Alexander McQueen

alexander-mcqueen-2008Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty at the V&A

Wow! what an exhibition, what an amazing talent, what an unsettling world the curators of this tribute to the enfant terrible of British fashion have brought to the V&A.

Not a follower of dress fashion normally, it was a friend and the play McQueen (see my earlier review) at St James that brought me to an exhibition I might not otherwise have caught.

The clichés have all been spent on the mercurial, quixotic Londoner who rose to the heights and disappeared forever following the death of his mother.

In between, we have creations the like of which I could ever have imagined – exquisite tailoring, billowing skirts in textures ranging from silk to horse hair set on models fetishized with leather-bound facia. S&M much in evidence in the early stages. Then extraordinary tartan dominated show-cases of frocks culminating in the central room – a soaring, high ceilinged accumulation of McQueen artefacts of frocks, kimonos, shoes – a temple to post-modern baroque. A theatrical happening, by any other name of a troubled but brilliant mind.

Be sure to catch before it finishes Aug 2.

And be bewitched – but troubled – by the video clip of Kate Moss disappearing into a cloud of dust, a cornucopia of gossamer with holocaust suggestions in its sound score (from Schindler’s List) and wooden surround.

http://creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/2015/march/how-we-made-the-kate-moss-hologram

Kate Moss hologram