Alexander McQueen- Savage beauty

AlexanderMcQueen was born 1969.  He was a chief designer for Givenchy for 5 years. As well he is known for founding his own label. He was openly gay. He recieved 4 British designer of the year awards and one International designer of the year award. He comitted suicide at the age of 40.

A little more than one year after McQueen's death,  art exhibition Savage beauty was held in 2011. at the Metropoliten museum of art and later inVictoria and Albert museum. Exhibition was extremly popular in NY city.To accommodate the large crowds, the Met offered a special $50 ticket to view the exhibit on Mondays, when the museum is usually closed. More than 480,000 tickets were sold for  the exhibition.

The show is composed of six separate galleries, arranged by theme: "The Romantic Mind", "Romantic Gothic and the Cabinet of Curiosities",  "Romantic Nationalism", "Romantic Exoticism", "Romantic Primitivism" and "Romantic Naturalism".

The Romantic mind

Romantic Gothic and the

 Cabinet of Curiosities

                     

Romantic Nationalism

Romantic Exoticism

Romantic Primitivism

Romantic Naturalism

The hosts for the gala on Monday were Anna Wintour  and  Salma Hayek and her husband , and François-Henri Pinault. Colin Firth and Stella McCartney were co-hosts.

                            

                           His work was a form of confessional poetry.

                        Andrew Bolton, the curator of the Met’s Costume Institute, has assembled hundred ensembles and seventy accessories

He felt an affinity with the Flemish masters, Gospel singing, Elizabethan theatre and its cross-dressing heroines, contemporary performance art, punk, Surrealism, Japan, the ancient Yoruba, and fin-de-siècle aestheticism. 

Was McQueen really an artist who just happened to work in cloth?

The show featured McQueen’s eye-catching and bizarre creations in materials ranging from wool to feathers and shell, starting from his days as a degree show sensation through to being a global design star. It included a 3D hologram of Kate Moss gently twirling in a glass pyramid.

.A specialist firm was hired to manage the waiting times including 15-minute slots for people to enter the show.

 His fascination with nature’s decadence was obvious.

“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.”

—Alexander McQueen

“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 personality.”
—Alexander McQueen

“The reason I’m patriotic about Scotland is because I think it’s been dealt a really hard hand. It’s marketed the world over as . . . haggis . . . bagpipes. But no one ever puts anything back into it.”
—Alexander McQueen

“I want to be honest about the world that we live in, and sometimes my political persuasions come through in my work. Fashion can be really racist, looking at the clothes of other cultures as costumes. . . . That’s mundane and it’s old hat. Let’s break down some barriers.”
—Alexander McQueen