Alexander McQueen: Once Savage, Now... Playful?
Fashion journalist and author asked me to chat with her about “Anna Season,” an apt alternative name for fashion month if I ever heard one. Check out our conversation here.
In today’s issue:
A recap of Alexander McQueen under new designer Seàn McGirr, one of the most anticipated shows of the season. Can the brand create mass luxury that makes everyone (except, literally speaking, some of the models) comfortable?
On the topic of mass content with no bite: Jennifer Lopez recently deluged us with content, and the content about it is so great.
Other Loose Threads from Paris Fashion Week, including Kim Kardashian’s Balenciaga clothing tag, Valentino, Hermès, and more.
If you were going to pull a show from the Alexander McQueen archive to inspire a debut collection in 2024 that would be heavily scrutinized in the press and on social media, The Birds is probably as a good place to start as any.
Walking in October of 1994, The Birds was McQueen’s fifth show. Inspired by the Alfred Hitchcock movie of the same name, models appeared to have tire tracks on their bodies and clothes. While notably dark, that was nothing compared to what he had coming.
McQueen told the press that he was using provocation in these early days to gain the attention of a financial backer. In 1993 at age 23, he had shown bumster pants for the first time. Perhaps his most famous creation, these exposed the top of the buttocks because he saw the lower spine as “the most erotic part of anyone’s body, man or woman.” Hip-hugging, flat-front styles then became The Look for pants over the next two decades.
After The Birds, McQueen shows took risks unfathomable today. In March 1995, he staged Highland Rape, in which models appeared bloodied, with tampon strings dangling from their bumsters. McQueen told London Time Out in 1997:
“[This collection] was a shout against English designers . . . doing flamboyant Scottish clothes. My father’s family originates from the Isle of Skye, and I’d studied the history of the Scottish upheavals and the Clearances. People were so unintelligent they thought this was about women being raped — yet Highland Rape was about England’s rape of Scotland.”
The Guardian wrote that the show caused London Fashion Week to “finish on a sour note,” adding, “It is McQueen's brand of misogynistic absurdity that gives fashion a bad name.”
For spring 1996, he presented The Hunger, inspired by the thusly titled erotic horror vampire film; the clothes were among his most commercial yet and sold well, even while revolving around themes of death and decay. He liked to put his models in contact lenses that made their eyes appear white or marbled. McQueen even filled one clear plastic corset with live worms. A men’s T-shirt bore graffiti that referenced fisting. When he took his bow, he mooned the audience to show the British press what he thought of their earlier negative reviews.
McQueen’s nineties provocations are much less likely to be perceived as the work of genius today than that of someone with a cancellation wish. Yet, he went on to be appointed head designer at LVMH-owned Givenchy in 1996.
McQueen told Time Out, “I don't wanna do a cocktail party, I'd rather people left my shows and vomited, I prefer extreme reactions.” When he got the job at Givenchy, which was closely associated with muse Audrey Hepburn, he told the press, “Hepburn is dead.” Before he started his own label, he worked in a British tailoring shop that made clothes for Prince Charles, later claiming to have written something vulgar on the lining of his jacket. After he landed an investor, he told the press he knew he would probably have to tone things down: “I'm mad in the front part of my brain but businesslike in the back."
Seán McGirr showed his first collection for Alexander McQueen in Paris on Saturday. He told Vogue before the show that his goal was to “let the light in.” Why not? People want fun and beauty post-pandemic, and a runway ought to be a good place to find both.
On his inspiration board, instead of images of death and decay, McGirr had photos of his own broken iPhone; Kate Moss circa 2005; and Amy Winehouse with a beehive and bustier dress. And McGirr examined The Birds, safer 2024 inspo than, well, Highland Rape.
It’s what fashion is these days — celebrities, a dash of smart phone ephemera, a designer who projects professionalism far more easily than he spews quotes that become headlines that will follow him around for the rest of his career.
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