Alexander McQueen’s Iconic Designs Christina Moon, Todd Nicewonger

Figure 1 Gallery View Title Gallery Courtesy of the Metropolitan Musuem of Art.

1 Quote by Thomas P. Campbell, Director of The Metropolitan Museum The avant-garde, it is commonly believed, creates new social of Art, in Metropolitan Museum of possibilities. This statement certainly is true in the case of fashion Art Alexander McQueen Exhibition designer Alexander McQueen. McQueen’s work has been described Press Release, http://www.metmu- as an exemplar of the kind of design that has “changed the course of seum.org/press_room/full_release. history and culture by creating new possibilities.”1 A trained tailor asp?prid=%7BDF7267FE-C1DC-44A3- AADC-8DF2B36FA870%7D (accessed from a working class family of Scottish descent, McQueen first June 3, 2011). gained public attention as a graduate student at Central St. Martin’s 2 For example, McQueen made headlines in . Soon after finishing his studies, he became ’s during the 1990s with his designed head designer and several years later launched his label, Alexander “bumsters,” or low-rise pants that McQueen. Known for his ability to draw on the darkly romantic revealed the crevices of buttocks; and he emotions of his muses, McQueen’s self-inflicted death in February often embellished and handbags with printed skulls. His theatrical shows 2010 brought a somber conclusion to a highly celebrated career. were also known to be quite contro- In memoriam, the Metropolitan Museum of Art commissioned an versial. For his VOSS Spring/Summer exhibition of his work, titled: Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty, 2001 collection, McQueen exhibited a which ran from May 2011 through August 2011. heavy-set naked woman surrounded by The show was meant to be a retrospective of McQueen’s entire fluttering moths. This masked woman turned out to be journalist Michelle Olly. body of work as a fashion designer. And although certain selected A video of this event was included in pieces helped explain why he earned the title “l’enfant terrible” Savage Beauty, and Olly’s memory of the of the fashion world,2 Savage Beauty opened up several critical experience was shared in the exhibit’s vantages for understanding McQueen’s reputation beyond agent audio tour. © 2011 Massachusetts Institute of Technology DesignIssues: Volume 28, Number 1 Winter 2012 101

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DESI_r_00129 by guest on 25 September 2021 provocateur. For instance, the exhibit highlighted how his designs created radically new possibilities for both reflecting and expressing cultural, historical, and subjectively political imaginaries. In doing so, the show provided a glimpse into the emotional dimensions of McQueen’s work, as well as the intimate and collaborative relationships that so profoundly shaped it. Alexander McQueen sought not only to transfigure the body through design and material culture, but to transform our emotions and ideas about the body as well. In providing these perspectives, the exhibit offered a unique opportunity to reflect on how fashion designers create new ways of interpreting the boundaries of fashion by drawing from their experiences in the larger world. For example, in moving through the exhibition, the little details called attention to the fact that McQueen was not only a highly accomplished designer, but also a socially engaged and sensitive observer. The quotes on the wall, echoing snippets of his thoughts, and the rhythmic beats of Bjork’s music playing through the audio system afforded to exhibit attendees the inspirational sources that once shaped his creative pursuits. Through these details, we learned that McQueen’s creativity was not just borne of some intrinsic quality, but also was a skill honed and developed through his interactions with a world full of sounds, feelings, and visual stimuli. Such influences can easily remain hidden behind fully realized design ideas, such as McQueen’s celebrated Highland Rape collection or the evocative VOSS dress. In the face of a completed design, viewers are not privy to the decisions, failed experiments, and background stories that went into its creation. And yet, in beginning to reflect on such a prolific designer as McQueen’s, one desires to learn more about his creative process and the place from where he drew his inspiration. Perhaps the most striking element of McQueen’s work, and one that curator sought to make explicit, was his desire to convey visceral feelings and sentiments through clothing, ornamentation, and display. This desire was clearly evidenced by McQueen’s keen interest in playing with notions of value and meaning through his innovative use of synthetic and organic materials. In all seven galleries of the exhibit (i.e., The Romantic Mind, Romantic Gothic, Cabinet of Curiosities, Romantic Nationalism, Romantic Exoticism, Romantic Primitivism, and Romantic Naturalism), we witnessed how McQueen whimsically reused materials discarded by nature to create new, beautiful, and innovative forms. Dresses made entirely out of long razor clam shells, gold-painted bird feathers, or coarse, kinky horsehair were striking in their novel use of uniform, natural materials. Other designs demonstrated his playful mimicry of nature caught in the midst of a life cycle. Leather was stretched and molded closely over the body so as to look like a second layer of skin, or was sewn into shaped barnacles that clung to the body as they cling to ocean rocks.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DESI_r_00129 by guest on 25 September 2021 Hundreds of thousands of glass beads strung onto a dress seemed to have grown like algae, and layers upon layers of light tulle recreated the ridged forms of oysters. Such naturalistic interests were further captured in earrings shaped into silver falcon claws, clutching a fresh catch of pearls and flowers wilted in a state of rot formed into a dress. McQueen marveled at the graphics, physics, engineering, and design of the materials nature produced and re-imagined them as adornments for the body. In his life and work, Alexander McQueen used what was available around him to create new meanings from the objects and remnants of everyday life, cast away as refuse. McQueen also drew on historical and personal aspects of his own life, often investing emotion, artistic expression, and narrative Figure 2 history in the objects he created. The exhibit gave opportunity Alexander McQueen (Brittish, 1969-2010). to encounter not just objects of fashion, but talismans, fetishes, Dress, Irere, spring/summer 2003, Courtesy of heirlooms, and varying objects of sentiment. McQueen gave such the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Photograph artifacts complex autobiographical histories, creating personalized ©Solve Sundsbo/Artt Commerce. value and meaning from such material forms. Lockets of hair sewn into the pockets of jackets referenced the social rituals of a bygone era, where the tresses of prostitutes served as a token of love between lovers. Similarly, the tailored recreations of Victorian dresses that made up his M.A. thesis collection (featured in the first gallery) were actually an intimate genealogical portrait that connected his own ancestry to Jack the Ripper. Such combinations of political history and personal cultural heritage were also made in his Highland Rape collection (exhibited in the fourth gallery), where he used tattered and torn dresses as political commentary about the uprisings and displacement of his Scottish ancestors. Savage Beauty demonstrated how McQueen’s creations were inspired by traditions, folklore, and historiography—often a historical revisionism dramat- ically inflected with personal meaning. Another display that broke from the more traditional approaches of fashion exhibition was titled “Cabinet of Curiosities” (the third gallery). In this display were featured accessory pieces, such as hats, shoes, and jewelry used to complete McQueen’s aesthetic vision on the runway. Particularly captivating about this display was the way it honored his significant collaborative relationships with fellow artisans and craftsmen, whom McQueen greatly respected. Hats designed in collaboration with the milliner Phillip Treacy depicted Chinese garden scenes, wicker picnic baskets, and swarms of butterflies. Jewelry designed with silversmith Shaune Leane featured tusks, body armor, and a “corset” that resembled the human spine and ribcage. Also in this room viewers could watch videos of runway shows, including one of model and actress , spinning on a rotating platform while being aggressively spray-painted by armed robots. In another video, para-athlete Aimee Mullins walked down the runway in prosthetic legs made of carved wood. Throughout Savage Beauty, wall texts reminded

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DESI_r_00129 by guest on 25 September 2021 visitors that central to McQueen’s vision was the concept of individ- ualism, “the hero-artist who staunchly follows the dictates of his inspiration.”3 Nevertheless, this hall also reiterated the significance in McQueen’s work of the inspiration derived from his collaborative relationships and the powerful influence these relationships had on his creative process. These collaborative relationships were also emphasized in the same gallery’s audio tour. For example, the late , a stylist and magazine editor who was McQueen’s friend and muse, was remembered. Blow committed herself in 2007, and while the media has portrayed the friendship as one soured by greed and betrayal, here as told by the voices of mutual friends, the history of their friendship and collaboration was remembered with tenderness. McQueen and Blow had an emotional connection—one that shaped both their aesthetic visions and their personal values in powerful ways—even beyond the fashion world. In the exhibit, Phillip Treacy anecdotally described how Blow would telephone McQueen on a daily basis to share some inane tidbit about an aristocratic royal of another century, providing an intimate insight and exceptional glimpse into one of the most publicly discussed relationships in McQueen’s life. Exiting the exhibit, the music of John Gosling, McQueen’s long-time music collaborator, reverberated throughout the rooms. The swell of violin music romantic and deeply somber, was enough to bring one to tears. The opportunity for such sentiments was ended abruptly by cash registers and lines of people wanting to depart with a memento of the show; in that respect, the exhibit’s accompanying catalog, Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty, by Andrew Bolton, was a worthwhile purchase. The book featured the beautiful photography of Sølve Sundsbø, but the gem of the book was a rare interview with , the creative director for McQueen who worked so intimately with him for 14 years. In total, Savage Beauty truly conveyed McQueen’s desire to “connect”—to find material ways to extend our senses to receive and experience the shapes, contours, and patterns of everyday life. The exhibit served as reminder, then, that the boundaries of fashion are permeable, and its coordinates are not easily mapped. Innovation in fashion requires a persistent curiosity, and in Alexander McQueen, we saw a designer who questioned, pushed, and probed until his designs expressed both material and transcendent being. In its communication Savage Beauty provided viewers with a retrospective journey through McQueen’s career as a designer, while inviting them to engage his work as a body of material inventions and also as a set of possible interventions for re-imagining life itself.

3 Andrew Bolton, Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2011), 13.

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