit his stride as a window designer, creating a display of mannequins in tuxedos sitting amongst trash cans and taxidermied rats for the Savile Row shop Nutter's.

Tommy Perse, owner of Maxfield in L.A., eyed a few of Doonan's later creations and hired him to work at the store. There, Doonan picked up on the glorious camp of Hollywood and fabricated startling images for Maxfield's windows such as a fashionably outfitted baby abduction.

After eight years at Maxfield, Doonan relocated to the other coast, first to apprentice under Diana Vreeland at the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and then to work for the Pressman family, owners of Barneys.

"They have a great sense of humor and tremendous energy," says Doonan of the folks who've employed him for the past 13 years.

Fred Pressman encouraged Doonan to use the merchandise with obsessive abandon, suggesting voluminous stacks of luggage and ties. That crowded aesthetic grew to be a stylistic trademark for Barneys' windows.

In the '80s, the Soho-based clothing store flourished and became the place to shop for downtown artists who were suddenly rolling in dough. Jean-Michel Basquiat and Ross Bleckner were among the names who bought their blazers at Barneys and dropped off portfolios, hoping to collaborate on Doonan's windows.

Always looking for an adventure, the window dresser collaborated with hundreds of artists, including Annette Lemieux, Candyass (aka Cary Liebowitz) and Rafael Sanchez. Not only did these collaborations bring street cred and notoriety to the store, they also gave the window dresser ideas. Duane Micheals' suggestion to silk-screen his poems onto the window for a Father's Day installation inspired Doonan to use the glass as a canvas for many of his own creations.

		photo: Steven Meisel

Not every artist's contribution has been a plus. Tom Sachs' miniature recreation of the Nativity scene using Hello Kitty characters, which appeared in the '94 Christmas window, caused a conservative uproar. (The Daily News ran a cover story with the headline "Away with the Manger.")

This led to one of Doonan's rules of the profession: Don't ever do windows with religious content.

The do's and don'ts section of Confessions might not teach you everything about the window biz, but there are some interesting ideas; for instance, "Do use perishable food."

"One time we had a window of Madonna eating microwave popcorn," recalls Doonan. "Mice ran in and out of that window for six weeks."

Did the owners complain?

"At one point a manager said to me, 'There's mice in the window,' and I said, 'Yes, that's because of the popcorn.' That was the end of the discussion."

Another hint: Copy other people's windows. Doonan is a big fan of the work Candy Pratt and Victor Hugo did for Bloomingdale's and Halston, but he also loves to get inspiration from shops in towns that aren't exactly fashion meccas, such as, ahem, Philadelphia.

Doonan's boyfriend, potter Jonathan Adler, is originally from Bridgeton, NJ, and his parents own a pied à terre in the Academy House. The couple (who met four years ago on a blind date) visit Philly two or three times a season. Of course, Doonan also loves to window shop. Does he stroll past Lord & Taylor? Strawbridge's? Nah. He's fascinated by all the mucky junk stores and tacky liquor displays.

"Philadelphia has all kinds of ratty displays with a ga-ga approach to design which I like," explains Doonan.

Adler says the couple loves to eat at Zocalo ("Better Mexican food than any place in New York") and browse at the Calderwood Galleries, Giovanni's Room and Mode Moderne ("Not so much for their window displays as the merch.")

Though it may seem Doonan is just following his muse when creating his windows, the bottom line is always in the back of his mind. He makes sure that the apparel being used in Barneys' windows, however unconventionally, is merchandise that's getting pushed by the store's buyers.

"Windows are about moving merchandise," comments Adler, 32, "and Simon finds that very liberating. Everything he does doesn't have to be fabulous or important and, if it is, then so be it, but it's not his agenda."

Doonan's official duties as Barneys' creative director for window design and advertising requires him to coordinate the visual identity of 10 stores around the world and oversee a team of 25 designers. Of course, he also has to design and install about 20 displays a season.

Never was Doonan's corporate creativity tested more than when Barneys filed for bankruptcy in early 1996.

"We made windows using toilet paper," recalls Doonan. The chain had overextended itself and, like many upscale clothing retailers, couldn't move the merchandise fast enough. "The vicissitudes of Barneys being in Chapter 11 have been very difficult, challenging and exciting," says Doonan tactfully. Confessions only brushes upon that controversial time.

Readers more interested in Barneys' financial foibles would probably do better to wait for The Rise and Fall of the House of Barneys, due out next spring from William Morrow.

Coincidentally, the author of that book, Josh Levine, lives in the building next to Doonan in New York. "He's left me notes saying we should get together for coffee and talk, but I've politely declined. I've been told by Barneys that we're not working with him."

As for Barneys' Christmas windows this year, the settings have a European cabaret theme, reflecting the new brasseries popping up all over the Big Apple.

"New Yorkers are going out a lot more these days, they're not cocooning and it's sort of a celebration of eating, drinking and going out."

Doonan's domestic decorations will be much more low key. "I have a couple of Christmas tree balls from the Liberace Museum with Liberace's head on them. When it's Christmas I hang them up and when it's over I take them down. That's it. I've been up to my neck in Barneys' Christmas."