Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty

//Brief overview\\

The exhibit was organized into rooms filled with looks under the themes of:

The Romantic Mind concrete walls mirror stark menswear tailoring influence of his Saville Row time

Romantic Gothic garments from the "Edgar Allan Poe of fashion"; aged mirrors add creep

Cabinet of Curiosities accessories in cubby holes, runway show footage

Romantic Nationalism clothing inspired by Scottish and British heritage

Romantic Exoticism music box-like mirrors and turn tables show off aesthetics from other cultures

Romantic Primitivism materials from nature, predator vs. prey

Romanticism Naturalism man vs. machine, nature vs. technology, white plastic sanitarium bricks

The emotion pouring out of McQueen's garments was uncanny.

 The fragile lace over a frail body stained and ripped on the upper thigh and chest. It hurts it's so violent, and yet mesmerizing.  From Highland Rape, about the rape of Scotland by England during the Jacobite Risings and Highland Clearances.

I felt so happy that someone could feel this image so deeply and then do something with it to make it even more sharp. It's comforting that someone was that emotionally alive and aware.
Click on this one to see it full size, it makes a difference.

Fragile girl with pink and purple scrambling to protect herself from the world. Probably using a pillow for self defense.

Every piece had a world of thought behind it. 

"Fashion can be really racist, looking at the clothes of other cultures as costumes" (Romantic Exoticism) "The reason I'm patriotic about Scotland is because I think it's been dealt a really hard hand. It's marketed the world over as . . . haggis . . . bagpipes. But no one ever puts anything back into it." (Romantic Nationalism)

 "It was a reaction to designers romanticizing ethnic dressing, like a Masai-inspired dress made of materials the Masai could never afford." (Nihilism collection, Romantic Primitivism)

The space the exhibit was housed in was equally as carefully planned. Each room had distinct music that fit the mood of the garments; one had a spooky wind, one an almost music box-y sound.

The rooms were designed in a way that put you in the aesthetic of the clothing.
This is the Highland Rape room, part of Romantic Nationalism. Rawness in the clothes and wood on the walls, rips in the fabric and floor.

Some garments were put on turntables for full viewing, the movement as dynamic as the looks themselves.
Others had mirrors underneath them so you could see how the piece was constructed underneath.

It didn't stop at the stationary, covering the performance art of his runway shows. Footage of the live shows, films showed at them, and the Kate Moss hologram from Widows of Culloden.

Even the exhibition catalogue was saturated with McQueen spirit. Shot by Sølve Sundsbø (one of my all-time favorite photographers), the images appear to be the standard mannequin centered catalogue. However, the "mannequins" are actually models, covered in alabaster acrylic paint (a new MAC product that doesn't rub off on clothes after dry) and strings tied around their bodies where the cracks on a mannequin would be, and digitally manipulated. They blur the lines between real and artificial, alive and inanimate; "The human started to break through, she is both artificial and flesh and blood," said Sundsbø. McQueen himself blurred the lines between fashion, art, and performance art,  creating his own world that was impossible to categorize.

I chose not to do an illustration for this post because Sundsbø's images were so perfect. 

Aside from a showcase of garments, the exhibit was an explanation of the emotions behind McQueen's work.
The whole thing was one big tangible mood. Upon leaving I couldn't stop thinking about the man behind it. Tormented (shown in constant tension in his clothes: dark/light, evil/good, life/death, technology/nature), a deep feeler, well versed in art history, equally loving the beautiful and the grotesque, and full of ideas, I'm overwhelmed at the creative and passionate force that can come from one person. I get the feeling that what he gave the world during his life was only a taste of what he had to offer. 

This song, "Perfection" by Oh Land, fits the exhibit perfectly (don't know if pun was intended).
She sings in English, but her accent adds some exoticism, just like McQueen uses familiar Saville Row tailoring with influences from other cultures.
Ethereal, soft, overwhelming, mesmerizing, dynamic, melancholy, celebratory, magical.