Book Review: “Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty”

          The late Alexander McQueen was renowned, sometimes to the point of being notorious, for his otherworldly and bizarre designs. Although his designs have now found homes upon the red carpet, McQueen was quite the opposite of a conventional celebrity. Growing up, he knew he was destined to have a career in fashion, and became apprenticed to a coat maker at the age of sixteen in 1985 before he became chief designer at Givenchy in 1996 and designed haute couture for the runway.

          As a designer, and at McQueen’s very core as an artist, it was insufficient to settle for creating beautiful clothing with nothing more than pure aesthetics in mind. He was driven to create clothing that did not just serve as fragments of an attire, but were actual pieces of art, designed to encompass elaborate narratives. For instance, in his collection Highland Rape (autumn/winter 1995-96), McQueen meant to infuse Scottish nationalism and politics by dressing models in scanty tartan with what audiences thought was “real blood” to tell the history of the British genocide against the Scots. However, the collection sparked controversy, causing critics to dismiss his ideas as shock value, even though McQueen’s intentions were never shallow. Following his own artistic ideals, McQueen continued to breathe life into many more sartorial beauties with stories to tell, such as the collection It’s Only a Game (spring/summer 2005), which was staged as a futuristic chess game in which the East (Japan) battled against the West (America). Even as McQueen won accolades and garnered media attention, he became more withdrawn and private, preferring to disappear into a car within seconds after a show than to remain backstage and meet and greet interviewers.

The late sartorial genius, Alexander McQueen

          Savage Beauty was published to coincide with the Alexander McQueen exhibit at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which was organized by the Costume Institute. The book, not including the statements, foreword, preface, introduction, and interview with Sarah Burton, McQueen’s design assistant, is divided into seven parts: The Romantic Mind, Romantic Gothic, Romantic Nationalism, Romantic Exoticism, Romantic Primitivism, Romantic Naturalism, and Cabinet of Curiosities. Each of these parts showcase highly detailed and crisp photographs of McQueen’s designs on mannequins, many of which seem to have been specifically made for McQueen’s clothing, so as to better express the emotions and tales that he meant to portray.

Sadly, Alexander McQueen passed away on February 11, 2010, at the age of forty. Although his life was short, he left behind a great fashion legacy that did not emphasize on how to make the wearer beautiful, but on how to tell messages and stories as artistic masterpieces. Savage Beauty, with all of its sumptuous photographic documents and text, does Alexander McQueen’s role as an artist and fashion designer justice.