Champagne Supernovas

“As someone whose knowledge of fashion runs fairly pedestrian, I was surprised to find myself unable to put down Maureen Callahan’s propulsive Champagne Supernovas. With a scholar’s eye and a tabloid reporter’s touch, Callahan bursts open one of the most exclusive industries in the world, revealing to the grit and glamour, the damaged, drug-addled underdogs, and the tortured geniuses who forever changed the way we comprehend and commodify beauty. This instant classic -- a master class in how to write smart, intimate, at times shocking, but always compulsively readable non-fiction -- deserves its place as the 90s answer to other pop culture giants, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls and Fifth Avenue, 5AM.

“Maureen Callahan has pulled off a very neat trick in Champagne Supernovas, capturing the essence of a fleeting moment when fashion’s guard changed. This rise-and-fall story has it all: sex, drugs, rock, and frocks. Fasten your seat belt. It’s a scary fun ride.”

"Shocking but never cheap, sometimes hilarious but more often heartbreaking, Champagne Supernovas is a thorough, intimate, and bracing look at the complicated and deeply troubled figures who sparked a fashion revolution."

“The 90s: a time when fashion suddenly mingled with punk rock, movie stars, art school, the fantasies of the whole world, in ways both deadly and revolutionary. Callahan brilliantly connects all the glittering wreckage from a uniquely explosive moment in pop culture, from London to Seattle to the Viper Room. A major work on a one-of-a-kind pop era.”

“A titillating ride through the ‘90s fashion world, as Kate Moss, Marc Jacobs, and Alexander McQueen eclipsed the reigning glamazons with their waifish chic.”

“Terrifically exciting and fun…this book works as a fun, if cautionary, read about some of the folks who changed fashion in the 1990s. Readers will wonder when a similar trio will arrive to save us all from the Kardashians.”

“Fast paced, gossipy and cleverly put together . . . fantastically entertaining and thoroughly researched . . . this is a book about how myths are made.”

“The author makes great use of personal interviews and reference materials, and through cross comparisons, she discovers like-minded commonalities they all shared with each other…A lucid, smoothly executed look at a pivotal decade in the legacy of American fashion.”

"Champagne Supernovas puts readers in the front row and three of the era's biggest names in the catwalk spotlight. . . . The pace is as quick as an H&M runway knockoff. Callahan's prose is tight, and she stitches together momentum and suspense by alternating chapters on the trio. . . . A page turner filled with juicy behind-the-scenes tales."

"Maureen Callahan proves, in a biography as dramatic and addictive as Game of Thrones, that the decade represents a revolution not just in fashion, but also the broader ideals of beauty. . . . A former editor and writer at New York magazine, Spin and the New York Post, Callahan crafts an intoxicating brew of scholarly rigor, dishy anecdotes and wicked commentary."

“A juicy and gossipy account of the '90s fashion scene. . . . You might not fully approve . . . but you can’t help wishing you were there.”