Alexander McQueen
Alexander McQueen is know for its dramatic, gorgeously constructed pieces, combining elements of British tailoring with French couture. Signature looks included billowy dresses cut in hourglass silhouettes, frock coats paired with skinny pants, sharp, angular suiting, and darkly romantic gowns covered in intricate embroidery and lace. According to Susan B. Kaiser, “Becoming visibly gendered—Binary oppositions notwithstanding—involves engagement with complicated, sorting coming systems of colors, fabrics, trims, from, shapes, and patterns and other body fashions” (121). McQueen’s tendency to combine female strength and sensuality with fragility in his collections, as well as the emotional power and raw energy of his provocative fashion shows. Through his unfortunate childhood experience suffering with sexual assaulting, he gives a unique voice to ideas that usually are silenced, in fashion as much as anywhere else. No-one working in fashion today, or previously, has presented gender in such a radically subversive way as Alexander McQueen. His work reminds us what we have repressed in order to be able to function in the world, but what we know in our unconscious minds to be true – and that, I think, is why a retrospective of it elicits the response that it does.
