Entering
the exhibition hall of Savage Beauty,
the famous depiction of Alexander McQueen’s face slowly transforming into a
skull welcomes you in, his penetrating gaze holding yours. With a large
screen flashing behind rows of mannequins, the prevailing theme is his love of
London: his hometown and the birthplace of the McQueen label. Murmurs, laughter
and McQueen’s voice permeate the room as garments displaying tags with his own
lock of hair as a way of ‘memento mori,’ perch alongside little snippets of
quotes from the designer; his acute awareness of the “blood beneath every layer
of skin” immortalised in gold lettering.
Passing
through, another fragment of Savage
Beauty unravels: a vision of decaying splendour, full of massive gilt
mirrors with obscured dusty faces like a vacant, forgotten room in an old manor
house, very akin to Edgar Allan Poe’s The
Fall of the House of Usher. Gothic silhouettes rise up on elevated
platforms, the blackened mirrors reflecting glimpses of jet beads, leather
buckles, slashed lace and painted duck and goose feathers from collections such
as The Horn of Plenty, Dante, Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious and
the Givenchy collection Eclect Dissect. Religious paintings like
Campin’s The Thief to the Left of Christ and
Lochner’s Altarpiece of the Patron Saints
of Cologne are mingled with a melancholic dark sexuality; an element
McQueen used in varying amounts “like a masquerade.” The designer loved to work
with juxtapositions, often mixing meticulous detail with a brutal slashing of
fabric to create an impression of constrictive tailoring marred with fierce
escapism, and here the layers of romantic Victoriana mirror this perfectly.
The
next room is a dark cave. Row upon row of intricately arranged bones envelop
the walls and ceiling, giving way only to allow for a glowing, bulbous glass
pane which hangs overhead, depicting a girl moving in water. Primitive figures
with horn mouthpieces and garments from Eshu
and It’s a Jungle Out There made
of hair, mud and raw natural elements stand guard in alcoves dotted around the
room. McQueen disliked the idea of women looking naïve; he sought to portray an
inner strength, and these primeval warriors are as savage as they are
beautiful.
Exiting
the cave, deep mahogany panels and flashes of twinkling gold beckon ahead. Tartan-clad
soldiers of the British Empire stand tall and erect as Handel’s Sarabande echoes around the opulent
room. Folds of red velvet, gold bullion and white tulle envelop mannequins armed
with gold-studded masks. The Widows of
Culloden in their MacQueen check dresses (painstakingly stitched so that the
pattern meets and flows where each piece of fabric meets), stand representing
the last Jacobite Risings of 1745 on wooden platforms opposite The Girl Who Lived in a Tree with her
soft, East Sussex sensibilities and jewelled Indian diadems.
A
room littered from floor to ceiling with ample divisions like a chocolate box is
the next treat: the Cabinet of Curiosities. As the iconic paint-sprayed dress
No. 13 rotates on a platform in the centre of the room, all around television
screens flicker between collections and a variety of headpieces, shoes and
garments look on from their sporadically allotted sections. Walking through into
a dark passage, a vision of Kate Moss swathed in layers of dancing fabric
moving as if in a trance to the haunting notes of the theme from Schindler’s
List slowly unravels and finally fades. This is the finale from the Widows of Culloden show; an example of
an old-fashioned technique called “Pepper’s Ghost’ which involved using mirrors
and projectors to give the illusion of the presence of a physical being.
The
next stages of the exhibition depict further contrasting elements such as
beauty mixed with the grotesque in a bittersweet entrapment of figures in glass
cases. A pale wallpaper permeated with skulls, dismembered bodies, decaying
flowers and childhood dolls is offset against the voluminous floral dresses of
the Sarabande collection, enforcing
the strong influence of nature throughout McQueen’s work. The concepts explored
in the Voss collection are translated
with mannequins in garments with embroidered chrysanthemum roundels and ostrich
feathers locked in a box with one-way mirrors and padded cell features, pressing
themselves against the glass. The lighting in the box dims to reveal a clip of
the Voss show finale: a naked
Michelle Olley covered in moths breathing through a tube. This still shocking
display highlights McQueen’s venture to take “something not conventionally
beautiful and show the beauty within.”
The last room presents us with Alexander
McQueen’s final exhibition: Plato’s
Atlantis. With digitally printed jellyfish and snakeskin prints encasing
silver mutant mannequins towering above in those iconic armadillo heels, it is
a disturbing glimpse of the “devolution of humankind.” Behind their gleaming
alien heads a large screen depicts model Raquel Zimmerman thrashing in the
water while she morphs into a semi-aquatic creature. This last collection, as
with each one that came before, holds an incredibly strong and intricate
message at its core, one we can only aspire to fully comprehend. McQueen was
more than a fashion designer: he was a true showman and an inventor, and his
savage beauty lives on in his magnificent work and the unique label he has
created.
‘Savage Beauty’ is showing at the Victoria and
Albert Museum in London until the 2nd of August 2015.
Photography and sketching is forbidden throughout the exhibition; all of these photos were sourced from Vogue UK.