McQueen
McQueen
The legend that is Alexander ‘Lee’ Mc Queen and his legacy ripped at the heart of the fashion from his earliest recognized appearance in the early nineties. His legacy runs even deeper than even his impressive legend though and his contribution and art of tailoring can never be underestimated.
This film co-directed by Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui strives to bring together the disparate strands of his already well documented life and place them into sharper focus and succeeds in most of its intentions. Dividing the film into chapters relating to his most famous and iconic collections provides a cohesion to the chaos of a too short life.
For die-hard Mc Queen aficionados there is little in the way of new information and the usual suspects such as the drugs, the liposuction, the HIV diagnosis, the various lovers. The Givenchy years, the Gucci deal, Kate Moss as hologram and the well documented mutual ‘love’ affair with Isabella Blow and its subsequent fall-out all make an appearance and somehow only add to the enigma.
The Isabella Blow sequence is of particular interest as it reveals the ruthlessness of his ambition as she is tossed aside when the real money starts to flow in. Some would argue that her work was done and there was no longer a position for her in the new regime- Blow never operated well in any restrictive circumstances and serious business requires a discipline she perhaps didn’t possess- but there is a feeling that she was discarded at a vulnerable time in her life and her subsequent suicide indicates she never quite got over this rejection from someone she had placed so much time, faith and energy in.
However if Blow took the rejection hard there is also the sense that McQueen himself never really forgave himself as her death precipitated an inherent sadness and tendency towards the grotesque and macabre which became even more apparent in his work than it had been previously; it had always been there but now it was prevalent and heavy hanging memento mori.
The footage of the shows however is simply transcendent and this is where the film shines as it serves to remind us of his genius. The early shows put together from unemployment benefit and quite literally rolls of cling-film are especially intriguing as although the clothes are un-wearable facsimiles of them exist even now on the fringes of mainstream fashion whilst some of them have had major fashion moments.
An intriguing film which whilst offering nothing new reminds us of a time when fashion actually meant something- nowadays the time between catwalk and chain store mass production is the blink of a camera shutter- and was both inspirational and aspirational rather than disposal.
McQueen himself states in the film that if he died then he wouldn’t want his line to continue in his name and the collection I saw recently in Harvey Nichols merely confirms his worst fears; commerce before art. As any purist will agree the McQueen line died with the man himself.