McQueen’s Requiem March 10, 2010
Posted by SCAD Fashion Department in : Industry News, Inspiration, Trends , trackback
Four weeks after his suicide in London, the final collection designed by Alexander McQueen was presented in Paris last night. McQueen is said to have “cut every piece for the collection himself.” Although 16 of the outfits were only 80 per cent finished upon his death, his studio team, led by Sarah Burton (who worked alongside McQueen for 16 years) worked intensely over the past few weeks to complete them according to his clear vision.
And while McQueen originally intended to present this collection in his favorite venue, the Conciergerie, a former royal palace and prison, the collection was presented, instead, to an intimate audience in a gilded, mirrored, salon at the headquarters of PPR, the company that owns the McQueen label.
The heavily religious designs were inspired by Byzantine art and by the work of master woodcarver, Grinling Gibbons, whose carvings adorn St Paul’s Cathedral in London. Abstractions of paintings by Hieronymus Bosch, were digitally captured, woven and manipulated into many of the looks. Bosch, a 15th Century Dutch artist was a painter of religious visions who frequently portrayed scenes of angels, demons and the torments of hell.
The sepulchral 17th-century choral music music played during the show was the same that Mr. McQueen had listened to while creating the collection. Christie Binkley of the Wall Street Journal wrote “What made the collection difficult to watch was the unmistakable impression that the designer was immersed in thoughts of the afterlife.”
According to Suzy Menkes of the International Herald Tribune: “There were damp eyes among the small audience and sobs backstage — both from personal grief and at the scale of the loss to fashion of this singular designer. In this collection Alexander — Lee — McQueen showed his sensitivity to history, his powers of research, his imagination, his technical skills and his love of women, often misinterpreted or misunderstood, but here evident in every fold and feather.”
Click here to see the complete collection.
- Tiffany Teague
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