An adoring homage.
An updated and translated biography of the famed designer.
Journalist and fashion writer Benaïm (René Lacoste, 2018, etc.) offers a meticulously detailed, overly worshipful biography of Yves Saint Laurent (1936-2008), conveyed in prose as sumptuous as the designer’s acclaimed couture. Born in Oran in Algeria, where he was a shy, bullied child, Saint Laurent felt shame and fear about his sexuality. “Being gay in Oran was like being a murderer,” he told the author. Later, internationally famous, he saw “celebrity as a revenge on the petty humiliations of his childhood.” Recognition came early: In 1954, he became the youngest winner of a coveted international prize; the following year, Dior hired him as a design assistant; in 1957, when Dior died suddenly, the young Saint Laurent was named as his successor. Triumph followed as he mounted shows for Dior and, when he was 25, for his own company. Benaïm describes each collection in detail, including reviews—usually gushing, occasionally dismissive—and the roster of his wealthy, trendsetting clientele. “Yves Saint Laurent offered liberated women additional sophistication,” writes the author, “and he gave the others the certainty that they were modern.” He extolled svelte, androgynous models; while other couture models were slim, or even skinny, his, one commentator noted, “skirt the edge of death from malnutrition.” Besides documenting his fashion innovations, Benaïm attends to his expanding business, which came to include hundreds of shops; and his cosmetics, jewelry, and perfume enterprises, which gave the world the coveted Opium, a scent that brought in more than $3 million in its first four months. The author examines his relationship with his lover, the mercurial, stubborn, and powerful Pierre Bergé, who whipped the YSL brand into a hugely profitable empire. She also chronicles Saint Laurent’s physical and psychological descent compounded by alcohol and assorted drugs. A detailed timeline distills the events of his life, and the author even includes a playlist of music that accompanied his shows.
An adoring homage.Pub Date: March 19, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-8478-6339-6
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Rizzoli Ex Libris
Review Posted Online: Dec. 29, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2019
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
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