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 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. 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. 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. I spoke with Gwen Roginsky—who has served as the publication director and production manager of Costume Institute books for twenty years—about her experience working on the Museum’s best-selling publication to date.

Alexander McQueen’s Spring 2010 show – an interpretation of what people would look like if humans had evolved from sea creatures. Photograph: Lauren Greenfield/InstituteAlexander 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. The installation curated by Andrew Bolton at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is absolutely wonderful, astonishing, extraordinary! I would give this book five stars if it contained photographs from the actual installation -- raw concrete stages, aged mirrors, Cabinet of Curiosities room, etc. This 8.5 minute video will give you a good overview of the "experience": http://blog.metmuseum.org/alexandermc... 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.’

One of the things that made the Savage Beauty catalogue such a success is the evocative imagery by fashion photographer Sølve Sundsbø, and I think readers might be interested to know that there is a little more to the photographs than meets the eye. How did these images come to be? 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.McQueen's romantic sensibility propelled his creativity and advanced his fashion in directions both unimagined and unprecedented. His individualistic and defiant vision was augmented by an acute sense of time and place, and a preoccupation with the exotic and the untamed. Filtered through a powerful modernity McQueen's work was, above all, driven by his fascination with the beauty and savagery of the natural world. 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”.