Log #7

2017.05.23

Log #7

McQueen's most celebrated catwalk show was his 2001 Spring/Summer collection "VOSS". The title, the name of a Norwegian town renowned as a wildlife habitat, suggested the collection would celebrate nature. With VOSS, McQueen wanted to make his audience question the notion of conventional beauty. Bodices, skirts and dresses were made out of razor-clam, mussel and oyster shells.

Figure 1. A razor clam.

"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 (the model) came out and trashed the dress, so their usefulness was over once again. Kind of like fashion, really."

Figure 2. Razor-clam-shell gown, VOSS, spring/summer 2001.

What I saw from this razor-clam-shell gown was that McQueen could discover beauty in almost everything. I mean EVERYTHING. "Beauty can come from the strangest of places, even the most disgusting of places. It's the ugly things I notice more, because other people tend to ignore the ugly things," he said. To me it is such an essential ability that an artist or a designer should embrace and run with. As a saying from the Russian artist Auguste Rodin goes, "Beauty is everywhere. It is not that she is lacking to our eye, but our eyes which fail to perceive her." Also the teamwork played a significant role in the execution of the dress. I firmly believed that McQueen and his team must have good communication with each other because if there were any quarrel, it would have shown in the works. Being a fashion designer equals being a team player. Most importantly, with his magical techniques, McQueen seemed to be able to play with the unconventional materials without losing their substances effortlessly.

References (in APA 6.0 format)

Bolton, A. (2011). Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://blog.metmuseum.org/alexandermcqueen/

Lewis, T. (2015). Why we're all still mad about Alexander McQueen. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/08/why-mad-again-about-alexander-mcqueen-nick-waplington-savage-beauty

Wilson, E. (2009). McQueen Leaves Fashion in Ruins. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/12/fashion/12MCQUEEN.html?_r=0

Alexander McQueen: Savage beauty, dark nature. (2011). Retrieved from http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2011/05/alexander_mcqueen

The Beautiful People. (n.d.) Retrieved from http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=2521

Encyclopedia of Collections: Voss. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.vam.ac.uk/museumofsavagebeauty/rel/encyclopedia-of-collections-voss/#related-objects