ALEXANDER MCQUEEN: SAVAGE BEAUTY

If you haven’t yet been to the Alexander McQueen ‘Savage Beauty’ exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, I suggest you change this right away. The exhibition allows one to be instantly transported into a realm of beauty, wonder and terror. It is a vivid showcase that illustrates just how much of a creative genius McQueen truly was. Observing his extravagant pieces allows one to partake in an aesthetically rich experience where you are able to witness the boundaries of fashion being broken and deconstructed, this allowing the world to be illustrated in a unrestrained manner. Fashion, for McQueen was about being unconstrained, being able to express the dark imaginings of the artist’s mind and using the body as a means of breaking free from marginality. He used fashion as a way of questioning and challenging the politics of society through combining beauty with the grotesque. Integrating notions of the sublime into his pieces enabled him to reveal that fashion is in fact limitless.

It becomes instantly clear throughout the exhibition that McQueen was all about empowering women through his Avant-Garde inspired costumes. “I want people to be afraid of the women I dress” (McQueen) is a declaration which diffuses through the fabrics of his mesmerising gowns. He integrates feathers, faux furs and horse hair into his outfits in order to transform the female body into an elevated figure who is able to shape herself into forms never thought possible. His creations were all about endless possibilities and he merged his style with the natural world in order to get this across to his audiences. Alexander McQueen desired to capture life and express it in a liberated manner through his striking clothes. He desired to “oscillate between life and death, happiness and sadness, good and evil” (McQueen) and illustrate life in its many forms through his romantic sensibility which is captured through his opulent pieces. Alexander McQueen’s ‘Savage Beauty’ exhibition will indeed take you on a journey where all of your conventional ideas concerning fashion, beauty and the body will instantly be challenged and transformed.

Written by Talia Ogunyemi

(I cannot be credited for any of the photos.)