Champagne Supernovas

Kate Moss, Marc Jacobs, Alexander McQueen, and the 90s Renegades Who Remade Fashion

Maureen Callahan

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
• eBook ISBN:
  9781471142642
• Year: 2014

The 1950s had rock 'n' roll and the 60s had the Beats. In the 70s and 80s, it was punk rock and modern art. But for the 1990s, it was all about fashion and Kate Moss, Marc Jacobs, and Alexander McQueen were the trio of rebel geniuses who made it great. Each had an amazing talent and each had demons that would jeopardize that same talent. Collectively, they represented a "moment" in fashion and pop culture that upended everything that had come before it.

In the tradition of pop-cultural histories like Girls Like Us and Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, Maureen Callahan explores a particular, pivotal time - the moment when the 1980s gave way to the 1990s, the alternative became the mainstream, and Gen X took over the reins of power in the fashion industry - through the lives of three people who would become both fashion icons and cautionary tales of the era. Callahan interviews insiders and reveals exclusive insights into the biggest dramas surrounding the most celebrated personalities of the decade: why Kate Moss and Johnny Depp broke up, how Marc Jacobs came through the crucible of the AIDS crisis, and what really drove Alexander McQueen to suicide.

Champagne Supernovas is the story of that singular time, as exemplified the lives of the three luminaries who forever changed the way we think about fashion and culture.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title page
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Dedication page
• Epigraph page
• Contents
• Introduction: This New Kind of Beauty
• CHAPTER 1: The Maybe Drawer
• CHAPTER 2: The Pink Sheep of the Family
• CHAPTER 3: Fifteen-Year-Olds Don’t Go to Nightclubs
• CHAPTER 4: Just Another Common Bitch
• CHAPTER 5: I Am the ’90s
• CHAPTER 6: A Culture Person in the Fashion World
• CHAPTER 7: Why Can’t I Have Fun All the Time?
• CHAPTER 8: A Catalog of Horrors
• CHAPTER 9: Grunge R.I.P.
• CHAPTER 10: A Nice Girl from Croydon
• CHAPTER 11: Fashion People Haven’t Got Any Brains
• CHAPTER 12: A Handbag That Costs as Much as a Month’s Rent
• CHAPTER 13: Cool Britannia
• CHAPTER 14: Those Skinny Fashion Bitches in the Front Row
• CHAPTER 15: The Decade of the Dilettante
• CHAPTER 16: The Queen of Primrose Hill
• CHAPTER 17: Paris Does Nothing for Me
• CHAPTER 18: It’s the Girl, Not the Clothes
• CHAPTER 19: When the Little Glow in Your Face Goes
• CHAPTER 20: Can Everybody Not Give Lee Any Drugs?
• CHAPTER 21: These People Are Not Your Friends
• CHAPTER 22: A Supermodel Just like McDonald’s
• CHAPTER 23: Paris for Couture, London for Suits, America for Psychiatric Hospitals
• Epilogue
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Index
• List of Illustrations