
Gods and Kings
The Rise and Fall of Alexander McQueen and John Galliano
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Buy for $21.49
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Elizabeth Sastre
-
By:
-
Dana Thomas
About this listen
In February 2011 John Galliano, the lauded head of Christian Dior, imploded with a drunken, anti-Semitic public tirade. Exactly a year earlier, celebrated designer Alexander McQueen took his own life three weeks before his women's wear show. Both were casualties of the war between art and commerce that has raged within fashion for the last two decades.
In the mid-1990s, Galliano and McQueen arrived on the fashion scene when the business was in an artistic and economic rut. They shook the establishment out of its bourgeois, minimalist stupor with daring, sexy designs and theatrical fashion shows. They had similar backgrounds: sensitive, shy gay men raised in tough London neighborhoods, their love of fashion nurtured by their doting mothers. By 1997 both had landed jobs as creative directors for couture houses owned by French tycoon Bernard Arnault, chairman of LVMH.
Galliano's and McQueen's work not only influenced fashion; their distinct styles were reflected across the media landscape. With their help luxury fashion evolved from a clutch of small, family-owned businesses into a $280 billion-a-year global corporate industry. Executives pushed the designers to meet increasingly rapid deadlines. For both Galliano and McQueen, the pace was unsustainable.
The same week that Galliano was fired, Forbes named Arnault the fourth richest man in the world. Two months later, in the wake of McQueen's death, Kate Middleton wore a McQueen wedding gown, instantly making the house the world's most famous fashion brand, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art opened a wildly successful McQueen retrospective, cosponsored by the corporate owners of the McQueen brand. The corporations had won, and the artists had lost.
In her groundbreaking work Gods and Kings, acclaimed journalist Dana Thomas tells the true story of McQueen and Galliano. In so doing she reveals the relentless world of couture.
©2015 Dana Thomas (P)2015 Recorded BooksListeners also enjoyed...
-
Alexander McQueen: Blood Beneath the Skin
- By: Andrew Wilson
- Narrated by: Piers Hampton
- Length: 11 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
McQueen had risen from humble beginnings as the youngest child of an East London taxi driver to scale the heights of fame, fortune and glamour. He designed clothes for the world's most beautiful women, including Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell. In business he created a multimillion-pound luxury brand that became a favourite with both celebrities and royalty, most famously the Duchess of Cambridge, who wore a McQueen dress on her wedding day. But behind the confident facade and bad-boy image lay a sensitive soul who struggled to survive in the ruthless world of fashion.
-
-
Earnest and Voyeuristic
- By anna on 01-21-21
By: Andrew Wilson
-
The Beautiful Fall
- Fashion, Genius, and Glorious Excess in 1970s Paris
- By: Alicia Drake
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 16 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the 1970s, Paris fashion exploded like a champagne bottle left out in the sun. Amid sequins and longing, celebrities and aspirants flocked to the heart of chic, and Paris became a hothouse of revelry, intrigue, and searing ambition. At the center of it all were fashion’s most beloved luminaries - Yves Saint Laurent, the reclusive enfant terrible, and Karl Lagerfeld, the flamboyant freelancer with a talent for reinvention - and they divided Paris into two fabulous halves.
-
-
Fun and immersive -- despite the narrator
- By SBG on 01-10-21
By: Alicia Drake
-
Ametora
- How Japan Saved American Style
- By: W. David Marx
- Narrated by: Brian Nishii
- Length: 8 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Look closely at any typically "American" article of clothing these days, and you may be surprised to see a Japanese label inside. From high-end denim to oxford button-downs, Japanese designers have taken the classic American look - known as ametora, or "American traditional" - and turned it into a huge business for companies like Uniqlo, Kamakura Shirts, Evisu, and Kapital. This phenomenon is part of a long dialogue between Japanese and American fashion.
-
-
You must read for anyone interested in Japanese and American style
- By Spencer Jackson on 01-23-22
By: W. David Marx
-
The Chiffon Trenches
- A Memoir
- By: André Leon Talley
- Narrated by: André Leon Talley
- Length: 9 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
During André Leon Talley’s first magazine job, alongside Andy Warhol at Interview, a fateful meeting with Karl Lagerfeld began a decades-long friendship with the enigmatic, often caustic designer. Propelled into the upper echelons by his knowledge and adoration of fashion, André moved to Paris as bureau chief of John Fairchild’s Women’s Wear Daily, befriending fashion's most important designers (Halston, Yves Saint Laurent, Oscar de la Renta). But as André made friends, he also made enemies.
-
-
Another case of author's narration not working.
- By CB on 05-21-20
-
Fashionopolis
- The Price of Fast Fashion and the Future of Clothes
- By: Dana Thomas
- Narrated by: Dana Thomas
- Length: 9 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Fashionopolis, Thomas sees renewal in a host of developments, including printing 3-D clothes, clean denim processing, smart manufacturing, hyperlocalism, fabric recycling - even lab-grown materials. From small-town makers and Silicon Valley whizzes to such household names as Stella McCartney, Levi’s, and Rent the Runway, Thomas highlights the companies big and small that are leading the crusade.
-
-
Very informative and optimistic
- By cannonwall on 01-05-20
By: Dana Thomas
-
Deluxe
- How Luxury Lost Its Luster
- By: Dana Thomas
- Narrated by: Dana Thomas
- Length: 13 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Once luxury was available only to the rarefied and aristocratic world of old money and royalty. It offered a history of tradition, superior quality, and a pampered buying experience. Today, however, luxury is simply a product packaged and sold by multibillion-dollar global corporations focused on growth, visibility, brand awareness, advertising, and, above all, profits. Award-winning journalist Dana Thomas digs deep into the dark side of the luxury industry to uncover all the secrets that Prada, Gucci, and Burberry don’t want us to know.
-
-
Great books, terrible narration
- By andrewlb on 06-09-21
By: Dana Thomas
-
Alexander McQueen: Blood Beneath the Skin
- By: Andrew Wilson
- Narrated by: Piers Hampton
- Length: 11 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
McQueen had risen from humble beginnings as the youngest child of an East London taxi driver to scale the heights of fame, fortune and glamour. He designed clothes for the world's most beautiful women, including Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell. In business he created a multimillion-pound luxury brand that became a favourite with both celebrities and royalty, most famously the Duchess of Cambridge, who wore a McQueen dress on her wedding day. But behind the confident facade and bad-boy image lay a sensitive soul who struggled to survive in the ruthless world of fashion.
-
-
Earnest and Voyeuristic
- By anna on 01-21-21
By: Andrew Wilson
-
The Beautiful Fall
- Fashion, Genius, and Glorious Excess in 1970s Paris
- By: Alicia Drake
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 16 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the 1970s, Paris fashion exploded like a champagne bottle left out in the sun. Amid sequins and longing, celebrities and aspirants flocked to the heart of chic, and Paris became a hothouse of revelry, intrigue, and searing ambition. At the center of it all were fashion’s most beloved luminaries - Yves Saint Laurent, the reclusive enfant terrible, and Karl Lagerfeld, the flamboyant freelancer with a talent for reinvention - and they divided Paris into two fabulous halves.
-
-
Fun and immersive -- despite the narrator
- By SBG on 01-10-21
By: Alicia Drake
-
Ametora
- How Japan Saved American Style
- By: W. David Marx
- Narrated by: Brian Nishii
- Length: 8 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Look closely at any typically "American" article of clothing these days, and you may be surprised to see a Japanese label inside. From high-end denim to oxford button-downs, Japanese designers have taken the classic American look - known as ametora, or "American traditional" - and turned it into a huge business for companies like Uniqlo, Kamakura Shirts, Evisu, and Kapital. This phenomenon is part of a long dialogue between Japanese and American fashion.
-
-
You must read for anyone interested in Japanese and American style
- By Spencer Jackson on 01-23-22
By: W. David Marx
-
The Chiffon Trenches
- A Memoir
- By: André Leon Talley
- Narrated by: André Leon Talley
- Length: 9 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
During André Leon Talley’s first magazine job, alongside Andy Warhol at Interview, a fateful meeting with Karl Lagerfeld began a decades-long friendship with the enigmatic, often caustic designer. Propelled into the upper echelons by his knowledge and adoration of fashion, André moved to Paris as bureau chief of John Fairchild’s Women’s Wear Daily, befriending fashion's most important designers (Halston, Yves Saint Laurent, Oscar de la Renta). But as André made friends, he also made enemies.
-
-
Another case of author's narration not working.
- By CB on 05-21-20
-
Fashionopolis
- The Price of Fast Fashion and the Future of Clothes
- By: Dana Thomas
- Narrated by: Dana Thomas
- Length: 9 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Fashionopolis, Thomas sees renewal in a host of developments, including printing 3-D clothes, clean denim processing, smart manufacturing, hyperlocalism, fabric recycling - even lab-grown materials. From small-town makers and Silicon Valley whizzes to such household names as Stella McCartney, Levi’s, and Rent the Runway, Thomas highlights the companies big and small that are leading the crusade.
-
-
Very informative and optimistic
- By cannonwall on 01-05-20
By: Dana Thomas
-
Deluxe
- How Luxury Lost Its Luster
- By: Dana Thomas
- Narrated by: Dana Thomas
- Length: 13 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Once luxury was available only to the rarefied and aristocratic world of old money and royalty. It offered a history of tradition, superior quality, and a pampered buying experience. Today, however, luxury is simply a product packaged and sold by multibillion-dollar global corporations focused on growth, visibility, brand awareness, advertising, and, above all, profits. Award-winning journalist Dana Thomas digs deep into the dark side of the luxury industry to uncover all the secrets that Prada, Gucci, and Burberry don’t want us to know.
-
-
Great books, terrible narration
- By andrewlb on 06-09-21
By: Dana Thomas
-
Karl Lagerfeld
- A Life in Fashion
- By: Alfons Kaiser
- Narrated by: Stephen R. Thorne
- Length: 14 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Karl Lagerfeld stylized himself into a living logo and a myth of the fashion world. In Karl Lagerfeld: A Life in Fashion, journalist Alfons Kaiser, who knew Lagerfeld personally for many years, introduces listeners to the public and private life of the charismatic fashion designer. Kaiser explores the many eras of Lagerfeld’s life: the youthful outsider in the north German flatlands; the urbane genius in Paris; the tireless draftsman; the enthusiastic photographer; the passionate book collector; and the disciplined Prussian workaholic.
-
-
Disjointed and dull
- By Adderburycat on 05-25-22
By: Alfons Kaiser
-
Anna
- The Biography
- By: Amy Odell
- Narrated by: Imogen Church
- Length: 15 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As a child, Anna Wintour was a tomboy with no apparent interest in clothing but, seduced by the miniskirts and bob haircuts of swinging 1960s London, she grew into a fashion-obsessed teenager. Her father, an influential newspaper editor, loomed large in her life, and once he decided she should become editor-in-chief of Vogue, she never looked back.
-
-
WONDERFUL, SPLENDID, I LOVED IT!!
- By Liz Jardine on 05-13-22
By: Amy Odell
-
Vivienne Westwood
- By: Vivienne Westwood, Ian Kelly
- Narrated by: Paula Wilcox
- Length: 13 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Vivienne Westwood is one of the icons of our age. Fashion designer, activist, cocreator of punk, global brand, and grandmother--a true living legend. Her career has successfully spanned five decades, and her work has influenced millions of people across the world. For the first and only time, Vivienne Westwood has written a personal memoir, collaborating with award-winning biographer Ian Kelly, to describe the events, people, and ideas that have shaped her extraordinary life.
-
-
Mother of Punk
- By Rafael Castillo on 07-28-16
By: Vivienne Westwood, and others
-
A Visible Man
- A Memoir
- By: Edward Enninful
- Narrated by: Edward Enninful
- Length: 7 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Edward Enninful became the first Black editor-in-chief of British Vogue, few in the world of fashion wanted to confront how it failed to represent the world we live in. But Edward, a champion of inclusion throughout his life, rapidly changed that. Now, whether it’s putting first responders, octogenarians or civil rights activists on the cover of Vogue, or championing designers and photographers of colour, Edward Enninful has cemented his status as one of his world’s most important changemakers.
-
-
Discovery!
- By Introspective on 01-04-23
By: Edward Enninful
-
The Cartiers
- The Untold Story of the Family Behind the Jewelry Empire
- By: Francesca Cartier Brickell
- Narrated by: Hattie Morahan
- Length: 23 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Cartiers is the revealing tale of a jewelry dynasty—four generations, from revolutionary France to the 1970s. At its heart are the three Cartier brothers whose motto was “Never copy, only create” and who made their family firm internationally famous in the early days of the twentieth century, thanks to their unique and complementary talents.
-
-
Wonderful Experience to Listen to This Story
- By BB on 01-12-20
-
Fashion Climbing
- A Memoir
- By: Bill Cunningham, Hilton Als - preface
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 6 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Fashion Climbing is the story of a young man striving to be the person he was born to be: a true original. Contained inside this audiobook is an education in style, an effervescent tale of a bohemian world as it once was, and a final gift to the fans of one of New York's great characters.
-
-
Worth listening to while you're working.
- By Jennifer Baratta She/Her on 06-13-19
By: Bill Cunningham, and others
-
Grace: A Memoir
- A Memoir
- By: Grace Coddington
- Narrated by: Grace Coddington
- Length: 8 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Beautiful. Willful. Charming. Blunt. Grace Coddington’s extraordinary talent and fierce dedication to her work as creative director of Vogue have made her an international icon. Known through much of her career only to those behind the scenes, she might have remained fashion’s best-kept secret were it not for The September Issue, the acclaimed 2009 documentary that turned publicity-averse Grace into a sudden, reluctant celebrity. Grace’s palpable engagement with her work brought a rare insight into the passion that produces many of the magazine’s most memorable shoots.
-
-
Grace a Memoir
- By Placeholder on 02-13-13
By: Grace Coddington
-
The Vanity Fair Diaries
- 1983-1992
- By: Tina Brown
- Narrated by: Tina Brown
- Length: 16 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Vanity Fair Diaries is the story of an Englishwoman barely out of her twenties who arrives in New York City with a dream. Summoned from London in hopes that she can save Condé Nast's troubled new flagship Vanity Fair, Tina Brown is immediately plunged into the maelstrom of the competitive New York media world and the backstabbing rivalries at the court of the planet's slickest, most glamour-focused magazine company. She survives the politics, the intrigue, and the attempts to derail her by a simple stratagem.
-
-
There is something about the Brits...
- By Sylvia on 12-11-17
By: Tina Brown
-
I.M.
- A Memoir
- By: Isaac Mizrahi
- Narrated by: Isaac Mizrahi
- Length: 13 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In I.M., Isaac Mizrahi offers a poignant, candid, and touching look back on his life so far. Growing up gay in a sheltered Syrian Jewish Orthodox family, Isaac had unique talents that ultimately drew him into fashion and later into celebrity circles that read like a who’s who of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries: Richard Avedon, Audrey Hepburn, Anna Wintour, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Meryl Streep, and Oprah Winfrey, to name only a few.
-
-
Even better then I hoped !
- By Gina ihms on 03-08-19
By: Isaac Mizrahi
-
A Gentleman in Moscow
- A Novel
- By: Amor Towles
- Narrated by: Nicholas Guy Smith
- Length: 17 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1922, Count Alexander Rostov is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, and is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life, and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel’s doors. Unexpectedly, his reduced circumstances provide him entry into a much larger world of emotional discovery.
-
-
A Reprieve Amidst Ugly News, Relentless Negativity
- By Cathy Lindhorst on 08-27-17
By: Amor Towles
-
Fall of Giants
- Book One of the Century Trilogy
- By: Ken Follett
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 30 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ken Follett's World Without End was a global phenomenon, a work of grand historical sweep beloved by millions of readers and acclaimed by critics. Fall of Giants is his magnificent new historical epic. The first novel in The Century Trilogy, it follows the fates of five interrelated families - American, German, Russian, English, and Welsh - as they move through the world-shaking dramas of the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and the struggle for women's suffrage.
-
-
Loved it and learned alot.
- By Louis on 10-19-10
By: Ken Follett
-
House of Versace
- The Untold Story of Genius, Murder, and Survival
- By: Deborah Ball
- Narrated by: Jo Anna Perrin
- Length: 12 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Versace. The very name conjures up images of outrageous glamour and bold sexuality, opulence and daring. All of course true, but only half the story. Versace is also the legacy of a great creative genius from a poor, backward part of southern Italy who transformed the fashion world through his intuitive understanding of both women and how a changing culture influenced the way they wanted to dress. House of Versace shows how Gianni Versace, with his flamboyant sister Donatella at his side, combined his virtuosic talent and extraordinary ambition to help create celebrity culture.
-
-
Amazing!
- By Brian M. Derrick on 08-26-19
By: Deborah Ball
Great reading and story
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
This Book is EVERYTHING
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Wow!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Important story told well!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Deeply researched, narratively rich and excellent
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
It reminded you that there is a lot more to fashion than clothes and the artist and the art that it takes to create wearable art
Tormented Genius
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Fascinating and beautifully read
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Fascinating
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I plan to read it a second time.
Highly recommend!
Loved everything about this book .
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
i really enjoyed this book.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.