Archive for Travel
13
Jun
2011
Savage Beauty
Alexander McQueen is probably the most imaginative and talented designer of his generation. His nineteen years of career have influenced for good the fashion history.
His collections were often related to darkness, death, provocation but generated always a feeling of admiration, that McQueen presented wonderfully through runway presentations, worthy of artistic performances.
He was a true genius, whose medium of expression was fashion, a vanguard with an innovative sensibility. McQueen was also a remarkable craftsman, a specialist of tailoring that he learned in Savile Row, and has always been influenced by British history: his pieces referrenced very often the exaggerated silhouettes of the 1880s, 1890s and 1950s etc.
Spring-Summer 1999. The dress was painted during the show with shotguns firing paint.
Andrew Bolton, the curator of the exhibition Savage Beauty, held at the Met, has completely understood Mcqueen’s world and has done an impressive scenography, whose main theme is Romanticism. The British designer has always been influenced by this subject and had the willingness to reach the Sublime. The approximately one hundred pieces are featured in six different rooms with a minimalist lighting and with soundtracks that increase this feeling of fear and wonder. The fantastic head treaments and masks designed by Guido Paulo, haidresser during several Alexander McQueen’s runways, bring to life the silhouettes and quotations of the designer written under some models make this homage even more poignant.
“You’ve got to know the rules to break them. That’s what I’m here for, to demolish the rules but to keep the tradition”
“People find my things sometimes aggressive. But I don’t see it as aggressive. I see it as romantic dealing with a dark side of my personality”.
The book of the retrospective with its hologram cover pays also tribute to the designer with exclusive interviews and articles.
Savage Beauty
Until 7th of August
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
20
May
2011
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