The perfectionist in Alexander McQueen would find much to admire in the stunning show of his work, Savage Beauty, which opened today at the Met, while the rebel in him would detest the way he has been softened, defanged, and degayed for rich, conservative fashion matrons/museum patrons. Andrew Bolton's curatorial notes often mention McQueen's "politics" and his complicated relationship growing up in England with Scottish roots yet the discussion of his work completely erases the outsider queer energy that fueled his visionary genius.
Trained as a tailor in Savile Row, McQueen's craftsmanship and obsession with detail (and his vast stable of couture workers, largely ignored in the exhibit) made his clothes technical masterpieces. His shattering originality, always engaging the past to destroy it and reinvent it, raised his work to art. Aiming higher still, he presented each collection in elaborately staged performances reinforcing the season's theme, with the models moving as pieces on a giant chess board, or robotic nozzles spray-painting colors onto a spinning woman's white dress on the runway, or an enormous two-way mirror-box alternately reflecting the audience and revealing his creations. I saw a private preview earlier and was wowed. Brave the stampedes and see it twice before July 31. The show's catalog from Yale Press is already in Amazon's Top 100 bestsellers. Click to enlarge.
Just as you said it would be. Hard to believe.
Posted by: Cynthia | May 10, 2011 at 08:39 PM
The new Met Couture book from the last decades political bashes in absence of the USA are out, with that Natalia stun-out on the cover. My picks are still Gianfranco Ferro and Alexander McQueen for the worst appearances on a national front without any public celebrity as spokesperson. Is that the law for anyone awaiting my Queer England?
Posted by: Queer England - cohorts | October 14, 2014 at 08:33 AM