Savage Beauty

People often ask me why I'm so fascinated with fashion, and to be honest I can never give one consistent, straight answer. However, I hope this excerpt of a review I wrote on "Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty", an exhibition I visited at The Metropolitan Museum of Art over the summer, will show a little of why I'm so infatuated with the industry... RIP Lee Alexander McQueen, you will always remain in my heart.

---As soon as I saw the entrance, even from afar, I knew Savage Beauty would be something special. “Alexander McQueen, Savage Beauty” was imprinted in gilded gold letters that stretched across a dramatic black shelf, and two gorgeous dresses from Voss (S/S 2001) were on display; a red feathery/paneled creation as well as a dress made entirely of oyster shells. Although I don’t usually read the entirety of museum introductions (they tend to become tedious after a while), I was drawn to read every word during my time in Savage Beauty. I even read all of the featured McQueen quotes, which I found to be interesting and insightful in regards to his personality and designs.

Upon entering, I came face to face with a mass of black. Mostly suit-cut, from his early days, tuxedo-like creations loomed high and low, and highlighted Lee’s innovative cutting practices, as well as his famous bumster pants. The collections featured were very Tim Burton/Sweeney Todd-esque, and featured a stark juxtaposition between graceful femininity and strong masculinity. As McQueen said, he wanted people “to be afraid of the women who wore his designs”. I love the fact that he wanted the woman he dressed to be powerful and strong, especially due to the fact that clothes are often deemed as just “pretty”.

I soon came into contact with the more sadistic, dark aspects of Lee. The next dresses featured various chains and belts, and highlighted the macabre fetishes and darkness that McQueen believed to exist in every human soul. I must say here that the Met did phenomenally with special effects/presentation. An eerie soundtrack followed guests, and a black ensemble from Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious (F/W 2002) featuring a fantastic cape fluttered violently in a glass case. My surroundings gave me the effect of being in McQueen’s own dark mind. Another prevalent theme I saw was the use of paintings, which were incorporated (literally) into clothing. Canvases became dresses, coats, etc. (It's a Jungle Out There, F/W 1997), and I often saw faces peering back at me. The experience as a whole was very real, and I forgot momentarily that I was in a museum.

Then, I became glassy-eyed when I glimpsed my favorite collection by McQueen, The Girl Who Lived in the Tree (F/W 2008). The jeweled, Tudor-inspired dresses and garments simply took my breath away; I felt like I had become reunited with old friends, friends who I had last seen splashed across the pages of Vogue on a certain Sasha Pivovarova. I enjoyed the pieces from Widows of Culloden (F/W 2006) and Highland Rape (F/W 1995) as well, although I became greatly embarrassed when I read McQueen’s quote regarding the collection, which stated that uninformed people had assumed that the collection was about the rape of a woman, when in reality it was about the rape of Scotland by the British (unfortunately, I had constituted as the “uninformed” before reading the quotation). This was just another indication of the layers of complexity that were behind every one of McQueen's collections; they were all so much more than they appeared on the surface.

I cannot recall every part of Savage Beauty in great detail, but I remember certain bits and pieces for the remainder of my time spent in McQueen’s world (I may have stayed for roughly 2 hours in that exhibit... Sorry Dad). I remember a hologram of Kate Moss in a floating confection from Widows of Culloden (F/W 2006) to the tune of a melancholy song from the soundtrack of Schindler’s List - the hologram was so somber yet beautiful, and reminded me of Lee’s personal life; one filled with beauty, yet ending with tragedy. I also recall a video clip from Voss (S/S 2001), a collection that was made to champion inner beauty. In the video, a woman who didn’t portray society's generally accepted perception of beauty emerged from a closed box, an allusion to our constant harboring of inner beauty while choosing to focus on the exterior instead. 

The last part of the exhibit was also McQueen’s last full collection - Plato’s Atlantis (S/S 2010). It featured the armadillo shoes made famous by Lady Gaga, as well as other reptilian-looking garments that looked as if they belonged in the deep sea. I was genuinely surprised that McQueen was such an all-around Romantic; he fully believed in the concept of the Sublime, and Plato’s Atlantis was a testament to a future time when humans would have to live underwater, where life originated. 

Savage Beauty led me to view Lee in a million new ways, as a true creative genius who embraced the darkness in humanity that the majority chooses to ignore. I don't think I fully understood the emotion that could go into fashion before visiting the exhibit, the meaning that fashion could convey, and the way it could make an observer think and feel. Every garment was positively beautiful and exquisitely made (butterfly/ship headpieces were notables, as were the Armadillo heels of course), and somehow captured human passion in physical form. It sounds like an over-exaggeration, but viewing 100+ pieces of McQueen’s work from the beginning of his career to the end was truly life changing. He will forever be an inspiration.