Alexander McQueen: savage and beauty by Misha Lyuve

topics: Alexander McQueen, angels and demons, fashion, Metropolitan Museum of Art, savage beauty, Suicide

“There is no way back now. I am going to take you on journeys you’ve never dreamed before possible” -Alexander McQueen

Fashion had resonated to me more with commercialism, vanity and superficiality than with art – till I saw Alexander McQueen’s Savage Beuaty at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Gallerly? Theater? Catwalk? — all of it and none. Music, lighting, set up of the rooms, McQueen’s quoatations created an intense medium to experience his creativity, passion, drama, angels and demons, and allowed to immerse into his intensity. Faceless static manequens were such better carriers of art than flickering models; they gave time to experience, to process, to feel.

So here is McQueen: a son of a cab driver, described by others “beer gut, shaved head, bad teeth and thick glottal cockney accent“, “foul-mouthed“, “hooligan“, “shy“; described by himself “I just want to be a wallflower. Nondescript. Just not anything. I don’t want to see me.” And that person created all this???

And suddenly I felt that maybe I am just getting a glimpse of how it was to be this man; when there is so much vision inside and such a huge gap with the outside — how intense that might feel? And the two ways out — death and madness — become reasonable and tangible.　

“I want to be the purveyor of a certain silhouette or a way of cutting, so that when I’m dead and gone, people will know that the twenty-first century was started by Alexander McQueen.“　

“I want to be the purveyor of a certain silhouette or a way of cutting, so that when I’m dead and gone, people will know that the twenty-first century was started by Alexander McQueen.“　

“It is important to look at death because it is a part of life. It is a sad thing, melancholy but romantic at the same time.”

“It is the end of a cycle — everything has to end. The cycle of life is positive because it gives room for new things.”