Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty
By Andrew Bolton
Yale University Press, 239 pages
Available at National Book Store
It’s hard to miss this book.
Peering behind a holographic skull from a substantial fabric-bound hardback is Alexander McQueen. A fitting image for a book that attempts to provide a glimpse into the mind of the reclusive late designer, who once again leaped into prominence in the news when the newly-christened Duchess of Cambridge turned to McQueen successor Sarah Burton for her now-iconic wedding dress, followed by the Vogue-hosted Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute gala which celebrated McQueen’s life’s work.
In Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty, Andrew Bolton tackles the man behind the myth with an extended interview with Burton, helmed by Tim Blanks, who delved into McQueen’s work process (he liked to work in 3D, foregoing sketches and shaping fabric directly on the fit model, often crafting patterns on the spot or demanding new techniques from studio assistants) and his evolution — from learning tailoring on Savile Row to discovering softness at Givenchy to, later, mastering his vision at his own house.
The Man Behind The Myth
Raw files: “I find that untouchable Hollywood glamour alienating,” Alexander “Lee” McQueen says. “It has no relevance to the way I live my life. Remember where you came from.”
Born to a working class family, McQueen was fond of referencing his personal life in his work. His graduating thesis at Central St Martins revolved around Jack the Ripper, having traced his ancestry to the infamous criminal. Isabella Blow, who would later become his friend and help shape his future in fashion, famously purchased the entire collection after viewing it.
“There has been this thing about the East End yob made good,” Lee recalls of his reputation in the press during the early part of his career. “But the press started that, not me. It’s the Pygmalion syndrome. It’s not true… At the end of the day, you’re a good designer or not and it doesn’t matter where you come from… I don’t think you can become a good designer or not or a great designer or whatever. To know about color, proportion, shape, cut, balance, is part of a gene. To me, you just are one. My sister is an amazing artist. My brother is an amazing artist. Amazing. Much better than I am. The difference is, they thought they had no chance but to do a manual job. That really upsets me.”
Having courted controversy early in his career, like informing journalists that during his tenure at Anderson & Sheppard he scribbled obscenities into the lining of coats bound for the closet of the Prince of Wales (the label quickly recalled the garments he worked on when the story went viral but found no evidence of vandalism), McQueen became an almost enigmatic figure. During the mid-’90s, his ascent to media darling and fashion authority already cemented, McQueen was still working out of a basement, living on social security. He resorted to his second name Alexander, instead of Lee as he was known by family and friends, for his label. His fear of having his government-funded paycheck rescinded turned him into an anti-fame whore: he shied away from the paparazzi and the parties.
Soon LVMH came calling and McQueen found himself head of Givenchy, having replaced the scandal-plagued Galliano who had gotten promoted to Dior. With an LVMH-funded paycheck in his bank account, McQueen was able to grow his own house’s operation. Whereas his early productions were constructed by a meager staff of two (“It was just me and Lee,” says McQueen PR Trino Verkade of a 1995 presentation. “I did everything. I remember I dressed the set for the ‘Highland Rape’ show. There was no show producer back then.”), McQueen found he could invest more in his collections.
Method Behind The Madness
McQueen and country: “You’re a good designer or not,” says McQueen, who was born to a working class family, “and it doesn’t matter where you come from…” What few people are aware of — and what Bolton quickly makes apparent — is the conceptual process behind every collection. McQueen always began with an idea for the show and from there would spring a fountain of ideas: new-fangled techniques on manipulating corsetry, treating fabric and working with new materials.
Once, the designer presented his studio assistants with a pack of razorback clamshells and said, “We’re going to make a dress out of these.” It later became a floor-length column sheath.
“Lee always had a way of bring ideas from anywhere,” Sarah Burton tells Tim Blanks. “It was about finding beauty in everything. He often challenged people’s perceptions of beauty. Lee liked to shock people because he wanted them to feel something.”
In his S/S 1999 collection dubbed, “No. 13,” he included Paralympics champion Aimee Mullins, crafting heavily embellished prosthetic lower legs hand-carved in wood for her. (For months after, editors would call PR requesting the piece, mistaking them for ornate footwear.)
Though his work was often beautiful, he had no interest in perfection.
“I find that untouchable Hollywood glamour alienating,” he says. “It has no relevance to the way I live my life. Remember where you came from.”
Putting On A Show
Shortly before the McQueen tribute at the Met gala, critics questioned the place of fashion in a venue dedicated to art.
The New York Times devoted a piece just last month to museums using fashion as a lure for visitors and big-ticket supporters. “Until about 10 years ago, there was an uneasy relationship between museums and fashion,” Met Costume Institute curator Harold Koda tells the Times. “But today there are more museum directors who are engaging in contemporary fashion.”
“Most museum administrators are not particularly keen on fashion because it is not generally considered art, and these shows do take place at art museums,” Valerie Steele, director of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, explains in the same article. “Of course, we realize that art is commercial, but it has a reputation for transcending that, whereas clothing does not.”
While some of the recent exhibitions at smaller museums are clearly a populist move to encourage middle-brow Project Runway-watching folks (at least, according to The New York Times), the Met Gala’s tribute seemed appropriately significant for a designer of McQueen’s stature and cultural impact.
Most people familiar with his work know that the designer’s oeuvre was more than just ad campaigns and licensing deals.
“He always called himself a designer, not an artist,” says Burton. “He was a showman more than anything. Still when you think about the way he designed, it did feel more about art. It was never, ‘Oh is that comfortable?’ It was all about the vision and the head-to-toe look of it. Lee was a designer who was making a world and telling a story.
“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 any 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.”
Bolton’s tome, which is an almost-encyclopedic documentation of McQueen’s creations, features stunning photographs by Solve Sunsbo (some of which are featured in this newspaper but deserve a closer view — preferably under good light, all the better to pore over the details). In the photographs, shot on a (sometimes headless) model made to look like a mannequin, it immediately becomes apparent to anyone with a passing acquaintance with art that the garments present in the images — the dress made of mussels, the sharply-cut jacket with antlers jutting out of the shoulders, an intimidatingly ruffled frock that manages to be both austere and flamboyant at the same time, a gown fashioned from decaying flowers to signal his darkly romantic mood — are more than clothes on a rack.
“My collections have always been autobiographical, a lot to do with my own sexuality and coming to terms with the person I am — it was like exorcising ghosts in the collections,” McQueen notes. “They were to do with my childhood, the way I think about life and the way I was brought up to think about life.”
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