The dA-Zed guide to Alexander McQueen. Savage Beauty has finally come home to the city that birthed the man.
Opening at the V&A five years after the fashion iconoclast’s death, the Alexander McQueen retrospective promises a groundbreakingly inclusive tribute to the designer and his vision. Whittling down the world of fashion’s most controversial, far-reaching and future-facing designer into a 26-point love letter feels, inevitably, too small; even in his quietest moments, McQueen’s romantic offensive against fashion’s prevailing mood for minimalism was unfailing. So here, to mark the exhibition’s opening, is just one narrative among so many: our critical guide to the clothes, the shows, the collaborators, and, connecting everything, the fantastical playground of inspirations that one can just about make out in the dark. McQueen at his theatrical best. His SS01 tableau saw models trapped inside a glass cube, with the audience outside looking in – but the models couldn’t see out.
“Are you gay and do you take drugs?” Alexander McQueen, le prince des ténèbres. Des queues énormes devant le Metropolitan Museum à New York, 660.000 visiteurs en trois mois, une ouverture spéciale le lundi (entrée : 50 dollars) : en 2011, l’exposition « Savage Beauty », consacrée à Alexander McQueen, le créateur britannique mort l’année précédente à l’âge de 40 ans, cassait tous les records en décrochant la palme de l’exposition mode la plus vue (et la huitième dans l’histoire du musée).
Bis repetita, cet été à Londres, où le Victoria & Albert Museum, temple anglais du design, a dû ouvrir la nuit pour accueillir les 493.043 visiteurs venus saluer l’enfant du pays, prodige mal embouché, provocateur, excessivement porté sur les drogues et l’alcool et surtout l’un des couturiers les plus talentueux de sa génération. Alexander McQueen, portrait d’un créateur audacieux au destin légendaire. Son crâne rasé, allié à son légendaire franc-parler, et son accent cockney lui ont valu les surnoms de “bad boy” ou de “hooligan”… Les bien-pensants se sont souvent offusqués de son esprit provocateur.
Tout en se réjouissant secrètement du frisson d’interdit qu’il insufflait à une industrie de plus en plus policée. Revealed: Never seen before archive of Alexander Lee McQueen at work. With photographs shot by renowned British photographer Gary Wallis, a new unique never before seen archive is launching in March at Proud Chelsea, London – presenting a true insider’s view into the genesis of a genius...
Along with the the arrival of Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty at London's Victoria and Albert Museum, the legendary Alexander Lee McQueen will be receiving another retrospective at the Proud Chelsea called McQueen: Backstage – The Early Shows. The breathtaking showcase will feature rare, behind-the-scenes images of McQueen at work in his early days from the personal collection of photographer and friend Gary Wallis. McQueen met Wallis when they both attended Central Saint Martins in London in the early nineties, with the photographer capturing McQueen's now iconic 1992 graduate collection, 'Jack the Ripper Stalks His Victims'. Wallis told Vogue: "He always showed an interest in my work, as he was also very interested in photography.
At Arles, Ann Ray pays tribute to Alexander McQueen. Installed in the blacksmith neighbourhood of the city of Arles, just a few minutes from the Luma Foundation, Ann Ray is showing her exhibition “The Unfinished McQueen”.
The respected - revered even - designer Lee McQueen, better known as Alexander, remains one of fashion's most influential people. In 2011 the exhibition Savage Beauty held at the New York Met celebrated the most iconic creations of the English designer, who’d committed suicide a few months earlier at home in London.
Over the last two years Alexander McQueen has also been the subject of a documentary and a photography book. In 2018, French photographer Ann Ray, who accompanied him for 13 years, from the end of 1997 to 2010, pays tribute to the man behind the creator, showing a more intimate side to the man the fashion world still calls “l’enfant terrible”. 2 people, 13 years and 35,000 silver halide photographs. This Photographer Took 35,000 Pictures of Alexander McQueen Over 13 Years. October 11, 2019 The year was 1996, and a young upstart named Lee Alexander McQueen took the helm of Givenchy as head designer at just 27 years old.
French photographer Ann Ray stepped inside his fantastical world, spending two weeks with him while he was creating his first couture collection that same year. “I had to move to London, so Lee asked me to photograph his collections and basically, I never stopped,” Ray tells AnOther while visiting New York. The result was a lifelong friendship and creative collaboration that would continue until his tragic death at the age of 40 in 2010. Given unprecedented access to document his design process and behind-the-scenes moments during his legendary runway shows, Ray spent 12-hour days in the atelier over a period of 13 years, making more than 35,000 photographs that capture the complexity of McQueen: the man, the artist, and the iconoclast.
Ann Ray - Exhibitions. Ann Ray met Lee McQueen in 1996, when he had just been made the artistic director of Givenchy.
An immediate friendship was formed; over 13 years, until his death in 2010, Lee McQueen let Ann Ray photograph everything: preparations, runway shows, intimate moments. From this confidential relationship emerged 35,000 analog photographs. 7 questions à Ann Ray, exposée aux Rencontres d'Arles. Alexander McQueen as seen by Ann Ray. Ann Ray shares initmate photographs of Alexander McQueen.
Photo essay: French photographer Ann Ray provides a personal insight into the life and career of British fashion designer Alexander McQueen, in this essay written exclusively for Dezeen to accompany a selection of photographs acquired by the V&A.
The 13 images were acquired by the London museum ahead of its Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty exhibition, which opens this week. Ray's photographs of McQueen – who died five years ago – offer rare glimpses into the backstage world of fashion's enfant-terrible. A close friend of McQueen's, Ray was given privileged access to his shows and photoshoots, documenting his creative process and gaining a unique insight into his character. "As a photographer, you sometimes see further than you wished to see," said Ray in the essay.
"In the frantic experience that can be the act of photography in a challenging environment and fugitive moment, you work in a kind of surreal presence/absence. Life is a joke. Photographer ann ray opens up about her new exhibition and long-lasting friendship with lee alexander mcqueen – Schön! Magazine. Ann Ray “Golden Years” 40×30 cm. silver gelatin print Image courtesy of Ann Ray and Barrett Barrera Projects From documenting McQueen’s creative process to behind-the-scenes footage of the runway, “Ann Ray & Lee McQueen: Rendez-Vous” is an exhibition exploring 13 years of friendship and collaboration between the late British designer and French photographer.
Featuring a series of Ray’s photographs reflecting on her inimitable relationship with the designer alongside garments from Barrett Barrera Projects’ private McQueen collection, ‘Rendez-Vous’ is on view until February 15 at Barrett Barrera Projects’ new gallery space, projects+exhibitions, in St. Louis, Missouri. To celebrate the exhibition, Schön! Caught up with Ray (formerly also known as Anne Deniau) to break down her long-standing relationship with the designer and the pair’s kindred spirits; as well as Barrett Barrera Projects‘ President Susan Barrett. Intimate portraits taken by one of Alexander McQueen’s closest friends. It was in late 1996, during his first couture collection as head designer at Givenchy, that French photographer Ann Ray first met Lee McQueen.
“That initial encounter led to us working together very closely and spending a lot of time together, almost 12 hours a day,” Ray recalls. “We connected on a creative level, but also on a profound human level. Lee was someone I admired immensely.” McQueen - Official Movie Site. Film Review: McQueen. The documentary McQueen is wild, fascinating and bittersweet. It reveals the complex contest between the late British fashion designer Alexander McQueen, his art and the sublunary need to earn money that brought him both great success and crushing isolation.
This was a struggle that finally imprisoned him completely with his suicide on the eve of his mother’s funeral in 2010. The film follows McQueen’s life and meteoric career from a teenager through five chapters, showing the milestones that led to an exquisitely visual integration of body, spirit and mind that set apart his creations from his peers.
Every runway show was a beautifully fierce and deeply personal commentary that attempted to elicit a reaction – to disturb, to offend, to fascinate, to tell it the way it is! Through archived footage and interviews the movie sensitively traces the dark archetypal imagery and powerful symbols that reflected the deepest layers of McQueen’s personality. McQueen movie. Alexander McQueen’s Best Creations in the Pages of W Magazine. If looks could kill… In his 1992 M.A. graduation show from Central Saint Martins, Lee Alexander McQueen sewed locks of his own hair into his designs: a throwback to the Victorian custom of giving prostitutes’ hair to your loved ones. The showcase, called. Alexander McQueen’s life and work in pictures.
McQueen and Tartan. The Craftsmanship of Alexander McQueen - Google Arts & Culture. Alexander McQueen - a look back in pictures. Read from Alexander McQueen’s guest-edited Dazed issue. The September 1998 issue of Dazed is one of the most meaningful in this magazine’s nearly three decade history. Guest edited by Alexander McQueen, who passed away ten years ago today, its cover features Paralympian Aimee Mullins, in an image that made headlines.
In the corresponding shoot inside, McQueen, in the role of art director, invited his designer contemporaries – including Rei Kawakubo and Hussein Chalayan – to create or supply clothing for a cast of other disabled models who sent in their pictures. Styled by Katy England and shot by Nick Knight, who described it as “one of the most important shoots I’ve done”, its vision was frank, beautiful, and frontier-pushing. Mullins would go on to walk in McQueen’s SS99 show in a pair of carved prosthetic legs that later featured in the exhibition Savage Beauty. Mcqueen unseen: go behind the scenes and dive into lee’s world. Robert Fairer was there, in 1993, at the Bluebird Garage, when Alexander McQueen staged his first professional catwalk show, Nihilism.
Though Lee's production budget was minimal compared to the spectacular productions that would define his career (he'd only just graduated from CSM), his wild talent and sheer inventiveness were there for all to see. The tightly wrapped cling film dresses splattered with paint and mud, sharply tailored evening coats, unbuttoned men's shirting and first glimpse of the infamous bumster trousers, provoked and intrigued. From exaggerated silhouettes to provocative model behaviour, and a fine balance between romance and aggression, the McQueen signatures were all on show.
All the elements were there, and Robert was there to document it. If you like McQueen’s asylum, you’ll like Joel-Peter Witkin. Like for Like is a new series that explores cultural connections, giving recommendations to help promote the discovery of groundbreaking underground fashion, film, music, arts and culture. 15 years ago this September, Alexander McQueen took over an old London bus garage for one of the most visionary shows of his career.
Guests arrived to the sound of a beating heart pulsing through the darkness, and were forced to wait looking, not at a runway, but at a large mirrored box, face-to-face with their own reflections (a gesture that returned the gaze of the fashion critic back on itself). Finally the box lit up – through the glass was a clinical asylum space, its walls padded, with another smaller box in its centre. Disturbed looking models emerged from the darkness, pressing their hands against the windows as they prowled in incredible creations brought to life with feathers, antique fabrics and shells, their heads wrapped in bandages. Being McQueen’s muse. You might not know her name, but you've seen her picture. It was September 2000 when journalist Michelle Olley (formerly of fetish magazine Skin Two and the short-lived reboot of Penthouse) got a call from Alexander McQueen’s right hand Sidonie Barton, saying she had a proposal for her.
Olley had been put forward by casting agent she knew through the London club scene to be the centrepiece in McQueen’s monumental asylum-themed SS01 show VOSS, where models prowled around a padded room, their heads bandaged. For the show’s finale, the glass walls of a box in the centre of the runway fell down and shattered, revealing a naked Olley reclining on a chaise longue in an image that referenced a picture by American photographer Joel-Peter Witkin.
As the audience broke into rapturous applause, Olley's fate as the focal point of one of the most powerful and provocative fashion shows in history was sealed. On the show's fifteenth anniversary, she reflects on her experience. Backstage With Alexander McQueen, During His Most Up-Close and Vulnerable Moments. Alexander mcqueen’s top beauty looks of all time. Gothic NightmaresA gothic nightmare come to life, McQueen's look for fall/winter 09 was like a magical assault on all five senses. The lips were smudged beyond all recognition — blood red or deep purple, glossy and assertive — and the complexion was as white as snow. This was McQueen at his dramatic best. Braids gone wild Like exquisite sculptures, Alexander McQueen's braids for spring/summer 10 were one of our all time fave looks. An intricate and incredible reminder of what fashion is all about. Bandaged beauties Ushering in a new kind of poetic beauty with their hospital headbands, rouged cheeks, and almond-shaped eyes, McQueen's demented girls who glided down the catwalk for spring/summer 01 were a cross between Swan Lake and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
Iconic archive Alexander McQueen jewellery is up for sale. The late, great Lee Alexander McQueen was responsible for some of the most iconic moments in fashion, especially when he teamed up with jewellery designer and frequent collaborator Shaun Leane. In fact, the two were such a great team that they were even spotlighted in an exhibition currently open at the Fashion Space Gallery. To celebrate some of the most breathtaking pieces the two collaborated on, Sotheby’s is opening an exhibition that will feature the impressive archive. Shaun Leane speaks about his work with Alexander McQueen. Jeweller Shaun Leane remembers his iconic McQueen pieces. From the face clamp to the skeleton corset, he shares the stories behind his multiple collaborations with the British designer.
How Shaun Leane and Alexander McQueen Radicalised Jewellery. Alexander McQueen’s greatest catwalk moments Womenswear. Lee Alexander McQueen is known as much for his shows as he is for clothes, and it’s impossible to look back in fashion and not automatically think of his legacy. The designer set himself apart with his collision of influences that ranged from low-art to the avant-garde, as well as the characteristic juxtaposition of light and dark that permeated his work and put him on the map. The McQueen show that changed the future of fashion. When Alexander McQueen Turned Trash Into Treasure. “The irony of conspicuous consumption is well past its sell-by date,” wrote Susannah Frankel in AnOther Magazine S/S09.
Alexander McQueen’s most dark and twisted moments. Alexander McQueen’s greatest catwalk moments. Looking back at Alexander McQueen’s otherworldly clowns of AW09. The 10 most breathtaking Alexander McQueen shows - vogue. Retour sur le style Alexander McQueen en 19 défilés. A new project unveils unseen footage of McQueen’s graduate show. Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty - Gallery Views. Selected Objects from the Exhibition. Savage Beauty. Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty. Savage Beauty. La rétrospective McQueen attire des foules records. Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty - Gallery Views. Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty is coming to London. Exploring Savage Beauty out of hours. Alexander McQueen set to become UK's most popular exhibition of all time. Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty review – superficially magnificent.
Photos: Alexander McQueen’s Fashion in 'Savage Beauty' at Victoria and Albert Museum. Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty. Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty - About the Exhibition. The Museum of Savage Beauty explores the hidden stories and craftsmanship behind some of the most remarkable objects made by Alexander McQueen and his creative collaborators. Here the designer's iconic pieces are placed along. Savage Beauty is the UK's most popular paid exhibition ever. Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty Victoria & Albert museum in London, England. Watch: Alexander McQueen retrospective opens at V&A. Kate Moss Hologram @ Alexander McQueen Fashion Show. No.13 spring-summer 2004 interl-h264 576p 6500kbps. Savage Beauty in Numbers. Alexander McQueen :Savage Beauty - Exhibition build time-lapse 4K.
SHOWstudio - Tribute to Alexander McQueen by Nick Knight, music by Björk. Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty Periscope Tour. Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty – An Inside View. Les défilés les plus marquants de Alexander McQueen. Kate Moss en hologramme pour Alexander McQueen ? Souvenez-vous. Plato’s Atlantis video - Jack O’Connell to play Alexander McQueen in upcoming biopic. Lee Alexander McQueen, 1969 - 2010: Fashion Film - Nick Knight / Edward Enninful / Alexander McQueen.