Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty (Fashion Studies)

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Published to coincide with an exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art organized by The Costume Institute, this stunning book includes a preface by Andrew Bolton; an introduction by Susannah Frankel; an interview by Tim Blanks with Sarah Burton, creative director of the house of Alexander McQueen; illuminating quotes from the designer himself; provocative and captivating new photography by renowned photographer Sølve Sundsbø; and a lenticular cover by Gary James McQueen. Nature was the greatest, or at least the most enduring, influence upon Alexander McQueen. Many artists of the Romantic Movement presented nature itself as a work of art. McQueen both shared and promoted this view in his collections, which often included fashions that took their forms and raw materials from the natural world.

McQueen expressed this originality most fundamentally through his methods of cutting and construction. These were both innovatory and revolutionary. He was such an assured designer that his forms and silhouettes were established from his earliest collections, and remained relatively consistent throughout his career. Alexander McQueen consistently promoted freedom of thought and expression and championed the authority of the imagination. In this, he was an exemplar of the Romantic individual, the hero-artist who staunchly followed the dictates of his inspiration. Right. All the works were part of McQueen’s archive and we photographed them there. The models we hired had worked as dress models for McQueen, so they were familiar with wearing his garments. We shot the photographs in December 2010, on a very fast schedule. We had to start printing the book in February so that copies would arrive from the Italian printer in time for the show’s opening in May. Alexander McQueen's dashing creativity was expressed through the technical artistry of his designs and the dramatic intensity of his fashion shows. Drawing on avant-garde installation and performance art, these were also emphatically autobiographical. McQueen fearlessly challenged the conventions of fashion. Rare among designers, he saw beyond clothing's physical constraints to its conceptual and imaginative possibilities.

Savage Beauty

When you see a woman wearing McQueen, there's a certain hardness to the clothes that makes her look powerful. It kind of fends people off." Alexander McQueen (17 March 1969 - 11 February 2010) was an icon in the fashion industry. He is currently the subject of a spectacular exhibition of his works at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and this book serves as a catalogue for that exhibition. From the lenticular cover by Gary James McQueen ('Lenticular printing is a technology in which a lenticular lens is used to produce images with an illusion of depth, or the ability to change or move as the image is viewed from different angles') to the layout or deign of the book itself to the extraordinary photography (by Sølve Sundsbø) this book is an art piece by itself. Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty opened at The Met in 2011. This year we celebrate the tenth anniversary of the exhibition and its publication, which has sold over 340,000 copies and counting. Written by Andrew Bolton—with an introduction by fashion journalist Susannah Frankel and an interview with Alexander McQueen’s creative director, Sarah Burton, conducted by Tim Blanks—this stunning book remains an essential publication on the groundbreaking artistry of this provocative designer. One of the defining features of Alexander McQueen’s collections was their historicism. While McQueen’s historical references were far- reaching, he was particularly inspired by the nineteenth century, drawing especially on the Victorian Gothic. ‘There’s something kind of Edgar Allan Poe,’ he once observed, ‘kind of deep and kind of melancholic about my collections.’

McQueen’s brilliance is celebrated in this sumptuous tome. . . . The hologram cover makes it a collector’s item.”— Harper’s Bazaar McQueen's romantic sensibility propelled his creativity and advanced his fashion in directions both unimagined and unprecedented. His individualistic and defiant vision was augmented by an acute sense of time and place, and a preoccupation with the exotic and the untamed. Filtered through a powerful modernity McQueen's work was, above all, driven by his fascination with the beauty and savagery of the natural world. The collection was a meditation on the dynamics of power, in particular the dialectical relationship between predator and prey. McQueen’s reflections on primitivism were frequently represented in paradoxical combinations, contrasting modern and primitive, civilized and uncivilized. Typically, McQueen’s narrative glorified the state of nature and tipped the moral balance in favour of the ‘natural man’ or ‘nature’s gentleman’, unfettered by the artificial constructs of civilization.This book . . . helps illuminate McQueen’s artistic process. Recommended for readers with an interest in contemporary fashion.”— Library Journal Like Byron, Beethoven, and Delacroix, McQueen is an exemplar of the Romantic individual, the hero-artist who staunchly followed the dictates of his inspiration. As a designer, he doggedly promoted freedom of thought and expression and championed the authority of the imagination.”

With most books, we go through many rounds of cover designs, and it is often hard to get consensus on the right image. Early in the planning, the exhibition’s curator Andrew Bolton and I met with the representatives from the McQueen organization in the Museum’s staff café. They showed us an invitation from one of McQueen’s last runway shows featuring a lenticular image, which shifted from a portrait of McQueen to a patterned skull depending on how we angled the card. Suddenly we had a cover. It never happens like that. Arguably the most influential, imaginative, and provocative designer of his generation, Alexander McQueen both challenged and expanded fashion conventions to express ideas about race, class, sexuality, religion, and the environment. Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty examines the full breadth of the designer’s career, from the start of his fledgling label to the triumphs of his own world-renowned London house. It features his most iconic and radical designs, revealing how McQueen adapted and combined the fundamentals of Savile Row tailoring, the specialized techniques of haute couture, and technological innovation to achieve his distinctive aesthetic. It also focuses on the highly sophisticated narrative structures underpinning his collections and extravagant runway presentations, with their echoes of avant-garde installation and performance art. What do you think most contributes to the popularity and longevity of this book over the past decade? Selected by columnist Julie Lasky as one of Designers & Books's Notable Design Books of 2011 and winner of the 2012 Independent Publisher Book Award for Most Outstanding Design. he always called himself a designer, not an artist. He was a showman more than anything. Still, when you think about how he designed, it did feel more about art. It was never, "Oh, is this comfortable?" It was all about the vision and the head-to-toe look of it. When you saw the models lining up, it was so clear and so direct. Lee was a designer who was making a world and telling a story. Sometimes it was on such a level that maybe the fashion audience wasn't the right audience to tell it to, but what audience was right? That's the problem I think he had. The stigma: is it fashion? Is it art? But if it's not making money, you can't do these amazing shows. Lee did care about the commercial side of the industry, but what most people remember are the shows.

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features new glorious photos of some of the late designer's most glorious pieces. The book also includes Tim Blanks's interview with McQueen's successor, Sarah Burton—one of the most extensive that's been conducted to date." An authoritative and moving insight into the legacy of the British designer.”—Carola Long, Financial Times Like the Victorian Gothic, which combines elements of horror and romance, McQueen’s collections often reflected paradoxical relationships such as life and death, lightness and darkness, melancholy and beauty.