Photo Source : WSJ“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.”
Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty
Where: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Ave., New York
When: Through July 31
How much: $20 for adults, $15 for seniors (65 and older), $10 for students. Members and children younger than 12 accompanied by adult are admitted free. For more information, call (212) 535-7710 or visit metmuseum.org
so I was one of lucky ones who made it to the Alexander McQueen'c iconic exhibit @ The Met, after 3 hours of waiting in three different lines (museum entry line, ticket line, and 2.5 hours average waiting line to go upstairs. My recommendations would be:
- the lines are extremely long, it is super crowded, so the first recommendation would be bring food or drink (if you can of course) cause when lack of fluids puts your body under additional stress along with the anticipation of the exhibit, the exhaustion might occur
- Bring an Ipod, Ipad, book, or better yet bring your girlfriends to chat and kill time, cause you are going to wait in line for a very long time
- Some people were really dressed up for the event. You might choose to do so, but make sure at least you have comfortable shoes (leave your Jimmy Choo's at home)
- Find a good restaurant near by and plan ahead cause the last thing you want to do is to look for a decent restaurant without a reservation...
They say "do as I say, not as I do" : We went there later than anticipated with my friends (thanks to NY traffic) and even though we cut the lines almost in half with some smart tricks, we still ended up waiting 3 hours in line but it was well worth it. We did not realize that half of New York would be there , so we were not prepared (no water, no food, no reservations for after exhibition). We ended up going to Shake Shack @ 86th & Lexington and was able to sit in the garden..Totally recommend it.
FYI, there is no photography allowed and no kids under 5 years of age and definitely no strollers. But some people obviously did not follow the rules and took photos. Here is the link for Flickr:
Alexander McQueen - Savage Beauty
Some of the highlights of the exhibition besides the costumes:
- Kate Moss's Hologram (music from the movie; Schindler's List)
- Cabinet of Curiosities
- Galleries: The Romantic Mind & Romantic Gothic, Romantic Nationalism, Romantic Primitivism, Romantic Exoticism, Romantic Naturalism
When I was looking at his design not only I was impressed that the show was able present his uber talent in fashion but the stories that makes them. Some of his quotes reproduced in the exhibit:
Alexander McQueen quotes from Savage Beauty
"It is important to look at death because it is a part of life. It is a sad thing, melancholy but romantic at the same time.It is the end of a cycle -- everything has to end. The cycle of life is positive because it gives room for new things."
“There is no way back for me now. I am going to take you on journeys you’ve never dreamed were possible.”
"I’m a romantic schizophrenic"
"Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind..."
"I don’t really get inspired by specific women…It’s more in the minds of the women of the past…who are doomed…iconic women."
"I want to empower women. I want people to be afraid of the women I dress."
"Animals...fascinate me because you can find a force, an energy, a fear..."
”I’m inspired by a feather but also its color, its graphics, its weightlessness and its engineering. It’s so elaborate. In fact, I try and transpose the beauty of a bird to women.”
“When I design, I try to sell an image of a woman that I have in [my] mind, a concept that changes dramatically each season.”
“I don’t really get inspired [by specific women]. . . . It’s more in the minds of the women in the past, like Catherine the Great, or Marie Antoinette. People who were doomed. Joan of Arc or Colette. Iconic women.”
“For me, what I do is an artistic expression which is channeled through me. Fashion is just the medium.”
"I find beauty in the grotesque, like most artists. I have to force people to look at things."
“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.”
“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.”
“The reason I’m patriotic about Scotland is because I think it’s been dealt a really hard hand. It’s marketed the world over as . . . haggis . . . bagpipes. But no one ever puts anything back into it.”
“I want to be honest about the world that we live in, and sometimes my political persuasions come through in my work. 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.”
“I try to push the silhouette. To change the silhouette is to change the thinking of how we look. What I do is look at ancient African tribes, and the way they dress. The rituals of how they dress. . . . There’s a lot of tribalism in the collections.”
“[With 'bumsters'] I wanted to elongate the body, not just show the bum. To me, that part of the body—not so much the buttocks, but the bottom of the spine—that’s the most erotic part of anyone’s body, man or woman.”
“There’s blood beneath every layer of skin.”
“My friend George and I were walking on the beach in Norfolk, and there were thousands of [razor-clam] shells. They were so beautiful, I thought I had to do something with them. So, we decided to make [a dress] out of them. . . . The shells had outlived their usefulness on the beach, so we put them to another use on a dress. Then Erin [O’Conner] came out and trashed the dress, so their usefulness was over once again. Kind of like fashion, really.”
“The inspiration behind the hair came from Victorian times when prostitutes would sell theirs for kits of hair locks, which were bought by people to give to their lovers. I used it as my signature label with locks of hair in Perspex. In the early collections, it was my own hair.”
“With me, metamorphosis is a bit like plastic surgery, but less drastic. I try to have the same effect with my clothes. But ultimately I do this to transform mentalities more than the body. I try and modify fashion like a scientist by offering what is relevant to today and what will continue to be so tomorrow.”
“I spent a long time learning how to construct clothes, which is important to do before you can deconstruct them.”
“I don’t think like the average person on the street. I think quite perversely sometimes.”
“[This collection] was a shout against English designers . . . doing flamboyant Scottish clothes. My father’s family originates from the Isle of Skye, and I’d studied the history of the Scottish upheavals and the Clearances. People were so unintelligent they thought this was about women being raped—yet Highland Rape was about England’s rape of Scotland.”
“Animals . . . fascinate me because you can find a force, an energy, a fear that also exists in sex.”
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