Alexander McQueen, 1969-2010

I'm a nocturnal person, so rarely do I fall asleep before 4 A.M. Usually, I awake between 10 and 2 P.M. depending on my day's schedule. At waking up at 11 this morning, I had a couple new Blackberry messages, as I always do when I get up. The first one I opened read, "You heard about your boy McQueen?" I had no clue what my friend was talking about, but before I answered, another message came in reading "Alexander McQueen committed suicide!" Just as I was then, I am now- I still don't know what to think or say or even how to feel. I called my ex, reported the news, there was silence. Stunned silence. We both had no words. I heard a shuffle on the phone, some more silence, an attempt to speak on his behalf, but all he could say was "What??" I told him i'd call back with the confirmed report; everyone knows how rumours work. I called back two minutes later sobbing with the news.

As a follower of McQueen on twitter, (his profile has been deleted now it seems) I got the news that his mother had passed away. In retrospect, the tweet seemed a bit... off-handed... Indeed, his previous tweets about his soon-to-be-seen collections seemed more impassioned. But, as an outsider, somebody totally unknowing of what goes in the world of McQueen, I hadn't a clue as to what kind of relationship he had with his mother but who was I to judge? He'd never read it, but I replied to his tweet, expressing my condolences to his family and offering my support to him during his time of loss. This was the last thing I ever expected.

Unlike other art-forms, like say music or visual art, fashion is different in that it's primarily made to be bought and worn. But realistically speaking, only about 2-5 per cent of the world's population can afford McQueen's couture. Hell, McQueen isn't even sold in even the most expensive, most fashionable boutiques in my country, Jamaica. But, like other art-forms, sometimes the point isn't even about who's wearing, who bought it, or who can afford it; now, more than ever, the fashion world has become so accessible, collections becoming instantly iconic for the images seen sauntering and sashaying down the runway, and since McQueen's emergence on the fashion scene in the 90's, he has sent some of the most incendiary, most brilliant, most envelop-pushing images in the entire history of the industry down any runway.

But what does all that mean for an island-boy, one living as diametrically opposed to the fashion world, as Mars is opposed to Earth? Well, before I was all fashion-savvy, it meant nothing, really. But in 2003 or so, when I started listening to Icelandic pop singer, Björk, (all my ex's fault) I was floored by one single image- that of the geisha-esque album cover of one of my fave albums, Homogenic. Designed by McQueen himself, my interest was instantly piqued in the man.

I researched him. I went through every available image he had on style.com. I sifted through all mags and collected spreads and editorials with his pieces. I became fixated and obsessed. Who was this man with his dark visions? Why was he so stylistically different than any of his fellow designers?? It's sad, because we may never know the answer to that now that he has passed away, but as the son of a taxi driver, (him, not me) McQueen inspired me, heck, he turned me on to fashion!

Here he was, from humble beginnings, no pedigree to his name, but daring to dream big. In the fashion world, that shit is hard. How dare you come from out of nowhere and try to take shit over? He may not have heard those words, but in his first couple of collections for the house of Givenchy, his audacity was unsurprisingly met by scathing reviews from fashion editors and critics. But he stuck to it.
He changed the way I looked at fashion and fashion shows, indeed, his very ideas caused me to think. Period. His thought and thought patterns moved me, and I wish I had even an ounce of his creativity. Yves St. Laurent may have been more of a classicist, but McQueen I hold in high-esteem as the premiere talent of my generation.
In the 90's he catered to the angst-y, post-Nirvana iconic hipsters of my teen years like Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell, sending them down the runway in grunge. Nowadays, he's been embraced by a whole new generation of tabloid-makers and fashion chameleons, (Lady Gaga, Rihanna, Sarah Jessica Parker) but i'm sure the thing that meant the most to McQueen was when Isabella Blow bought his entire graduation collection. Blow was there for him and believed in him before the world criticized then jumped on his bang wagon. I can only imagine the grief he suffered when Blow herself died in 2007.
Some may say his creativity waned in recent years, but that was hardly the point. This man had earned the right to send models completely naked down the runway- and it would still have been our obligation to praise him if he so chose.

McQueen will never know of me, but I know of him, and for that, my life will perpetually be inspired and enriched. He inspired me to think, he inspired me to be different, he inspired me to dream and for that, I am eternally grateful. Godspeed, McQueen. Godspeed.

The Best Spring/Summer 2010 RTW Collections

As we prepare for the fall collections next month, and sift through pre-fall, let's look back at September and October of '09. Here are my choices for the top ten best collections of last season. 

10. Balmain

There's a reason Balmain is your favourite celebrity's favourite label. Christophe Decarnin's padded, over-priced shoulders is now a phenomenon, but thankfully, for his S/S 2010 RTW collection, he gave us much more than trends. Goddesses in huge-shouldered, metal-epauletted military tailcoats, dominated his runway; their T-shirts tattered, bullet belts slung around artfully destroyed, stained, and holed jeans.

 9. Viktor&Rolf

It surprised, even annoyed me a bit how some of these so-called authorities on fashion were quick to pan Viktor&Rolf's collection. When has a runway show (emphasis on show) been about accessibility? With that said, Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren's collection succeeded. The use of mountains of tulle was ingenious to say the least, and the shoes were quite gorgeous. I'm waiting feverishly to see how this will all transfer to retail.

8. Versace

What has gotten into Donatella Versace lately? With each new collection, the clothes have just been getting better and better! With vivid pastels, geometric prints, baroque curlicues and slinky chain mail, it was all very commercial, but no one should complain when it's this tastefully done.

7. Karl Lagerfeld

In a dying industry, sometimes going back to basics is necessary. And that's exactly what Karl Lagerfeld did with his RTW collection for S/S 2010. The black and white motif reflected the designer's own personal style, but it was the use of couture fabrics that proved the collection's pedigree. And those dresses at the end with overlapping silver filigree? Gorgeous!

 

 6. Burberry Prorsum

 

With the trench coat as his canvas, Christopher Bailey reshaped and remade the staple over and over again with one not-so-simple technique- ruching. In a collection that could have killed itself from repetition, it is testament to Bailey's talent as a designer how very seamlessly everything came together.

5. Givenchy

 

Remember when Riccardo Tisci's shows weren't given the seal of approval? My how times have changed. Every editor and fashion industry insider worth their salt now claw their ways to attend his shows. But really, nothing has changed about his approach to design.

His collections continue to fuse religious, couture and cultural influences. If that sounds like nonsense on paper, look at how beautifully the clothes turned out: the graphic jackets; tiny kilts; attenuated drop-crotch harem pants; cool, multi-layered, modernized tutus; and draped, wrapped, and swathed tulle dresses. I suspect Tisci is somewhere having the last laugh.

4. Lanvin

Decadent. Sumptuous. Regal. Fitting words to describe Alber Elbaz' drape-tastic S/S 2010 collection for Lanvin. Opulent fabrics in a candy-store array of pink, salmon, peach, and vermilion was paired with a dash of extraordinary fine leather and a buildup of encrusted gold sequins and jewelry.

3. Balenciaga

 

In a collection that seemed as much informed by as designed for the streets, Nicolas Ghesquière collaged  elements of recycled fabrics and natural-looking hemp weaves, into tribalistic clothes completely ready for the concrete jungle.

2. Gareth Pugh

 

Has Gareth Pugh started to lighten up? No. He's started to tone down. Garnering some of the best reviews of his very short design career, Pugh's usual elements were still there- black and white, dark androgyny- but the collection also proved how meticulous he is with experimenting with fabrics, micro-pleating, weaving and slashing crepe and chiffon. Pugh has talent, there's no doubt about that, but this was the first time anyone could call his creations beautiful.

1. Alexander McQueen

What a hubbub this collection caused! Kanye West blogged about it. Lady GaGa caused the live stream to feed what with debuting her new song at the time, "Bad Romance", at the show, before she wore some of the fashion in the accompanying music video. Even Daphne Guinness was photographed in the 12-inch shoes. But all that aside, McQueen's vision of Darwin was the singularly most brilliant stroke on the runway last season for its creative execution alone. The clothes, though, speak for themselves- sea-reptile prints, nipped waists, belled silhouettes, I don't even know how to describe the fabrics themselves. All I can say is each dress was a work of computer-generated art crossbred with McQueen's couture signature. And that's a compliment if ever I gave one.

Alexander McQueen 2010 Spring/Summer Collection

For McQueen's 2010 Spring/Summer collection, it all started with reptiles. Yes. Reptiles. The collection he showed on Tuesday evening, the third in a series that has explored man’s relationship to the earth with Darwinian detachment, was, theatrically speaking, heavy. With the polar ice cap melting, the earth can no longer support life as we know it. We’re headed back from whence we came, the ocean.
Titled “Plato’s Atlantis”, the performance opened with a video of a naked woman writhing in the sand with snakes. Two robotic arms with video cameras glided up and down the runway, gyrating like snakes, streaming the show live on the designer's website.
Models perched on impossibly high platform booties that were convex through the top of the foot, their hair a serpent's den of cornrows, wore short dresses in snakeskin-light chiffon printed with the scales of copperheads and cobras. Exquisite pleating created strange and wonderful volumes on the shoulders, sleeves and hips, while bubbly metallic paneling on some of the dresses glinted like scales.
Next came the winged creatures; owls and insects, whose markings morphed into hallucinatory prints on feathery chiffon. For the aquatic creatures, the palette shifted from rusty browns and mustard-y yellows to a spectrum of blues, purples and grays. Along with the dresses, we got deep-sea gear, with neoprene layered over shimmering microfibers. The booties, embellished with metalwork, glimmered darkly, like an oil spill.
Then McQueen went intergalactic, sending out girls who looked like distant nebulae, naked but for a cloud of metallic fabric that swirled around their hips and up their midriffs.
Evolution—Darwin, the natural world, technology—provided inspiration for the dazzling clothes. Most of the dresses, in engineered prints and jacquards, were molded and draped, and in astonishing whorls of colors. Platform shoes looked like the hulls of ships.
What is hard to appreciate is the amount of thought and work that went into the making of the clothes. The prints and fabrics were amazing, but then consider a slim gray coat cut clean open at the chest and then closed in a soft arc near the hem, as if the whole thing had been hollowed out of an existing coat and this was the shape that remained.
It was breathtaking, and filled with too much fine work and too many grand references to take in at once. McQueen proves why he may be the very best designer living today. Not only was it the most ambitious show yet of Paris' ready-to-wear displays, McQueen's sartorial synthesis of evolution was also the most brilliant. And the best. There. I said it.