Alexander Mc Queen Fashion Exhibition at the V & A Museum

By Trudi Goldsmith

The lovely Taliza Eloise finally got her belated  birthday present from me in March!  A ticket  to the Alexander McQueen fashion exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London .

Ok so if you’re not really into fashion designers you’ll probably be left thinking who is that ?  Well in a nut shell, Mc Queen was named British fashion designer of the year four times before his  untimely death in  February 2010.  I’ll have you know that this man has heavily influenced fashion worldwide and the designer  brand has highly influenced high street stores who have attempted to make their own versions of items from his collections.  For example I’m sure you’ve seen people wearing skull scarves etal on the high street over the past few years, as well as seeing celebrities wearing the McQueen version. Check out Lady Gaga’s style which was heavily influenced by McQueen , see her Bad Romance video where she was  dressed from head to toe  in McQueen’s designs from his Plato’s Atlantis Spring/Summer 2010 collection.

Following McQueen’s death his final collection Autumn/ Winter 2010 was finished by his Creative Director Sarah Burton, who also designed Kate Middleton’s wedding dress.

The Alexander McQueen exhibition  ‘Savage Beauty’ first opened in New York  in 2011 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art  a year after McQueen’s death.  The exhibition resulted in record attendance at the museum and ran from  May 4th until 7th August.

On March 14th 2015 The Savage Beauty exhibition opened up at  London’s Victoria and Albert Museum in the city that McQueen professed inspired so much of his work. The opening gala was attended by Victoria and David Beckham, Kate Moss , Naomi Campbell and  a host of other famous faces all dressed in McQueen designs.

Almost a fortnight after opening day, ticket in hand, alongside Taliza Eloise,  I  arrived at the V& A  for the Savage Beauty Exhibition .

At the entrance to the exhibition  was a wall filled with holographic photos of Alexander McQueen’s face  which changed into the  trademark  McQueen skull as you walked past it.   The first room was filled with some original pieces from McQueen’s graduate collection ‘Jack The Ripper Stalks His Victims.’  The items were kindly loaned by the husband of the late fashion journalist Isabella Blow who purchased the entire collection back in 1992. We were also informed  that the lining of the suit jackets in the collection contained locks of McQueen’s hair! Very eerie in retrospect.

The  various rooms that housed items from Mc Queen’s many collections were well lit with some of  his quotes written on the background walls and on the staging in front of the clothes. There was so much to see  from McQueen’s ‘bumster’ trousers to some of the beautiful dresses from the Autumn / Winter 1995 Highland Rape Collection. Further into the exhibition   we entered  the  awe inspiring ‘Cabinet of Curiosities’  which was a large room  full of some of McQueen’s amazing shoes, head pieces and dresses with  television screens on the walls showcasing  the collections on the runway.

 The Cabinet of Curiosities

The centre piece  of the Cabinet of Curiosities was a   rotating mannequin wearing the white spray painted dress  worn by  Shalom Harlow  that was sprayed   black and yellow by two mechanical robots at McQueen’s  NO.13  Spring Summer 1999  fashion show. It was so easy to spend  over an hour in the Cabinet of Curiosities looking at all the beautiful pieces. I would have loved to have tried on the wonderful Alien shoes  that were on display  from the 2010 Plato’s Atlantis Collection.  ( also seen on Lady Gaga in her Bad Romance Video) Sadly  Plato’s Atlantis  was the last  collection  that  McQueen  fully completed before his death.

 Plato’s Atlantis

It was  however great to see  some of the  Autumn Winter 2010 collection  at the exhibition which saw McQueen’s unfinished designs  completed by Sarah Burton following  his death.

The last room of the exhibition was a dark room with a  3 D holographic pyramid which contained Kate Moss  dressed in a chiffon white dress from McQueen’s Autumn winter 2006  The Widows of Culloden collection .  Set to John Williams haunting soundtrack  from Schindler’s List Kate Moss could be seen as an ethereal apparition dancing in the air  slowly as the dress  delicately swished around .  A fitting finale to the exhibition.

Leaving the exhibition I was left wanting to visit it again to see all the beautifully designed pieces and  to re visit the stories behind the items on display . There is so much  more to see than I have  mentioned above!  I highly recommend a visit.

In association with Swarovski  McQueen’s Savage Beauty runs  at the Victoria and Albert Museum until 2nd August 2015.  Tickets available from their website.