Alexander McQueen

“McQueen was never anybody’s boy. He was never going to bow down and kiss ass to anyone, which made him rare in that world.” (Sischy, para. 6) -

Elton John

Alexander McQueen’s staunch refusal to kneel before authority was but one of the key themes inherent in all of his runway collections. This, along with his intense fascination with violence and macabre imagery, his penchant for multi-media experimentation, his tendency to inject history, politics, and social issues into his designs, and his use of performance and spectacle in many of his fashion shows, was what marked McQueen as a true avant-garde fashion designer, as well as an avant-garde artist.

A quick glance at a timeline tracing the trajectory “shock” has taken as the centerpiece of visual and performatory art reveals how the five aforementioned themes were manifested – whether intentionally or not – in the works of avant-garde painters, photographers, film directors, and other artists alike. From the Realism paintings of Gustave Courbet and Édouard Manet, to the variety theaters of Futurists like Marinetti and Dadaists like Hugo Ball, to the heavily cut and sliced photomontages of John Heartfield and films of Sergei Eisenstein, to the politicized and rebellious creations of the Situationalists, and finally, to the DIY-nature of the Punk Movement, “shock” has become more than just a technique, but a theory and an agent of change. However, what grants McQueen particular uniqueness as a shock artist is his medium of avant-garde expression (clothes), which has not been a focus of our class. But perhaps the more important canvas of McQueen is not the fabric and cloth, but the female body – and thus, by analyzing his most notable runway shows, I seek to demonstrate how the five themes described above can be grouped under one overarching one: the woman as the site of shock tactic experimentation.

The Challenging of Authority and Convention Gustave Courbet’s profound exclamation “The government is at a loss with how to deal with me” (Tillier, 24) was a statement of pride and not of anguish. And McQueen also spoke of breaking institutional conventions with particular delight: remarking on how he’d forced audience members to stare at their own reflections during his Spring/Summer 2001 show, the designer said “Ha! I was really pleased about that. I was looking at it on the monitor, watching everyone trying not to look at themselves. It was a great thing to do in the fashion industry – turn it back on them! God, I’ve had some freaky shows.” (Mower, para. 15) Indeed, Voss was an extremely eye-opening show; the finale, featuring British journalist Michelle Olley trapped inside a glass box with breathing tubes protruding from her mouth and nothing but moths covering her body, used juxtaposition – between the show’s thin models and the markedly heavier-set Olley – to challenge body standards normalized by the fashion industry. “By putting beauty and horror together” (Evans, 99), and by enlisting waifish models and public figure Olley as his actors, McQueen was not only forced us to question not only our prevailing notions of how the female is “supposed” to look, but also the mysterious and illusive “fashion gods” who’ve appropriated such ridiculous body standards as the ideal in our society.

But it was not only the institution of fashion and the convention of size double zero which McQueen aggressively confronted. For instance, he also dared to oppose the system of financial sponsorship. His Spring/Summer 1998 show, initially titled “The Golden Shower”, had to be renamed “Untitled” when its corporate sponsor American Express, horrified by the collection’s explicit sexuality, threatened to withdraw its support (Quinn, 48). And then there was McQueen’s ability to change how we perceive clothes themselves – of what is deemed “wearable” and what is not: in his Spring/Summer 1994 collection Nihilism, his Spring/Summer

1995 collection The Birds, and his Spring/Summer 1996 collection The Hunger, models sauntered down the runway in shredded pants and tight leather ones strategically cut to expose the woman’s backside and butt crack. Even in a relatively “open” avant-garde fashion show environment, the shocking nature of these bottom was exponential – so did McQueen actually expect such pieces to sell in the marketplace? Like Neo-Dada provocateur Piero Manzoni, who famously canned and sold his own shit in 1961, McQueen was seeking to mock commercialization through his iconic “bumsters”: “I want to empower women. I want people to be afraid of the people I dress. I’ve never aspired to mass production.” (Bolton, 60)

The “Cut” and Media Experimentation McQueen’s “bumsters” also demonstrate how the designer understood the shock value inherent in the “cut” technique. Like Sergei Eisenstein’s expert slicing of film footage to create conflict and dynamism in his documentaries, and John Heartfield’s careful reconstructing from the deconstructed in his photomontages, McQueen’s slashing of fabric and apparel textiles were not mere random acts of rebellion, but well-theorized decisions. “…the point of the bumsters, [McQueen] said, was not just to ‘show the bum’; they elongated the torso, and drew the eye to what he considered the ‘most erotic’ feature of anyone’s body – the base of the spine.”

(Thurman, para. 13) McQueen was also no stranger to media experimentation. “A great deal of McQueen’s designs integrate shells, feathers, antlers, animal skins, and even entire taxidermed animals in order to bring the wearer into a ‘molecular proximity’ with the animal that transforms the body in a decidedly nonhuman fashion” (Bolton 2011, 150-72, as cited in Seely 2013, 253).

Works Cited Bolton, Andrew. Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty (Metropolitan Museum of Art). New York, NY: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2011. Print.

Evans, Caroline. Fashion at the Edge: Spectacle, Modernity and Deathliness. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007. Print.

Mower, Sarah. <http://www.style.com/stylefile/2010/02/mcqueen-the-showman/>.

Quinn, Bradley. Techno Fashion. Oxford, UK: Berg, 2002. Print.

Seely, Stephen D. “How Do You Dress a Body Without Organs? Affective Fashion and Nonhuman Becoming.” WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly 41: 1 & 2 (Spring/Summer 2013).

2013. Print.

Sischy, Ingrid. <http://www.vanityfair.com/style/features/2010/04/mcqueen-201004>. para. 6.

Tillier p. 24 Thurman, Judith. “Dressed to Thrill.” The New Yorker. 16, May 2011. Web. 1, December 2013. <http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/artworld/2011/05/16/110516craw_artworld_thurman>.