Many things have been written about the late designer Alexander McQueen. Essays about his work praised it, elevating his pieces to art; features characterised by an investigative slant tried to delve into his mind and find the truth behind his death; fans mourned his genius. Yet, since the designer was always secretive about his modus operandi, we very rarely saw images of McQueen in his studio, preparing a collection surrounded by models and staff. That's why the volume Alexander McQueen: Working Process (Damiani) could be considered as a unique book.
Together with Susannah Frankel, photographer Nick Waplington followed McQueen as he prepared his Autumn/Winter 2009-10 collection. Entitled "The Horn of Plenty!" and subtitled "Everything And The Kitchen Sink", the collection was showcased in March 2009 in Paris after five weeks of preparations.
The book chronicles those five weeks, opening with a model in a coif and corset; as things progress, we see moodboards with intricate references going from Matthew Bourne's "Swan Lake" to Cecil Beaton's My Fair Lady and Nick Knight's images; fabrics and patterns; dressmakers and interns at work; sets and rehearsals; McQueen smiling or striking a model pose to show how a design should be interpreted; Philip Treacy making his extravagantly bizarre headpieces with lampshades, umbrellas, plastic bags, aluminium cans and rubbish bins. Anna Wintour makes a quick appearance and the tension during the catwalk is also chronicled. The book ends with the loneliness of the designer taking refuge on the balcony of his hotel after the show.
When the collection was showcased, some critics complained about the misogynistic look of the models who wore terrifyingly vivid red or dark lipstick that made them look like crossovers between inflatable dolls and Leigh Bowery, but McQueen used it with the same irony he injected in his pied de poule printed skirt suits with cinched waists evoking Christian Dior’s New Look or in the Harlequin print blouses with leg of mutton sleeves and goat hair coats à la Schiaparelli.
Ironic, parodic and extravagant, McQueen told us with this collection that past, present and future fashion is at its core a pile of rubbish, a Frankenstein monster built from trendy debris and random parts of previous collections by various designers.
Characterised by this dark and bitter irony, the collection was indeed a critique of consumerism, and a compendium of the last 15 years of McQueen's production in which some of his previous garments were dismembered, recreated and given a new life.
The designer stated in a quote republished in the book that this wasn't a safe collection, but a critique to indiscriminate consumption, “It's a punked up McQueen It Girl parody of a certain idea, of a woman who never existed in the first place. It's Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast At Tiffany's. It's Dior. It's Valentino's ladies who lunch. It's the women you see in those old images by (Irving) Penn. They're caricatures of their time and I've pushed that caricature even further (…) everything is extreme. Extreme-d.”
In a way this volume - edited by McQueen who picked the order in which the images had to be printed - could be considered as revolving around two parts, workmanship and mise en scene. Waplington's images show indeed moments of hard work and the making of the spectacle behind a catwalk show, but his pictures are also intertwined with photographs of the waste grounds near where McQueen grew up.
While talking about this collection McQueen stated that the whole set in the show hinted at the fact that we live in a mess, adding “I want to throw that at the audience to make them think”. Suddenly his words accompanied by these images of demi-couture designs, landfill sites and recycling plants make more sense, while this book introduces fans to an intimate world capturing the essence of McQueen much better than a thousands essays written about him.
Alexander McQueen: Working Process, Photographs by Nick Waplington is published by Damiani.
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