Savage Beauty

Savage Beauty book cover

I aspire to be anything close to Alexander McQueen, he is with out a doubt one of the greats. Recently the lovely Cissy Walker very kindly treated me to the Metropolitan Museum of art's book based on the body work of his spring 2011 exhibition, Savage Beauty. The exhibition celebrates his remarkable vision and creativity.

Sadly the ability for me to visit the exhibition first hand is on the unrealistic side however I was lucky enough to get a sneak preview in the Harvey Nichols window display a few weeks ago. The Met kindly lent a few dresses as the sale kicked off before each were individually wrapped and jetted off to New York City. I luckily had my trust camera in hand to take a few pics.

I read Savage Beauty last night. What I intended to be a 10 minute read turned into a 2 hour. I thought I had done my research on Lee previously, knowing all about his relationship with Isabella Blow, the work he did on Saville Row and costume at Angel, beating John Galliano for Givenchy and sadly his deal with drugs and later on suicide. But last  night my eyes were fixated on the depth and emotional encounters McQueen took to convey his relationship with his designs. They represented both his physical and mental health.


Andrew Bolton's preface really hit me 'Tattooed on Alexander McQueen's upper right arm were the words 'love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,' a quotation from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Spoken by lovesick Helena, who has been abandoned by her beloved Demetrius because he loves the more beautiful Hermia, the soliloquy considers the erratic and irrational nature of love. In her contemplations, Helena believes that Love has the power to transform something ugly into something beautiful because love is propelled by subjective perceptions of the individual, not by the objective assessments of appearance. This belief was not only shared by McQueen but also critical to his creativity. As in A Midsummer Night's Dream, the themes of love and beauty were central to his vision of fashion, which reflected upon the politics of appearance by revealing both the prejudices and the limitations of our aesthetic judgments.

Beautiful.