Center Blog

Photo by Victoria Anderson

Guest Post by Jeff Adams

The Second Tuesday series moved temporarily to Wednesday to welcome Simon Doonan on February 15. The fashion/style maven delighted the audience with a reading from his latest book, Gay Men Don’t Get Fat, and answered a wide variety of questions.

Doonan, who is the Creative Ambassador at Large for Barneys, said he’d debated about what chapter to read—should it be about food, or fitness or celebrity. He ultimately chose “Hokey Hookers and Gypsy Tarts” because “the only way for the ordinary gay or gal to afford fashion is restoring to the world’s oldest profession.” We were regaled with his own “reformed hooker” story, which took place in Manchester in 1973 during his last year of college when his funds were running low.

Photo by Victoria Anderson

It all started because he found out his friend was pleasuring her landlord every month. He decided he’d give it a try to and he went out to a pub in search of someone he could make some cash off of. He ultimately found a Charles Bronson-type and a misadventure ensued. You’ll have to pick up the book to find out what happens because no blog post retelling can do it justice—you need Doonan’s own words.

Following the reading, Doonan took questions from the audience. It’s not surprising, given the title of the book, that the first question was “How do you stay thin?” He said the key is to eat the right mix of gay food and straight food correctly. An example was to mix steak (a straight food) with a salad (a gay food) rather than potatoes (another straight food).

Photo by Victoria Anderson

He went on further to discuss the food he had while growing up and making it clear that he isn’t nostalgic for it at all—he categorized it as appalling. That included the gypsy tart from the chapter he read. A mixture of evaporated milk and sugar, the tart was something he loathed but ended up eating a lot of anyway because it was cheap.

Not surprisingly, there were questions about fashion. Doonan characterizes today’s fashion as incomprehensible. “Every trend that ever was is concurrently available,” he said. “You have to surrender to the vastness. It’s liberating because you just have to have your own wardrobe and look. “

Doonan, who has published five books (six depending on how you count Beautiful People, which is also under the title Nasty in the U.S.) and also writes a column for Slate.com, started writing when he was 44 and “from the get go established a style that was demented.”

“If I had to write straight stories, like covering fashion for The New York Times, I’d have a nervous breakdown,” he said. “The books are a good counterpoint to keep me from being the world’s oldest window dresser.”

Photo by Victoria Anderson

While he no longer does the Barneys windows in his creative ambassador role, he is not sure what the future holds for him. “I’m not very ambitious,” he says. “I’m a hard worker. I’ll grab the opportunities and not procrastinate, but I’m not a visionary.”