Simon Doonan’s life-size celebrity caricatures defined now-defunct Barneys New York holiday window displays beginning in the 1990s. As creative director for one of New York’s chicest shopping spots, he transformed traditional holiday windows into contemporary exhibitions during his two-decade reign at the famous retailer. WWD coined him the “diminutive doyen of display” for his playful look at celebrity that critiqued and mirrored Nouveau Society of the time. Doonan’s satirical vision, often not so Christmas-y, added a certain allure and anticipation to the seasonal window stroll. Below, in this 1992 interview with WWD, Doonan tells not exactly all of his “top secret” ideas for Barneys New York holiday windows of the future.
NEW YORK — Interviewing Simon Doonan is more like meeting with a CIA operative than the vice president and creative director of Barneys New York. The words “top secret” were practically stamped across Doonan’s forehead when he arrived at Barneys’ Le Cafe, and at the mention of this year’s Christmas windows, which open tonight, a red-alert button sounded.
“It’s all in various secret locations,” said Doonan. “The dolls are in one area, the caricatures in another studio, and all the branch-store stuff in another.”
Why the cloak-and-dagger tactics? After all, these are department store windows, not nuclear weapons. On the other hand, they’re not your regular Santa-Claus-is-coming-to-town windows with fake snow, a creche and some jingle bells.
In fact, Simon’s windows have barely a trace of traditional Christmas in them. What they do have, though, are famous faces, and according to their 40-year-old creator, celebrity windows are now the name of the game.
“My first season, we got 11 different artists to do Christmas,” says the dapper Doonan, who this day is sporting a brown plaid jacket and a polka dot tie. “But I’ve learned that in terms of getting public attention and bringing people to the store, it’s very hard to beat doing celebrity caricatures; people are automatically intrigued by what you’re doing.”
Celebrities. Is that the first clue to what this season’s windows will be about? Last year, Doonan created quite a stir with his caricaturized figures of people who had been featured in Vanity Fair, including Margaret Thatcher, George Hamilton, Dolly Parton and, of course, Madonna.
Doonan quietly offers Clue Two: “The focus this year is on celebrities who made their mark during the year.”
Born in England, the “Diminutive Doyen of Display,” as he refers to himself (he’s 5-foot-4), had planned to go into advertising, but got his first job in a London boutique. In 1978, he moved to Los Angeles, doing displays for Maxfield, and came to New York to work on a special project for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. That’s when Barneys snatched him up.
Now, the self-described “big-picture dude” supervises a staff of 20. His responsibilities range from designing Barneys’ interiors to laying out its newsletter to, of course, doing the windows, which Doonan describes as “the icing on the cake.”
“I tend to like the more absurd, over-extreme and vaguely hideous things.”
– Simon Doonan
His cozy Greenwich Village studio is a reflection of his eclectic tastes. In addition to restored flea-market finds, there is a beaded Moroccan bedspread, washed-pastel walls and slashed window treatments. Even his answering machine sounds bizarre — stripper music overlapping Henry Mancini.
“I tend to like the more absurd, over-extreme and vaguely hideous things,” he says. “And, though I’m drawn to a certain grotesque quality, I also understand the esthetic.
“I tend to react — if someone said something is directional or de rigueur, I’d go the other way,” continues Doonan. “Take grunge, for example. People have been grunge dressing for a long time. But now that its got a name, it’s finished. But we’ve been so conservative that now things need to be deconstructed a bit. I’ can’t exactly see Hilary Clinton in Martin Margiela, but I can see her in Donna or Calvin.”
As for his windows, he admits that miniature caricatures can be a pain in the panes.
“Demi Moore ended up looking like Buddy Hackett, Lady Kier of Deee-Lite looked more like Tammy Faye Bakker and Sandra Bernhard turned out like Ruth Buzzi.”
Last year, however, Susan Gutfreund got an injunction to keep Barneys from using her image and the window display keyed to her Vanity Fair appearance was executed sans doll.
At one point last year, says Doonan, he got a phone call from Guttfreund.
“At least, it was somebody who said it was her,” he adds. “She said she felt sure there was a way we could figure things out, that it [the injunction] was just a lot of red tape. Then she said, ‘Maybe we could do it next year?’”
And maybe not, says Doonan. It’s time for others, like Donna Karan, he implies. And with that, his visitor is invited on a tour of his secret studio, where most of the displays are produced.
“I’ve organized everything into these windows that are a bit like a cross between a video wall and a Joseph Cornell box,” Doonan says, pointing to the first window — Whoopi Goldberg’s. It’s filled with huge Christmas trees styled like Rasta hats, a “Whoopi Goldberg Show” sign and quotes from the comedian.
In the next room, another compartmentalized wall houses a dunce-capped elephant, the Murphy Brown Esquire cover and a Mr. Potato Head sitting in front of a sign that reads “today’s special — potatoe,” Doonan’s tribute to Dan Quayle.
“We need to figure out how to Quayle-ize the Mr. Potato Head,” says a staff member.
“Give him a dunce cap,” Doonan responds.
Magic Johnson’s Christmas tree is decorated with condoms, Ross Perot’s is a money-spiked cactus planted in a Perot-ears pot, and Roseanne Arnold’s is pure junk food. Tina Brown’s window shows The New Yorker then and now, and Madonna makes her third Christmas appearance in a photographic tribute by Steven Meisel.
Prince is immersed in a purple rainforest, and Martha Stewart is ensconced in Doonan’s favorite display of the season. He describes it as showing “all the things you have to do to be the perfect Martha Stewart girl.”
One of the funniest windows is Queen Elizabeth’s. She’s dressed in an Isaac tweed kilt (“the first time l’ve ever tried to be matronly,” says Mizrahi) and sits on a candy-trimmed throne surrounded by three photos — Di with Charles, Fergie with Andy and Tony Snowdon with Margaret. Each picture has a small saw going through it.
Doonan is introducing computer-generated video graphics into his displays this season, created by video artist Jane Nisselson in conjunction with The Future Now. Donna Karan’s video is a cheerleader-like chant consisting of words such as “stretch, rap, snap” and “jangle your bangles, here comes Donna.”
Perot’s keeps repeating, “Hey, big spender.”
By next fall, if all goes according to plan, Barneys will have another store here, up on Madison Avenue. Doonan’s window plans for Christmas ’93 would involve both stores, he says. “We have to make it an uptown-downtown exhibition.” he reveals, “where people would go see what you’ve done uptown and then jump in a cab and see the show continuing downtown, or vice versa.”
Asked where he thinks window displays are headed, Simon answers in his typically secretive way.
“I know what it is, but I’m not telling you,” he teases. “When you come to 660 Madison, you’ll see…It’s only a year away.”
— Reported by Heidi Lender
Reproduced by Tonya Blazio-Licorish
