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Champagne Supernovas: Kate Moss, Marc Jacobs, Alexander McQueen, and the '90s Renegades Who Remade Fashion Hardcover – September 2, 2014


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Product Details

  • Hardcover: 288 pages
  • Publisher: Touchstone (September 2, 2014)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1451640536
  • ISBN-13: 978-1451640533
  • Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.9 x 1.1 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,559 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Editorial Reviews

Review

“As someone whose knowledge of fashion runs fairly pedestrian, I was surprised to find myself unable to put down Maureen Callahan’s propulsive Champagne Supernovas. With a scholar’s eye and a tabloid reporter’s touch, Callahan bursts open one of the most exclusive industries in the world, revealing to the grit and glamour, the damaged, drug-addled underdogs, and the tortured geniuses who forever changed the way we comprehend and commodify beauty. This instant classic -- a master class in how to write smart, intimate, at times shocking, but always compulsively readable non-fiction -- deserves its place as the 90s answer to other pop culture giants, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls and Fifth Avenue, 5AM. (Susannah Cahalan, author of Brain on Fire)

“Maureen Callahan has pulled off a very neat trick in Champagne Supernovas, capturing the essence of a fleeting moment when fashion’s guard changed. This rise-and-fall story has it all: sex, drugs, rock, and frocks. Fasten your seat belt. It’s a scary fun ride.” (Michael Gross, author of Model: The Ugly Business of Beautiful Women and House of Outrageous Fortune)

"Shocking but never cheap, sometimes hilarious but more often heartbreaking, Champagne Supernovas is a thorough, intimate, and bracing look at the complicated and deeply troubled figures who sparked a fashion revolution." (Alan Light, former editor-in-chief, Vibe and Spin magazines)

“The 90s: a time when fashion suddenly mingled with punk rock, movie stars, art school, the fantasies of the whole world, in ways both deadly and revolutionary. Callahan brilliantly connects all the glittering wreckage from a uniquely explosive moment in pop culture, from London to Seattle to the Viper Room. A major work on a one-of-a-kind pop era.” (Rob Sheffield, author of Love Is A Mix Tape and Turn Around Bright Eyes)

“A titillating ride through the ‘90s fashion world, as Kate Moss, Marc Jacobs, and Alexander McQueen eclipsed the reigning glamazons with their waifish chic.” (Elle)

“Terrifically exciting and fun…this book works as a fun, if cautionary, read about some of the folks who changed fashion in the 1990s. Readers will wonder when a similar trio will arrive to save us all from the Kardashians.” (Publishers Weekly)

“The author makes great use of personal interviews and reference materials, and through cross comparisons, she discovers like-minded commonalities they all shared with each other…A lucid, smoothly executed look at a pivotal decade in the legacy of American fashion.” (Kirkus Reviews)

"Champagne Supernovas puts readers in the front row and three of the era's biggest names in the catwalk spotlight. . . . The pace is as quick as an H&M runway knockoff. Callahan's prose is tight, and she stitches together momentum and suspense by alternating chapters on the trio. . . . A page turner filled with juicy behind-the-scenes tales." (Associated Press)

“Fast paced, gossipy and cleverly put together . . . fantastically entertaining and thoroughly researched . . . this is a book about how myths are made.” (Telegraph (UK))

"Maureen Callahan proves, in a biography as dramatic and addictive as Game of Thrones, that the decade represents a revolution not just in fashion, but also the broader ideals of beauty. . . . A former editor and writer at New York magazine, Spin and the New York Post, Callahan crafts an intoxicating brew of scholarly rigor, dishy anecdotes and wicked commentary." (Chicago Tribune)

About the Author

Maureen Callahan has worked as an editor and writer at the New York Post, covering everything from the subcultures of the Lower East Side to local and national politics. She has also written for Spin, New York magazine, Vanity Fair, and Sassy. She lives in New York City. Visit ChampagneSupernovas.com.

More About the Author

Maureen Callahan has worked as an editor and writer at the New York Post, covering everything from the subcultures of the Lower East Side to local and national politics. She has also written for Spin, New York magazine, Vanity Fair, and got her start at Sassy, which was her bible as a teenage girl growing up on Long Island. She lives in Brooklyn. Visit ChampagneSupernovas.com.

Customer Reviews

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful By Jill Meyer TOP 500 REVIEWERVINE VOICE on September 6, 2014
Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase
I've often wondered if creativity was a byproduct of madness...or the opposite. Does it take a certain madness to be creative or does creativity cause madness; driven mad by the creative demons? I'm being a bit metaphysical here and I can't prove a damn thing, but I know that most of the creative geniuses in "Champagne Supernovas" by Maureen Callahan barely survived the 1990's.

Callahan highlights clothing designers Alexander McQueen and Marc Jacobs, as well as the fashion model Kate Moss. McQueen died a suicide in 2010, after creating some of the most avant garde fashion, both for his own label and that of the venerable house of Givenchy. (I think of Audrey Hepburn's fabulous clothes when I think of Givenchy; not spray paint and designs modeled by a double amputee model.) Alexander McQueen, who dumped his real first name, Lee, in favor of his more chi-chi middle name, Alexander, was a depressive, drug taking mess, who was known for his savagely mean nature. His treatment of his - supposedly - closest friend and first muse, Isabella ("Issie") Blow as she wallowed in her own depressive state until her suicide in 2007, is indicative of a malignant nature. (I do think that Isabella Blow - she of the ultra-odd hats and boas - is perhaps the saddest person in the book. There are several biographies out on her and she seemed like a sad, well-meaning, dependent person who was ill-treated by the creative geniuses who used her as a muse.)

Kate Moss, the "model" of the 1990's and later is the "bad-girl" whose slight body and plainish face set off the clothing of McQueen, Jacobs, and the other designers. Her insouciance, whether on the cat-walk or in the clubs, made her a role-model of that was "now". Women of all ages wanted to wear what Kate was wearing.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful By SimiyaNR on September 8, 2014
Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase
This book is a marvelous read. It can get a bit repetitive, especially the amount of times the author harps on about Kate Moss being the antithesis of 80s fashion excess (although the 90s created it's own type of damaging excesses), but I thoroughly enjoyed it.
The book was definitely an education on how the fashion world works; how creative directors are vetted to run the big fashion houses; the conflicts between creating for the fashion houses and their own lines; LVMH takeover; and other info. Highly recommended.
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8 of 11 people found the following review helpful By dnkybk on September 5, 2014
Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase
Besides being a fun and hysterical (and often disturbing read), the book is thoughtful and analytical with an all-encompassing scope to it.
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