“There was always an attraction to death, it was a bit dehumanized…. Who knows, perhaps by constantly flirting with death, death ends up attracting you", the nonpareil Karl Lagerfeld's remark after McQueen’s tragic death.
There has been no arty-farty , pretentious gait about the enfant' terrible Alexander McQueen, jolting fashion watchers every time his collection stepped onto the runway, sending trend shock waves globally.
McQueen's provocative, challenging, bizarre, shockingly morbid fashion created sensational runway moments. His aesthetics dramatized disturbing arts and visuals..leaving audience in awe and bewilderment... He came, created and without further ado...left.
.... no goodbyes, abrupt, hard-hitting and tragic, his kind of french leave!
McQueen was right there on his prime.His star rose to unparalleled dimension, becoming a global force and an influential trendsetter. Critically acclaimed and commercially successful, celebrities love his clothes including the over the top, edgy and radical diva-Lady Gaga.
McQueen denotes domineering style, it is intimidating.... Was!
LEE ALEXANDER MCQUEEN: Non-Conformist, Avant Garde... Anti-Establishment.
* Master’s degree in women's wear from Central Saint Martin’s in London with the patronage of fashion royalty Isabella Blow
* worked for Givenchy (1997-2001)
* and eventually venturing on his own.
His clothes are highly constructed and structural in details... molded and stiff. Gothic inspirations asserted his playfulness to the dark side and has gotten darker; more twisted with a sense of impending doom.Hard edge and almost like an armour, his models strutted in metallic shields envisioning wars of a sort kind. Highland Rape, a socio- political interpretation , was downright controversial.. the creepy Alfred Hitchcock’s films.... and arts of unclaimed corpses at morgues by Joel-Peter Witkin.
McQueen’s visuals were so overt and bizarre, that it sometimes evoked more fear than desire. But beyond all his tactics, his works were of great magnitude and lots of character.
Beneath McQueen's styling and theatrical clothes, is an amazing work of engineering – intricately seamed, greatly detailed, flawlessly finished. The corset, the fitted trouser, the cinched waist jackets emerging in many McQueen collections, were undeniable results of his tailoring experience. Inspirations varied; Victorian, military, sportswear, sci-fi and manga – in his sartorial route.
The evolution of McQueen’s works, yielded some excellent haute genre stuffs, shifting from the norms to untamed zones of style..others dared not to.Not so bad..after all, he received countless awards, including four British Fashion Designer of the Year between 1996 and 2003.
In the designers circuit, Mcqueen is considered the "David", to the fashion "Goliath" power brokers, inspiration to those outside the fashion syndicale, overly adulated lah-di-dah to the established classicists and a blasphemy to unyielding puritans.
Interestingly, in this last salvo, McQueen seemed to have been "turned" to a green earth activist and environmentalist on his last Reptilian Fall 2010, unwittingly the best among his collections.
Would Mc Queen be revered as an icon?....
Well....let's watch!
