“When I’m dead and gone, people will know that the twenty-first century was started by Alexander McQueen.”
- Alexander McQueen
Image: The Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art
Lee Alexander McQueen first came to fashion prominence with his role as chief fashion designer at the house of Givenchy. McQueen succeeded John Galliano in this role (Galliano moved from Givenchy to work at Dior) in 1996 until 2001.
In the second year of the new millennium, Lee founded a fashion house under his own name – Alexander McQueen. Throughout his short-lived career, McQueen achieved a series of prestigious fashion accolades including the British Designer of the Year Award in 1996, 1997, 2001 and 2003. In 2003, the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) awarded McQueen with their distinguished International Designer of the Year Award.
With the shocking death of the British designer, the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art decided to exhibit a collection of McQueen’s pieces to demonstrate his two decades of fashion. ‘Savage Beauty’, in the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Exhibition Hall, consisted of one hundred ensembles and seventy accessories, prominently from McQueen catwalks with a few select couture pieces from McQueen’s, Givenchy era.
Andrew Bolton, the curator of the museum’s Costume Institute Gala, sectioned the exhibits with reference to Alexander McQueen’s periodic inspirations; historicism, primitivism, naturalism, exoticism, the gothic and Darwinism.
‘Savage Beauty’ opened to public admission on May 4th and was originally to close on August 1st. The exhibition attracted an unprecedented number of visitors. Due to McQueen’s popularity, the museum included midnight opportunities to peruse the collection and extended the exhibition by one week.
The spotlight on Alexander McQueen’s exhibit, at the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art in New York, will fade with its close at midnight tonight.
Image: The Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art
Dress, VOSS, Spring / Summer 2011.
Red and black ostrich feathers and glass medical slides painted red.
“There’s blood beneath every layer of skin”
- Alexander McQueen
Image: The Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art
Coat, Jack the Ripper Stalks his Victims, MA Graduation Collection, 1992.
Pink silk satin printed in thorn pattern lined in white silk with encapsulated human hair.
From the collection of Isabella Blow, courtesy of the Hon. Daphne Guinness.
“The inspiration behind the hair came from Victorian times when prostitutes would sell theirs for kits of hair locks, which were bought by people to give to their lovers. I used it as my signature label with locks of hair in Perspex. In the early collections, it was my own hair.”
- Alexander McQueen
Image: The Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art
Dress, The Horn of Plenty, Autumn/Winter 2009 – 2010
Black duck feathers.
“It is important to look at death because it is a part of life. It is a sad thing, melancholy but romantic at the same time. It is the end of a cycle—everything has to end. The cycle of life is positive because it gives room for new things.”
- Alexander McQueen
Image: The Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art
Ensemble, Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, Autumn/Winter 2002-2003
Coat of black parachute silk; trouser of black synthetic; hat of black silk satin.
Hat by Philip Treacy for Alexander McQueen, courtesy of Alister Mackie.
“This collection was inspired by Tim Burton. It started off dark and then got more romantic as it went along.”
- Alexander McQueen
Image: The Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art
Ensemble, The Girl Who Lived in the Tree, Autumn/Winter 2008-2009
Coat of red silk satin; dress of ivory silk chiffon embroidered with crystal beads
“I don’t really get inspired [by specific women]. . . . It’s more in the minds of the women in the past, like Catherine the Great, or Marie Antoinette. People who were doomed. Joan of Arc or Colette. Iconic women.”
- Alexander McQueen
Image: The Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art
”Oyster” Dress, Irere, Spring/Summer 2003
Ivory silk organza, georgette, and chiffon
“Working in the atelier [at Givenchy] was fundamental to my career . . . Because I was a tailor, I didn’t totally understand softness, or lightness. I learned lightness at Givenchy. I was a tailor at Savile Row. At Givenchy I learned to soften. For me, it was an education. As a designer I could have left it behind. But working at Givenchy helped me learn my craft.”
- Alexander McQueen
Image: The Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art
Dress, Widows of Culloden, Autumn/Winter 2006/2007
Pheasant feathers
“Birds in flight fascinate me. I admire eagles and falcons. I’m inspired by a feather but also its color, its graphics, its weightlessness and its engineering. It’s so elaborate. In fact I try and transpose the beauty of a bird to women.”
- Alexander McQueen
Image: The Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art
Dress, Widows of Culloden, Autumn/Winter 2006-2007
Cream silk tulle and lace with resin antlers
“When we put the antlers on the model and then draped over it the lace embroidery that we had made, we had to poke them through a £2,000 piece of work. But then it worked because it looks like she’s rammed the piece of lace with her antlers. There’s always spontaneity. You’ve got to allow for that in my shows.”
- Alexander McQueen
Image: The Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art
“Jellyfish” Ensemble, Plato’s Atlantis, Spring / Summer 2010
Dress, leggings, and “Armadillo” boots embroidered with iridescent enamel paillettes
“There is no way back for me now. I am going to take you on journeys you’ve never dreamed were possible.”
- Alexander McQueen
