McQueen developed a host of new shapes, tailored to mimic marine features: pronounced hips and shoulders gave way to amorphous forms; a fluted miniskirt resembled the folds of a jellyfish; puffed sleeves were folded and pleated to connote gills. Alexander McQueen - when someone pushes themselves to their maximum potential, they produce great things. I just wonder what the cost was. Yes, he killed himself, but what actually contributed to his suicide, and if it was the pressures of his very high pressured responsibility, was it worth it? He produced perfect work. I'm not saying At what cost? because I don't know his circumstances, and maybe the stress of his empire wasn't what drove him to suicide. Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty opened at The Met in 2011. This year we celebrate the tenth anniversary of the exhibition and its publication, which has sold over 340,000 copies and counting. Written by Andrew Bolton—with an introduction by fashion journalist Susannah Frankel and an interview with Alexander McQueen’s creative director, Sarah Burton, conducted by Tim Blanks—this stunning book remains an essential publication on the groundbreaking artistry of this provocative designer. Our book holds up because of its exceptional photography, design, text, and curation. Andrew selected each piece to tell a broader story. Thumbnail images of some of McQueen’s fashion shows give a sense of his creative process and show how he presented his work. Quotes from McQueen about his work appear throughout the book.

Bolton chose not to include any biographical information in the original New York Savage Beauty because he felt that McQueen’s life was “laid bare in his work for all to see”. There is a purity to this approach and it is surely true that our appreciation of McQueen’s art is not enhanced by knowing the details of his nights – and days, come to that – of drinking and drug-taking, the fights with various boyfriends, the liposuction he resorted to in a desperate attempt to slim down to a more fashionable weight. There is, however, one fact about McQueen’s life that emerges from Andrew Wilson’s biography as a possible key to his creative vision as well as to his final depression. Though not as authoritative as Thomas’s book on McQueen’s place in the world of fashion, Wilson had the benefit of interviews with the designer’s family, which makes his biography the more intimate and affecting of the two. At the age of nine or 10, McQueen started to be sexually abused by a violent man – Terence Anthony Huyler – who was married to his sister Janet. When he later confided in Blow, he said that this man stole his innocence. The young McQueen also watched powerless on several occasions when Janet was beaten or half-strangled by Huyler. Janet, who had no idea that her husband was abusing her little brother, remained close to McQueen all his life, almost like a second mother. Wilson convincingly argues that Janet became “the blueprint” for his clothes, a woman who was “vulnerable but strong”. Sometimes the women on the runway were McQueen himself, other times they were Janet. This, writes Wilson, “was the woman he wanted to protect and empower through his clothes; the patina of armour that he created for her would shield her from danger”. Alexander McQueen’s romantic sensibilities expanded his imaginary horizons not only temporally but also spatially. As it had been for artists and writers of the Romantic Movement, the lure of the exotic was a central theme in McQueen’s collections. His exoticism was wide-ranging. Africa, China, India and Turkey were all places that sparked his imagination. Japan was particularly significant, both thematically and stylistically. The kimono, especially, was a garment that the designer endlessly reconfigured in his collections. Despite these heartfelt declarations of his Scottish national identity, McQueen also had a deep interest in the history of England. This was most apparent, perhaps, in The Girl Who Lived in the Tree (Autumn/Winter 2008), inspired by an elm tree in the garden of McQueen’s country home near Fairlight Cove in East Sussex. Influenced by the British Empire, and drawing on a recent trip to India it was one of McQueen’s most romantically nationalistic collections, albeit heavily tinged with irony and pastiche. I do not follow fashion closely by any stretch of the imagination, but found Alexander McQueen's craftsmanship breathtaking and his complex ideas expressed about Nature, culture, politics, gender, sexuality and beauty really fascinating. When you see a woman wearing McQueen, there's a certain hardness to the clothes that makes her look powerful. It kind of fends people off."The Museum of Savage Beauty – The Museum of Savage Beauty explores the hidden stories and craftsmanship behind some of the most remarkable objects made by Alexander McQueen and his creative collaborators. Here the designer's iconic pieces are placed alongside historical objects from the V&A’s collections, which represent some of the many design traditions that inspired him the museum of

Published to coincide with an exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art organized by The Costume Institute, this stunning book includes a preface by Andrew Bolton; an introduction by Susannah Frankel; an interview by Tim Blanks with Sarah Burton, creative director of the house of Alexander McQueen; illuminating quotes from the designer himself; provocative and captivating new photography by renowned photographer Sølve Sundsbø; and a lenticular cover by Gary James McQueen. As with any works of art in The Met collection, the staff preserves and protects all accessioned costumes from deterioration. For this reason, no one may wear a garment after it enters the collection. You were able to photograph McQueen’s works on live models because they weren’t accessioned Museum objects, right? This approach to fashion, however, combined the precision and traditions of tailoring and pattern making with the improvisations of draping and dressmaking, an approach that became more refined after his tenure as creative director of Givenchy in Paris. It is this way of working, at once rigorous and impulsive, disciplined and unconstrained, that underlies McQueen's singularity and inimitability. With most books, we go through many rounds of cover designs, and it is often hard to get consensus on the right image. Early in the planning, the exhibition’s curator Andrew Bolton and I met with the representatives from the McQueen organization in the Museum’s staff café. They showed us an invitation from one of McQueen’s last runway shows featuring a lenticular image, which shifted from a portrait of McQueen to a patterned skull depending on how we angled the card. Suddenly we had a cover. It never happens like that.I took advantage of the extra hour to see the exhibit at 8:30 a.m. Saturday, and skip the queue which was two hours long when I came out at 10:00 a.m.! (That doesn't include the queue to get into the museum..). Six hours after and still processing, I summed up for friends: Burton, Bosch, Braveheart, beads, bones, birds, brutal, beautiful.. Bravo! McQueen, arguably more of a performance artist than even a fashion designer, used every influence, everything he learned, to form his art in his unique interpretational way. Each idea was personalized using world history and his imagination. His incredible attention to tailoring, learned on Saville Row during an apprenticeship at the tailor shop used by the Monarchy, is staggering. He could cut a pattern from a vision in his head in 3 minutes!!! This is a fine tribute to a fashion designer and conceptual artist who died far too young but whose contributions to contemporary fashion and art will live on. This book is likely to become a collector's item, so handsomely designed and present as it is. Alexander McQueen's dashing creativity was expressed through the technical artistry of his designs and the dramatic intensity of his fashion shows. Drawing on avant-garde installation and performance art, these were also emphatically autobiographical. McQueen fearlessly challenged the conventions of fashion. Rare among designers, he saw beyond clothing's physical constraints to its conceptual and imaginative possibilities. The finale was inspired by a photograph by Joel-Peter Witkin entitled Sanitarium (1983), which depicted a voluptuous woman connected via a breathing tube to a stuffed monkey. On McQueen's catwalk, the role was played by the fetish writer Michelle Olley.

It amazes me! Perhaps it reached a tipping point and became so iconic that everyone affected by McQueen’s work wanted to have it. The collection featured a number of exoticised garments, including a coat and a dress appliquéd with roundels in the shape of chrysanthemums. A fragile, blood-red glass and ostrich feather gown offered a meditation on life's transience, while a thermal image of the designer's face was woven into the fabric of a silk coat.Like Byron, Beethoven, and Delacroix, McQueen is an exemplar of the Romantic individual, the hero-artist who staunchly followed the dictates of his inspiration. As a designer, he doggedly promoted freedom of thought and expression and championed the authority of the imagination.” People find my things sometimes aggressive. But I don’t see it as aggressive. I see it as romantic, dealing with a dark side of personality.’

Fashion can be really racist, looking at the clothes of other cultures as costumes. That's mundane and it's old hat. Let's break down some barriers.' Savage Mind ‘You’ve got to know the rules to break them. That’s what I’m here for, to demolish the rules but to keep the tradition.’I want to be the purveyor of a certain silhouette or a way of cutting, so that when I'm dead and gone people will know that the twenty-first century was started by Alexander McQueen.' The Museum of Savage Beauty explores the hidden stories and craftsmanship behind some of the most remarkable objects made by Alexander McQueen and his creative collaborators. Here the designer's iconic pieces are placed alongside historical objects from the V&A’s collections, which represent some of the many design traditions that inspired him Skip to content Art and Religion McQueen often referenced art historical works in his garments. He favoured the painters of fifteenth-century Northern Europe, including Hans Memling, Robert Campin and Hieronymus Bosch. Alexander McQueen consistently promoted freedom of thought and expression, and championed the authority of the imagination. In this, he was an exemplar of the Romantic individual, the hero-artist who staunchly followed the dictates of his inspiration. 'What I am trying to bring to fashion is a sort of originality', he once commented. One of the defining features of Alexander McQueen’s collections was their historicism. While McQueen’s historical references were far- reaching, he was particularly inspired by the nineteenth century, drawing especially on the Victorian Gothic. ‘There’s something kind of Edgar Allan Poe,’ he once observed, ‘kind of deep and kind of melancholic about my collections.’