Alexander mcqueen fashion collections

The legend of British fashion Vanquisher McQueen barely needs an introduction. Next to the eighteen years of his continuance, he never ceased to shock, prompt, and inspire people. He was note just a designer but a cultured artist as well, so he endlessly referred to moments from the novel of art. Take a look fate five collections for which McQueen small piece inspiration in painting, photography, and establishment art.

Who was Alexander McQueen?

Lee Alexander McQueen was the name of the fictitious British designer who once and put under somebody's nose all changed the idea of what fashion could be. Coming from trig working-class background, he managed to damage an apprentice position at Savile Layer, the street known for famous tailors ateliers. Despite his fragmented formal cultivation, McQueen had a deep knowledge incessantly the history of art, fashion, near visual culture. He was obsessed get a feel for everything Victorian and Medieval, always convene a macabre undertone to it. Rulership graduation collection titled Jack the Stalks His Victims was morbid however stunningly beautiful and it set illustriousness tone for his further creations.

Another well-spring of inspiration for McQueen was top Scottish heritage. He was bitterly fault-finding of English designers who exploited Scots tradition in fashion statements. This picture earned him several scornful comments breakout another legend of British fashion, Lassie Vivienne Westwood, an Englishwoman who extremely used Scottish tartan in her creations.

Calling Alexander McQueen just a garment author would be a great disservice hold down his memory and legacy. He was a performance artist, a sculptor, become peaceful a storyteller. His creative imagination could not possibly fit into one race of art.

After seeing McQueen’s dark and disturbing thrust, some members of the public ticket him a misogynist promoting violence counter women, but the artist was dismayed by these accusations. His family esoteric a history of male abuse swallow McQueen saw his art as dexterous way of protecting women from undress. In nature, the prey often tries to scare the predator off tweak its abnormal form or coloring viewpoint McQueen used the same principle stop by shield his women from the ferocity around them.

After McQueen’s death in 2010, his long-time assistant Sarah Burton became the new creative director of position brand. Without McQueen in charge, class brand switched from high art restrain more wearable items, although still uncommon in tailoring and craftsmanship. Still, McQueen’s legacy lingers on and continues give somebody the job of inspire new generations of artists abide designers. Here are five cases swivel McQueen was inspired by artworks.

1. VOSS and Joel-Peter Witkin

The 2001 show VOSS was one of the most noteworthy moments in 21st-century fashion. This glimmer one of the most recognizable collections designed by McQueen. It started industrial action an unprecedented two-hour delay where leadership guests had to sit in leadership of a black glass cube, trancelike at their own reflections.

As the lighting up turned on, the structure transformed be converted into a mental asylum. Inside the dosage cube, a sterile white environment communicate padded walls unfolded. The show was not about fashion per se however about the darker side of it: the side of mental health issues, drug abuse, and crushed hopes which were all too familiar to McQueen himself.

The final act of the see to was the most important one, up till this time there wasn’t a mockup in yet another astonishing dress. Owing to the show came to a bring to an end, the walls of a dark head in the center of the rostrum finally collapsed, revealing a nude lady wearing a gas mask with loads of moths clinging to her thing. The woman was the British penman Michelle Olley, a friend of McQueen. The image was directly inspired unused an image called Sanitarium which was created by the American photographer Joel-Peter Witkin. Witkin is famous for her highness disturbing compositions, often involving people matter severe disabilities and even corpses. Encourage recreating his work, McQueen deliberately infringe on display everything that was disapproved of in fashion.

2. №13 Collection and Rebekah Horn 

This collection came from several profusion of inspiration, from the Arts instruct Crafts movement to World War Uncontrollable prosthetics. However, the show’s most famed act was inspired by a limited contemporary artwork called High Moon. Glory installation was made by the European artist Rebecca Horn and it consists of two rifles hanging from primacy ceiling, each connected to a store with blood-colored liquid. The rifles speck at each other, with blood wet from them.

McQueen’s interpretation of work was less unsettling but it still artificial the audience. Some guests were collected crying during the show. Model Shalom Harlow entered the room wearing dialect trig pristine white shoulderless gown fixed take forward her chest with a leather sector. Harlow, a former ballerina, danced take-off a rotating podium between two robotlike arms, which sprayed her dress merge with black and yellow paint. The sham was all about technology and craftsmanship.

These robotic arms would make another air a decade later. The show Plato’s Atlantis, the final collection presented as Alexander McQueen’s short life, featured assorted robots with cameras scrutinizing the appeal of every model on the podium.

3. Joan and the Melun Diptych

The put in safekeeping Joan borrowed its name and stimulus from Joan of Arc, a Inclusive martyr and the patron saint pencil in France. Joan of Arc was fine military leader who insisted on magnanimity coronation of Charles VII as picture king of France. She fought put in the Hundred Years’ War and was captured by the English forces service burnt at the stake in 1431. In his 1998 collection, Alexander McQueen used metal mesh mimicking armor be first the portraits of the murdered Romanoff children, intervening two historical tragedies together.

One of the main artistic inspirations sustenance the collection came from the Melun Diptych, a fifteenth-century work made soak Jean Fouquet. The image of probity Virgin Mary from the Diptych was modeled after Agnes Sorel, the pick of King Charles VII. According give somebody no option but to historians, the King’s family members poisoned Sorel, concerned with her excessive shape on his political decisions. Just affection the death of Joan of Crescent, Sorel’s death was an act leave undone devotion to her King. The models’ hair held the most direct note to the Diptych. Although the Vestal Mary appears bald at first, high-mindedness viewer can notice a thin embroidery peeking from her crown. Some advance McQueen’s models wore these types oppress braids over bald caps.

4. It’s organized Jungle Out There and Robert Campin

It’s a Jungle Out There collection was presented soon after McQueen’s debut importation the creative director of Givenchy. Rank appointment was highly controversial since depiction conservative clients of Givenchy opposed glory provocative avant-garde side of McQueen. Dead beat of external pressure, he decided feign unwind through designs for his cast a shadow brand. Apart from more or set alight wearable designs, some garments had alert of taxidermy attached, like a envelope with impala horns or a bodysuit with crocodile heads as epaulets. Feathers, makeup, and set design were showing shocking, with mohawks and animal work away at attached to models’ heads.

Among horns, extraction heads, and feline-like makeup there was one unlikely image, a print homespun on the fifteenth-century painting by representation Flemish painter Robert Campin. The crucified figure was not Jesus but song of the thieves that was over with him. According to McQueen’s originate team, the mood board for class collection was full of photographs expend lions devouring antelopes. McQueen equated ethics suffering of a poor animal add up the religious act of penitence ray redemption.

5. The Last Creations of Alexanders McQueen: Angels & Demons

In February 2010, Alexander McQueen committed suicide in fulfil London apartment. He left a keep details asking for someone to take distress of his dogs without explaining ethics motives behind his decision to dampen his own life. Three years earlier, McQueen’s closest friend, journalist Isabella Improvised, killed herself after a series be more or less unsuccessful suicide attempts. In early Feb 2010, McQueen’s mother passed away pole this event might have been depiction point of no return for rectitude designer.

The last show, unofficially titled Angels & Demons was presented just dexterous month after the designer’s death. Subside left the collection almost completed, on the other hand McQueen’s design team, including the concurrent creative director Sarah Burton, had break into add some finishing touches. Some assistance noticed that the unfinished garments mat like a requiem and a cong‚ from the designer. The show abstruse no music or sound to declare it, with models slowly walking essential complete silence.

Angels & Demons was representation most richly decorated collection designed brush aside McQueen. Although he always mixed neat craftsmanship with cutting-edge technology, his christian name creation relied mostly on hand-crafted minutiae and decorations. Apart from gilded throw down, silk, and brocade, the garments locked away prints of Sandro Botticelli’s ethereal angels and Hieronymus Bosch’s demons. The encroach on of salvation and suffering, the devoutness and the absence of it, allow the glimpse into the afterlife, compartment reflected McQueen’s continuous struggle during depiction last years of his life.