Savage Beauty: Alexander McQueen at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Alexander McQueen Savage Beauty, Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

by Ingrid Mida

“The world is experiencing a McQueen moment” said Thomas P. Campbell, director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in his opening remarks to the press at today’s preview of the exhibition Savage Beauty: Alexander McQueen.

A more fitting choice of words could not be spoken. Until now, the extraordinary and rare genius of Lee Alexander McQueen’s artistic vision was not widely appreciated. In this retrospective presentation of about one hundred garments and seventy accessories from the late designer’s relatively short career from 1992-2010, The Metropolitan Museum has honored and documented the enormous legacy of McQueen to the world of fashion and art.

Alexander McQueen once said “For me, what I do is an artistic expression of that which is channeled through me. Fashion is just the medium.”

Not defined by stylistic convention, McQueen explored themes of love, nature, sex, and politics in terms of clothing and accessories for women. McQueen was also fascinated by the polarities of light/dark, wonder/terror, ugly/beautiful, life and death. Although his medium was fashion, McQueen’s thematic precepts were the opus of contemporary art and the exhibition celebrates that aspect of his work.

McQueen Black Duck Feathers Fall 2009, Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

The expansiveness of McQueen’s vision is apparent in not only the thematic underpinnings to his work but also in his innovative use of materials. He manipulated feathers, horns, wood, glass, flowers, horsehair and shells into coverings for the female form. Mollusk shells became a corset, feathers became a skirt, alligator heads peeked out of jacket epaulettes, carved wooden boots became prosthetic legs, a jawbone became jewelry. There can be no doubt that he was an artist who presented his work in runway spectacles instead of a gallery. Looking to provoke reactions from his audience, he scripted the models for the runway shows to act with the charged emotions of a performance piece.

Presented thematically instead of chronologically, the exhibition defines McQueen’s work as a Romantic individualist, a “hero-artist who staunchly followed the dictates of his inspiration,” in the words of exhibition curator Andrew Bolton. Divided into galleries defined by themes of romantic historicism, naturalism, primitivism, and nationalism, the exhibition is evocative of a gothic fairy tale. One moves from light into darkness and the stuff of dreams.

Creating an exhibition that translated the spectacle of a McQueen show into the confines of a museum setting seems like a virtually impossible proposition. But curator Andrew Bolton and the exhibition designers captured the spirit of McQueen in a multi-dimensional sensory immersion into his oeuvre.  Sound, air and light are designed to synthesize the effect of being at a McQueen runway show. Wind effects create movement of the garments. Music and music and light are manipulated to achieve a dream like quality to the galleries. Video projections within, behind, and around the objects, and in one case on the ceiling, animate the displays and allow the visitor to check their reality with the looped clips from runway shows.

Much care has been given to the mannequins. Masks by Guido created out of leather, lace, linen and other materials conceal some of the mannequins faces and evoke a haunting presence. Some mannequins are headless and others look as if they are moving. Some sit on turntables or are backed by mirrors.

McQueen Gallery View Highland Rape, Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

No detail has been overlooked in this hauntingly beautiful presentation. Several of the rooms bring to mind a Baroque palace with glass-fronted cabinets befitting such a place. One gallery is suggestive of the Victorian cabinet of curiosities and showcases accessories that were created in collaboration with others such as Philip Treacy and Shaun Leane.  And yet other galleries are modern and as disparate as the designer’s collections were from season to season. The exhibition is a showcase of unexpected delights, featuring the best examples of McQueen’s work sourced from the McQueen and Givenchy archive, as well as private collectors such as Daphne Guinness and Hamish Bowles.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has set a new standard for exhibitions of costume. This exhibition is a fitting tribute to Lee Alexander McQueen’s extraordinary talent and is one of those shows that people will undoubtedly reference for years to come.

By Ingrid Mida

Ingrid Mida is a freelance writer, researcher and artist whose work explores the intersection between fashion and art. Based in Toronto, she is represented by Loop Gallery and also writes for a variety of journals. She will be the keynote speaker at the American Costume Society mid-west conference where she will talk about her artistic practice and when fashion becomes art.

Photos provided courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Second Fashion in Film Festival Symposium

One more symposium on Fashion in Film is is taking place at the CUNY Graduate Center this Monday May 2nd from 5 to 7:30 pm. Among the impressive roster of speakers are Caroline Evans, who will speak on her current research on the early history of modelling and the fashion show.

"Since the emergence of cinema in the late-19th century, the role of costume, fabrics, and fashion has been crucial in conveying an aesthetic dimension and establishing a new sensorial and emotional relationship with viewers. Through the interaction of fashion, costume, and film it is possible to gauge a deeper understanding of the cinematic, its complex history, and the mechanisms underlying modernity, the construction of gender, urban transformations, consumption, technological and aesthetic experimentation.

Jody Sperling will speak on “Loïe Fuller and Early Cinema;” Caroline Evans Michelle Tolini Finamore on “‘Exploitation’ in Silent Cinema: Poiret and Lucile on Film;” and Drake Stutesman on “Spectacular Hats! A New Kind of Identity in a New Kind of Love (1963).” With moderator Amy Herzog and respondent Jerry Carlson."

The symposium which is organized by Eugenia Paulicelli in conjunction with the Fashion in Film Festival is co-sponsored by the Concentration in Fashion Studies, MA in Fashion: Theory, History, Practice in the MA Liberal Studies Program, Film Studies, Women’s Studies and the Center for Gay and Lesbian Studies.

Lady Gaga's Little Monsters...

Some of Lady Gaga's Little Monsters

by Francesca Granata

I recently went to a Lady Gaga concert as part of my research. The most surprising thing about it was the inventive and often DIY costumes worn by her fans. I caught a few of them on camera: a woman wearing a balloon skirt, one in a yellow body suit with Mickey Mouse ears that she self-painted. Someone else constructed Lady Gaga’s staggeringly tall heel-less shoes via an ingenious system of black electric tape, while others rendered more literal imitations of the pop star. Among these were a mother with her little girl, both sporting blond wigs and black leather outfits! Alas, no meat-dress emulator was in the crowd.

The pop star herself wore elaborate costumes, which are by now familiar either through her videos or television appearance.

Jay Ruttenberg—a contributing editor of Fashion Projects and a music critic at Time Out New York, wrote a in-depth review of the concert which praises Gaga’s ability of self-transformation over her music skills.

“Lady Gaga, if the conspiracy is not by now obvious, is the highly evolved master’s thesis of Tisch performance-art scholar Stefani Germanotta, who is currently completing her studies on the transformative nature of a pop, fashion and media phenomenon in the age of social media. Saturday night at Nassau Coliseum, Germanotta came one step closer to obtaining her degree, appearing before thousands of young participants dubbed her “Little Monsters” for the duration of the project”

For the full review and photo of the concert, visit Time Out New York

The Urban Catwalk: A Fashion + Street Culture Symposium

Also coming up on the 22nd and 23rd at Yale University is the "The Urban Catwalk: A Fashion + Street Culture Symposium." Organized by Madison Moore and Alex Tuleda. The conference aims to investigate the relationship between street style and identity. Among the diverse range of speakers are New York Times Guy Trebay, and Caroline Weber, Associate Professor of French at Barnard. For more information, please visit the site

The Fashion in Film Festival comes to New York

UPDADTE: The first in two seminars is taking place this Tuesday April 19th at the Cuny Graduate Center. Titled Metamorphoses: Clothing in Motion from Early Cinema to Contemporary Fashion Film, the seminar is moderated by Eugenia Paulicelli and its speakers include Penny Martin (of GentleWoman), Antonia Lant and Donald Gregg, in addition to festival curator Marketa Uhlirova.

The tireless curator and fashion scholar Marketa Uhlirova brings her "Fashion in Film Festival" to New York City. For this exciting edition of the festival, "Birds of Paradise," she partnered with the Museum of the Moving Image's Chief Curator David Schwartz, Ron Gregg at Yale University, and Eugenia Paulicelli at the Graduate Center, CUNY. The festival, which is hailed as "a major extravaganza in costume spectacle, dance and diabolical glamour," takes place from April 15 to May 2nd at the Museum of the Moving Image, while a seminar on the topic is scheduled for April 19th at the CUNY Graduate Center. For a full program of the festival, please visit the Fashion in Film Festival site.