FASHION can be acquired, but style is something you're born with. Simon Doonan knows all about it. Now a sprightly 55-year-old at the top of his game, he is - he says - a man who is lucky enough to be doing what he loves.

"You should be wildly worshipful of me because I'm doing something I actually enjoy. A lot of my colleagues work for the money and they make a huge amount more than I do. But I'm the one that gets to have the chuckles," says the man who is creative director at the famous New York fashion emporium Barneys, as well as a noted writer and arbiter of style.

Although he's revered in the world of high fashion it's not as if he was born into it. Fact is, he was born in Reading, England, in a distinctly working class suburb where he grew up in a two-roomed walk-up with no kitchen or bathroom (Oscar Wilde wrote a famously depressing poem about the nearby jail).

His parents, he says, met in a soup kitchen at the end of the war. It was by no means an ideal background for a high-spirited boy who liked to dress up in drag and was fascinated by floral prints.

Doonan's darkly funny family memoirs, which grew out of his weekly column for The New York Observer, are now being made into a sitcom called Beautiful People in England, a fact that amazes him.

"I called my memoir Nasty: My Family and Other Glamorous Varmints because, I find, you remember the really hideous things first, don't you?" Doonan said during an interview with the Irish Voice last week.

"You can remember the time that you took your blind Aunt Phyllis out for a walk and let her slam into a lamppost because you weren't paying attention. Then you're consumed with guilt. It's not a whiney book. I made a deliberate attempt to celebrate the richness of my family and the humor."

The son of Irish parents, Doonan learned early on that in England in the 1950s, being Irish meant being second-class. So his upbringing was, he says, gritty as hell. But his family, and especially his mother Betty, always had such personal style.

Originally from Belfast, his mother became an electrician during World War II, the only woman in a hanger full of a thousand men. "She was the original Rosie the Riveter," says Doonan, betraying his obvious pride.

"Every summer without fail we would pack up and get on the bus and head up to Liverpool for the boat over to Belfast, where we'd spend the summer with my granddad in Bangor. My mother was born in Bangor in 1918 - the year that women got the vote - and she left school at 13. She was very tough and very smart, a self-invented person. She was one who made her own way, and she was an inspiration to me."

That independent streak was inherited by her son, who from an early age was fearless in his determination to meet the world on his own terms.

"I have pictures of me and my best friend Biddie Biddecombe at the age of 10 and we're both wearing full on drag. And I know that my mother took those pictures, she was a little eccentric like my other relatives. Her instructions to me were basically don't become a heroin addict or end up in a loony bin like a lot of my relatives."

Oddly enough, that eccentric family background actually prepared Doonan for the life of glamour that he dreamed of in London. In 1973, when he and his childhood best friend Biddie set off for still Swinging London he told his friends that just like Lynn Redgrave in the film Smashing Times, "I'm going to get a flat and a modeling job and I'll be back in half an hour."

Doonan attributes his success to his work ethic and his ability to make good on the lucky breaks that came his way.

"I didn't have a fabulous career in London. I just had a job. So when a lot of young kids come to me now and ask how do you do it, how do I get to be you? I just tell them get a job. Work hard and don't worry too much. Go to Macy's and get an entry level job and stop bothering me."

In the 1970s during the era of punk rock, Doonan was dressing upscale fashion store windows with coffins and stuffed rats (wearing rhinestones and tiaras), and quickly he started to get recognition. Then one day came the offer of a job and a green card to the U.S., and Doonan immediately said yes. At the age of 25 he just ran home and packed.

"Living in LA was fun," says Doonan. "I was just 25. When I see Britney Spears and some of these girls carrying on now I remember I was very like that myself. Only minus the fame and all the money.

"We'd stop at the beach and take all our clothes off and go swimming because it was hot. The difference was there were no paparazzi following us everywhere. Why do they make such a big deal about it?"

Doonan, remembering his mother's powerful example, has always been a champion of uncompromising self-expression, particularly when it comes to what he calls "wacky chicks," the girls who blow a raspberry at social expectations and usually get away with it.

"I think Ireland has more than its fair share of self-invented women, women who have faced discrimination. Irish women like my mum can make other women look a bit insipid," he says.

In his latest book Eccentric Glamour: Creating an Insanely More Fabulous You, Doonan offers what he calls "a defense against the tidal wave of slutty dressing and porno-chic which has been engulfing us since the arrival of Paris Hilton, Anna Nicole Smith, may she rest in peace, and Tara Reid."

Doonan believes that the real pathway to a more insanely fabulous you means recognizing that your own unique personal style is your birthright. It means understanding and magnifying the core of your individuality, all the things that make you yourself, and not parroting the latest look in the celebrity rags.

"You need to stop trying to understand fashion and just understand yourself. Use clothes and style as a form of self-expression and don't worry about being in or out or whatever. Clothes are non-verbal communication. Carrie Bradshaw is a very good example of eccentric glamour. Pat Field always does a great job with her."

Doonan's celebration of women who meet the world on their own terms is heartfelt, so he was the obvious first choice to interview Madonna about her new album Hard Candy in Elle magazine in April. A fan since the early days he was, he says, insanely nervous.

"It was scary. I had met her before and achieved a minute comfort level but it was still terrifying because I don't have that kind of drive. My drive only extends to keeping myself entertained," Doonan says.

"I'm very productive but it's all about entertaining myself. Her vision is macro and global in a way I can't really wrap my head around. She's a very impressive person, and you have to hand it to her for staying relevant."

Last weekend Doonan hit the news again when he announced that he planned to wed his longtime boyfriend, designer Jonathan Adler, in California later this year.

"Some reporter in Los Angeles asked me the other night if we planned to get married and I replied yes, actually, we will in San Francisco in September. It was a very en passant remark. I didn't think much of it. But by the time we got back to New York it was all over the papers. I thought maybe I should turn into Star Jones and milk it."

(Eccentric Glamour: Creating an Insanely More Fabulous You, is published by Simon and Schuster.)