Alexander McQueen

Product Information

Alexander McQueen’s fascination with the elemental—earth, wind, fire and water—imbued his collections with primordial drama. Nature and its materials were a constant in McQueen’s work.

Victoria and Albert Museum, London London was at the heart of McQueen’s world. The son of a taxi driver, he grew up in the East End and left school at 15 to become a tailor’s apprentice on Savile Row in Mayfair. In 1990 he joined the prestigious MA Fashion course at Central Saint Martins. Already a highly proficient and inventive tailor, here he learned how to be a fashion designer, drawing inspiration from London’s history, its world-class museums and emerging BritArt scene.

Since the exhibition, there have been many books published on McQueen. I thought ours might be surpassed, but it remains a benchmark.

McQueen developed a host of new shapes, tailored to mimic marine features: pronounced hips and shoulders gave way to amorphous forms; a fluted miniskirt resembled the folds of a jellyfish; puffed sleeves were folded and pleated to connote gills. 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. 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. The book’s popularity is a testament to McQueen’s talent, originality, and creativity, as well as Andrew Bolton’s insight and vision. It is a book meant to be looked at over and over. Even a decade later, there is always something new and inspiring to discover. As with any works of art in The Met collection, the staff preserves and protects all accessioned costumes from deterioration. For this reason, no one may wear a garment after it enters the collection. You were able to photograph McQueen’s works on live models because they weren’t accessioned Museum objects, right?It's hard to find garments like that amid the high street's shapeless viscose and denim. McQueen's collections were art. As Burton says:

I do not follow fashion closely by any stretch of the imagination, but found Alexander McQueen's craftsmanship breathtaking and his complex ideas expressed about Nature, culture, politics, gender, sexuality and beauty really fascinating. I want to be the purveyor of a certain silhouette or a way of cutting, so that when I'm dead and gone people will know that the twenty-first century was started by Alexander McQueen.' 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.

To quote from the introduction of the book itself, "The latest in a long line of male homosexual designers who exploit women while pandering to their own fantasies." 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 Museum of Savage Beauty explores the hidden stories and craftsmanship behind some of the most remarkable objects made by Alexander McQueen and his creative collaborators. Here the designer's iconic pieces are placed alongside historical objects from the V&A’s collections, which represent some of the many design traditions that inspired him Skip to content Art and Religion Fashion can be really racist, looking at the clothes of other cultures as costumes. That's mundane and it's old hat. Let's break down some barriers.' The installation curated by Andrew Bolton at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is absolutely wonderful, astonishing, extraordinary! I would give this book five stars if it contained photographs from the actual installation -- raw concrete stages, aged mirrors, Cabinet of Curiosities room, etc. This 8.5 minute video will give you a good overview of the "experience": http://blog.metmuseum.org/alexandermc...

It amazes me! Perhaps it reached a tipping point and became so iconic that everyone affected by McQueen’s work wanted to have it.

Savage Mind

McQueen, arguably more of a performance artist than even a fashion designer, used every influence, everything he learned, to form his art in his unique interpretational way. Each idea was personalized using world history and his imagination. His incredible attention to tailoring, learned on Saville Row during an apprenticeship at the tailor shop used by the Monarchy, is staggering. He could cut a pattern from a vision in his head in 3 minutes!!! McQueen often referenced art historical works in his garments. He favoured the painters of fifteenth-century Northern Europe, including Hans Memling, Robert Campin and Hieronymus Bosch. The collection featured a number of exoticised garments, including a coat and a dress appliquéd with roundels in the shape of chrysanthemums. A fragile, blood-red glass and ostrich feather gown offered a meditation on life's transience, while a thermal image of the designer's face was woven into the fabric of a silk coat.