McQueen at the Met
Director Thomas P. Campbell is a wise man to take on the challenge of showcasing the world’s greatest designer Alexander McQueen! He has placed Andrew Bolton in the driver seat of this exhibition; a man who truly understands McQueen and has been leading the project with a theatrical yet craftsmanship approach. This approach makes sense as this is how he (and millions of us {McQueen’s loyal fans}) views Alexander McQueen from his pieces of art.
I am chomping at the bit to catch a flight for The Costume Institute (of The Metropolitan Museum of Art) Gala Benefit on May 2, 2011 or anywhere from May 4–July 31, 2011 to catch this remarkable presentation of wearable art the fashion collections of Alexander McQueen. The pieces in the exhibit will include approximately 100 garments from McQueen’s 19-year career, starting with his postgraduate collection at Central Saint Martins in 1992, all the way up to his final fashion collection.
Why has Alexander McQueen been chosen to be featured in his own exhibit?
I can’t believe you would ask this!
- He is an artist like any other in The Met. He was a tortured soul with too much vision for one mind to handle. To create a show SO beautiful as to make your audience weep, well that is talent and unfortunately it comes at a price.
Let us not remember Lee McQueen as a tormented man… but instead of the visionary he was and lets hold his designs in the highest regard.
I say “Long live fashion as it was through McQueen’s eyes.”
Following is the Overview of the exhibit as written on The Met Website (full write up here)
Exhibition Overview
The exhibition, in the Metropolitan Museum’s second-floor Cantor Galleries, will feature approximately 100 examples of Mr. McQueen’s work from his prolific 19- year career. Drawn primarily from the Alexander McQueen Archive in London, with some pieces from the Givenchy Archive in Paris as well as private collections, signature designs including the bumster trouser, the kimono jacket, and the Origami frock coat will be on view. McQueen’s fashions often referenced the exaggerated silhouettes of the 1860s, 1880s, 1890s, and 1950s, but his technical ingenuity always imbued his designs with an innovative sensibility that kept him at the vanguard.
Galleries will showcase recurring themes and concepts in McQueen’s work beginning with “The Savage Mind” which will examine his subversion of traditional tailoring and dressmaking practices through displacement and deconstruction. “Romantic Gothic” will highlight McQueen’s narrative approach to fashion and illuminate his engagement with Romantic literary traditions such as death, decay, and darkness. It will also reveal the main characters of his collections, including femme fatales and anti-heroes such as pirates and highwaymen. “Romantic Nationalism” will look at McQueen’s fascination with the distant past, while “Romantic Exoticism” will examine his focus on distant places. “Romantic Primitivism” will explore McQueen’s engagement with the ideal of the “noble savage.”
Five of McQueen’s landmark collections that explore his engagement with the Romantic sublime and the dialectics of beauty and horror will be interspersed among the galleries — Dante (autumn/winter 1996-97), Number 13 (spring/summer 1999), Voss
(spring/summer 2001), Irere (spring/summer 2003), and Plato’s Atlantis (spring/summer 2010). “Cabinet of Curiosities” will include various atavistic and fetishized objects often produced with milliner Philip Treacy and jeweler Shaun Leane, longtime collaborators of McQueen’s. A separate screening room will display videos of McQueen’s renowned runway presentations.
-from The Met Website
- Fast Fashion Fact: Nearly five million people visit the Museum each year.
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