Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty
This year’s Met Gala was every bit the fashion fireworks show it always is, but for me this one was bittersweet. The entire fashion world and Hollywood came out in their finest regalia, this time to honor the brilliant late designer Alexander McQueen and commemorate the opening of a retrospective of his work aptly named Savage Beauty.
McQueen’s work has been an inspiration to me my entire adult life and was particularly important to me when I was starting out as a young make up artist in San Francisco. His cerebral collaborations with such eccentric luminaries as Isabella Blow, Phillip Tracey, Bjork, Val Garland and Nick Knight had a huge influence on me and a profound effect on my early sensibility. Like receiving smoke signals from the creative world beyond that I was not alone, don’t give up!
The gift of seeing his work beautifully displayed in one of the world’s foremost art institutions was an incredible experience, but I couldn’t help but feel an acute sense loss wash over me as I absorbed it’s beauty. I found myself contemplating the void that Lee McQueen’s unconventional eye has left in the world of fashion, art and in my world as well. I used to look so forward to his collections each season for a host of reasons but mostly because it was never just about the clothes. His collections always asked more of you, nudged you out of your comfort zone, had you contemplating deeper more profound ideas. Begging the question, what is beautiful anyway?
The artist’s process has always been an endlessly fascinating subject to me, especially when it’s an artist I adore. For Lee McQueen it was his innate ability to exploit the parallels and juxtapositions he saw just about everywhere. In nature, geography, history, science fiction, his family tree, cinema, mythology, poetry, music, the monarchy, literature, subculture, pop culture, religion and sex. The result was always a perfectly realized amalgamation of his influences expertly cut and stitched into haunting reflections of the world as he saw it through his unique lens. But I always thought his true signature was the underlying deep emotional charge you felt while watching his shows.
The ever present contradiction that was both him and his work, the personal war waged within himself, being a man both resigned to the dark yet endlessly drawn toward the light.
Savage Beauty does a good job of showcasing how masterful he was at creating collections that wove together stark polarities,provoking a visceral response in the viewer. His talent for cutting straight to the truth of the human condition—all be it often tongue in cheek—really grew out of his own need to excavate his mind’s dark recesses, deep seated fears, fantasies and unexplored passions. Thus allowing us all free pass to visit our own.
In the end his ability to see, sense and weave together darkness and light, humor and horror, nature and science, love and lust, life and death was both his greatest gift and his undoing. The early departure of this sensitive, complicated, wickedly funny, emotionally intelligent, darkly inclined, hopelessly romantic, expert tailor from Saville Row has not gotten any easier even a year later, and I for one am still in mourning.
Thankfully I will never have to say goodbye because his work will live in my mind and those like me forever…Long Live McQueen!
