Who

Camp fashion icon Simon Doonan is creative director of Barneys, a columnist at the New York Observer, and an author. His boyfriend is designer Jonathan Adler.

Backstory

Born and raised in Reading, England, Doonan grew up in a two-room flat that lacked a kitchen or a bathroom with a family full of eccentrics: Doonan says his parents brewed homemade wine using scraps of potatoes and parsnips, his butch sister called herself Jim, and his grandmother had undergone a lobotomy. After heading to London in search of "the beautiful people," he became a window dresser on Carnaby Street, which led to a 1977 job at avant-garde fashion/lifestyle store Maxfield in Los Angeles, where he lived in a "squalid" studio apartment next door to a noisy prostitute. The next stop was New York and Barneys, where his artistic window displays made with unpredictable materials—he's used everything from brooms to bottle caps—made him famous.

Doonan has since changed the entire concept of window shopping and his Barneys window displays are as much a part of the New York holiday season as the Radio City Rockettes. Some of his most memorable displays: a safe sex-themed window that featured a Christmas tree covered in gold condom wrappers, a nativity scene featuring Bart Simpson and Hello Kitty dolls, and a window devoted to the Sex and the City cast. At Barneys, he works closely with fashion director Julie Gilhart.

Of note

Doonan may be just as famous for his work outside of Barneys. He's a columnist for the Observer and has written the books Eccentric Glamour: Creating An Insanely More Fabulous You; Confessions of a Window Dresser; Wacky Chicks; and Nasty: My Family and Other Glamorous Varmints—which is coming to the small screen in a BBC show from the producer of Absolutely Fabulous and The Office. He also makes regular appearances on cable as a style expert, often wearing ruffled shirts and velvet blazers.

Legal file

Doonan was arrested a total of three times during the heady days of his youth, first for running out on a restaurant check ("in full glam rock attire"), and next for falling asleep drunk in a UK train station in 1971. His third arrest was for drunk driving in L.A. in the mid-'70s—he says he was wearing Vivienne Westwood plaid bondage pants at the time.

Personal

When not making the ordinary look fabulous, he's in the company of his longtime partner, designer/ceramist/style maven Jonathan Adler. (They've been together since Adler showed up at Barneys in the mid-90s with his pottery line in tow.) Doonan says his relationship with Adler is "sedate." "Are we swinging from the rafters and doing crystal meth and fisting each other every Saturday night? No." Doonan and Adler have a beige Norwich terrier named Liberace, and split their time between homes in Palm Beach (with a snakeskin wallpapered bathroom), Shelter Island and Greenwich Village (which features grass-cloth walls and a suit of armor).

No joke

Doonan read for the part of Nigel in The Devil Wears Prada along with, he realized to his chagrin, every other "fashion fag in Manhattan" and then discovered that Stanley Tucci was reviewing the taped auditions for inspiration.