gothicNetwork.org

As you enter Victoria&Albert Museum in London, and the elegantly white area surrounds you with chic Maserati cars and refined cafés, you notice something which explores a deeper, maybe hidden, side of you: at the end of the dark shadowed corridor on the way to the posthumous exhibition of Alexander McQueen's Savage Beauty, - open until 2nd August -, you begin to be sure, with the opening hologram on a continuous video streaming, you will be thrilled by linen and tissues with a shape which explores and exposes your hard to be seen spots glaring a ghostly face of yourself.

Ten rooms for different collections: from the beginning, which exhibits McQueen's Jack the Ripper Stalks His Victims (1992) and which compels you to think that something as someone else's hair is stitched and bond under lining, that you cannot see but you simply know and feel that this weird gift ties you to an unknown part of a “victim” of McQueen's creative mind. That's the room called London, which also encloses jackets and suits from the collection The Birds (1995), Hitchcock's movie inspired; Highland Rape (1995) and The Hunger (1996), together with the seductive “Bumster” low cut trousers, with an emphasis on sharp edges on jackets and a look to the XIX century fashion.

One of the topic McQueen has always spread through all his collections is that of Gothic, and Gothic Romanticism, which is the second section of Savage Beauty is a showcase made of darkened antique glass with golden frames, pushing us in Poe's tales sets into turreted abbeys and castles reminding us with sketches which seemed tailored directly from The Fall of the House of Usher, and we seemingly listen to the cry of Madeleine already entranced by such a display of black on black, from feathers to hair and hairs (we don't really know if from animal or human!). Victorian England rules here in the collections from What a Merry Go Round, 2001; Supercali, 2002, through the celeb Voss 2001, whose name comes from the pub where Jack the Ripper met his last victim, and years after until The Horn of Plenty 2009-2010. Let's say darkness and decay always surrounded, in a mode or another – which quotes Poe's final to The Masque of the Red Death -, McQueen's creations, in the way they charmed from the in depth to light, as we see in the beautiful and mournful white on Kate Moss' Pepper's Ghost appearing in a triangular architecture for the Widows of Culloden collection (2006) with the sad and melancholic theme from Schindler's List – (composed by John Williams, New World Philharmonic Orchestra, Tasmin Little on violin). We know that for Chinese tradition white is the colour of mourning, and so Bijörk, who collaborated with McQueen alive, arrived dressed in this colour for the funeral, and paid a music tribute to him together with Nick Knight.

People pass through sections in an hallucinatory mood: we all try to grasp something among those little feathers in golden, black and white too: fetish masks all over the mannequins disturb and open a crack into our minds, letting flow what's behind too many times. Fetish chains which work on ourselves and on our imagery through the titles of collections: Nihilism, Banshee, Dante and The Widows of Culloden, connected to the Battle of Culloden of 1746 where the Scots were completely overwhelmed by English Army and McQueen remembers this hatred defeat not only through tartan but eagerly with a look on those times strikingly romantic in the face of grief. The Girl who lived in the Tree (2006), same year same theme, less tartan more Swaroski – a compliance which deserves celebration –: a mix of red and white embroidered with dazzling crystals for a mesmerizing fairytale made of clothes.

Philip Treacy, friend to McQueen as Isabella Blow, this latter had bought his first collection and all the three joined forces for long, has created the hats for the two: Isabella and Alexander, - and he's famous in Buckingham Palace where his hats are provided to the entire noble forum - : here we can notice, above others made by McQueen himself, the enchanting Butterfly Headdress of hand-painted turkey feathers for La Dame Bleue (2008) – and no blue is visible in the collection in spite of the name -, we are in the double-eight gallery of the Cabinet of Curiosities (Wunderkammer in original), surrounded by monitors, display cases, rotating mannequin as that replicating Shalom Harlow with a cotton dress sprayed by robots in the showcase you can see in one of the cases, the Spray Paint Dress resembles a moving doll in front of a ravished audience.
Skulls, Joan's red rhinestone dress from head to bottom, and we also see the model encircled by fire during the fashion show; Aimee Mullins Paralympics' champion on No.13 who dresses carved wood prosthetic legs from another monitor; moon and star hats; wonder on wonders you are completely amazed by with a touch of heresy before Christ symbol on one of these crucified crowns, knowing not to which one staring at, while John Gosling electronic sound pulses inside your breast.

Going through Voss (2001) again we notice a marvellous exoticism, as in Scanners (2003) and in It's only a game (2003), rich and glamorous, especially refined in light tone colours and embroidered with silk flowers or shells of mussels, oysters and razor-clams, giving a sense of rebirth and vitality to everything. This would match well with another favourite composer among McQueen's musical tastes: Max Richter, spreadly used as soundtrack of his fashion shows with Infra and Vivaldi Recomposed: we notice  Summer 1  from this latter album on his Savage Beauty site (written and recorded by Max Richter, from the album Recomposed By Max Richter: Vivaldi – The Four Seasons).

Last collection with McQueen alive – he unfortunately hanged himself a few days after her beloved mother's death - has been Plato's Atlantis in 2010: a cascade of glaring blue and green on serpents' printed tissues together with holographic images of insects on the same colours mixed with earth brown tones, all dressed with various kinds of Armadillo shoes 30 cm tall. At first we visualize a video of a Cleopatra alike model with serpents sliding on her body, then all drown underwater: a collection which flirts with earth and water colours – black of course doesn’t' lack with evening suits – and relevantly flows as his fashion has done through ages, anticipating dreams and fears of a dystopian future where the earth would have been all covered up with water, as in Verne's novel.