Alexander McQueen at the Met

Last Thursday I went to a members-only event at the Metropolitan Museum of Art to see clothes designed by the late Alexander McQueen. When Ed invited me to go, I'd never heard of McQueen. For those of you who haven't, he was a very avant gard Scottish fashion designer. He committed suicide a few months ago, so the exhibit was a tribute to him.

The white one is made of seashells.

 Most of the exhibit was beautifully designed, although at one point I commented to Ed that I felt like I was in a haunted house. A placard announced that the background music was a track called "Bloodbath" and the lighting was low, with dramatic spotlights pointing at the clothes, shoes, and jewelry. Also, each room had at least one screen showing footage from fashion shows he'd done in the past. In many of them, his models were wearing bizarre make-up and walking or dancing in a jerky manner that put one in mind of an epileptic fit. I read that one of his shows featured models in the foreground and caged wolves in the background.

Nearly every dress was accompanied by a quotation of his; he was unusually articulate about his work, apparently. He said wanted to empower women with his designs, and he felt that women should always be a bit threatening in addition to being beautiful.

 

As far as the clothes themselves... Well, I'm not devastated that I'll never be able to afford any of the ones I saw in the show. While looking for images to accompany this post, I found the website where his designs can be purchased, and many of the ones available for retail are actually quite beautiful. But his real statement pieces were a bit much for my taste. He created dresses from dramatic feathers, huge pieces of pony hide, seashells (I'm talking about a floor-length skirt composed entirely of seashells), and locusts - really. One of his collections was supposed to showcase something about modern versus traditional culture, and there was a short dress accessorized with football pads and a football helmet made of embroidered kimono material. We saw a metal ribcage with a stinger that was meant to be worn over a dress. I was able to spot only one dress I'd actually have wanted to wear. His shows were often quite theatrical in nature, apparently. This seemed a bit odd to me, and Ed and I talked quite a bit about different media used for making statements. To me, clothes seem to be a strange way to make a stand when they cross the line from practicality to totally bizarre - I can see doing this with a painting or a sculpture, but something that is supposed to be worn? - but I guess that's one of the many reasons I never got into fashion. 

After we'd walked through the whole exhibit, we headed to a different wing of the Met for a reception in a gorgeous room filled with marble statues and natural evening light filtering down through the skylights. We took advantage of the complimentary wine and listened to two curators talk about the exhibit, which wasn't terribly enlightening. The best part was getting a chance to check out the fellow attendees. The event was for members under 39, but most of the crowd seemed to be many years from reaching that benchmark. Over half of them were impeccably dressed, befitting a fashion event. (I had come straight from work and felt a bit frumpy, but Ed was dapper in a gray three-piece suit.) I got the feeling that after the show, everyone else was headed to a posh party in a loft somewhere to which I had not been invited. That kind of crowd isn't really my cup of tea, anyway. But it certainly was fascinating to watch them in their natural habitat.