Alexander McQueen PARIS, March

PARIS, March 4, 2005 – Tippi Hedren and Marilyn Monroe. Biker molls and sweater girls. You got it: Alexander McQueen went to the sixties, all the way, for fall. With its filched movie and rock 'n' roll themes, the collection read as a knowing vehicle, a McQueen director's cut. Glacially restrained tailoring, early rocker chic, the classic Hollywood ball gown moment: He had 'em all. Plus great hair, great music, and a roar of old-school glamour.
But there's no such thing as a McQueen routine without a sinister psychological subtext or two. Was there a hint in the invitation—a pastiche of the film poster for Vertigo, superimposed with the title of another Hitchcock movie, The Man Who Knew Too Much? What McQueen knows shows aplenty. His combined knowledge of Savile Row tailoring and Parisian couture means he can scissor an impeccably narrow gray tweed coat or a nipped-waist pencil skirt suit, and put sizzle into period sobriety. The same goes for his showstopper Charles James-meets-Marilyn evening gowns, with their strapless sculpted fishtails and "Happy birthday, Mr. President" spangles.
But there's an underlying strain in all this knowingness, too. At a time when fashion demands commercial reality, theatrics alone can't carry a show. McQueen, perhaps with a weary sense of show 'em what they want, also put out a lot (Navajo blankets, tasseled suede circa The Misfits), which turned parts of the presentation into a merchandise run-through of dubious taste. A cynical trotting out of an overextended theme isn't what the fashion world expects of Alexander McQueen. We know; he knows: He's bigger than that. So was that why, to the sounds of Elvis echoing through the hall, he left the building without comment?– Sarah Mower

PARIS, October 10, 2003 – It takes a showman like Alexander McQueen

PARIS, October 10, 2003 – It takes a showman like Alexander McQueen to get the lifeblood pumping back into fashion performance. His show—staged in the Salle Wagram, a nineteenth-century Parisian dance hall—was an exuberantly hilarious reenactment of Sydney Pollack's Depression-era film They Shoot Horses, Don't They? Choreographed by Michael Clark over two weeks of intensive rehearsals in London, the narrative involved dancers, models, and audience in a visceral celebration of exquisitely glamorous clothes.
In the opening scene, the girls entered—dancing for all they were worth on the arms of muscle-bound sailors and hunky hopefuls—dressed in fishtailed silver lamé, figure-hugging cha-cha dresses, and show-stopping gowns with spangled bodices and huge feathered skirts. Other competitors whirled on wearing pink corseted tulle tutus over gray ballet sweats; mint satin tap-suits; or a slinky confection of gray checkerboard chiffon. A Billie Holiday look-alike, dramatically vamping in pink charmeuse and ostrich, vied for attention as flashy bodysuited showgirls were energetically twirled aloft by their partners.
McQueen's signatures—elaborately pieced tailoring (now beautifully softened with delicate inserts of lingerie) and body-hugging denims spliced onto nude tulle—also did star turns. The pace picked up even further in the elimination race, in which morphed-together fluorescent chiffons and sports pieces ran hell-for-leather (on impossibly high heels) in a hotly contested dash around the room.
There was even an opening for daywear. Blue-collar marathon survivors staggered out wearing plaid shirts, coats, and skirts made from quilts and recycled patchworks of shirting material, all crafted to the McQueen sex-bomb template. The show reached its climax as a lone exhausted dancer in a silver sequined gown mock-expired center stage. As she was carried off by the designer and his choreographer, thunderous applause rocked the hall.– Sarah Mower

Alexander McQueen’s PARIS, March 8, 2003

PARIS, March 8, 2003 – A glass wind-tunnel corridor bridging a snow-covered wasteland: that was the bleak techno-meets-nature setting for Alexander McQueen’s mind trip for fall. "I wanted it to be like a nomadic journey across the tundra," he said. "A big, desolate space, so that nothing would distract from the work."
The clothes, sculpted into his signature nip-waisted, stiff A-line skirt silhouettes, exhibited all the intense craft and some of the shapes that he learned during his stint at Givenchy couture. It bumped his ready-to-wear up to a new level, and if the plot—which traveled through Eurasian ethnic into punk and on to motocross—wasn't all that understandable, the decorative impact made up for it.
Fantastic details were lavished on dramatic structured carapaces, embroidered, painted and mind-blowingly embellished to look like antique samurai armor, Russian lacquered dolls and tribal ceremonial dress. Somewhere along the line, the stiff pleated skirts segued into molded suits, done in jigsaws of two-tone checkerboard—the better to show off the designer’s devilishly accurate cutting skills.
McQueen can’t resist some theatrics: he sent two models into the wind tunnel, one wearing a skintight leather suit harnessed to a billowing parachute, the other dragging a twenty-foot kimono into the eye of the fake snowstorm. Still, the moments that made the audience catch its breath were those that betrayed McQueen's softer, more romantic side. One was a jacket constructed of white tulle pom-poms that looked like a bubble of snowballs. The other was the prettiest dress in the show: pale gray chiffon cut in an empire shape, embroidered with sequins and worn by Natalia Vodianova with the brightest red ruched over-the-knee boots.– Sarah Mower

Alexander McQueen PARIS

PARIS, March 9, 2002 – Casting away all but one of his usual theatrical props, Alexander McQueen proved to Paris that his design can stand on its own dramatically erotic strengths. Showing in the shadowy medieval vaulted hall of the Conciergerie, McQueen couldn't resist a lone, macabre trick—a vista of a pack of caged wolves, and the opening image of a lone figure clad in a purple leather cape leading a pair of dogs (who looked more scared than scary). But that was just for old times' sake. When his models stalked out in brown tweed, tailored to within an inch of their lives, and strapped into variations on brown leather braces, it was clear McQueen was concentrating on clothes and not theatrics.
His vixenish women had tiny-waisted silhouettes done with amazing attention to cut and detail. Milkmaid necklines—far from innocent-were pushed up by leather bodices that curved down into the tightest pencil skirts, and finished off with thigh-high leather boots. McQueen moved from that Helmut Newton-esque fantasy to another—bad schoolgirls, who mixed lingerie and silver lamé ties and skirts in with their proper blazers and duffels. For a splendid finale, he brought out romantic flouncy skirts, an exaggerated puff sleeved black velvet coat and a skirt made of swags of jet beading. Best of all, he's softened his sometimes severe hand so that the idea of wearing these pieces seems not just possible, but quite appealing.
A trim McQueen took his bow in a bespoke suit made by the Savile Row tailors, Huntsman. It seemed like a coming of age. "I wanted it to be romantic, beautiful," he said. "Power to the women! I got fit for this and I worked hard for it."– Sarah Mower

ALEXANDER MCQUEEN Colorful lights

LONDON, February 21, 2001 – Colorful lights, a merry-go-round, the sound of children? Alexander McQueen's mise-en-scène brought to mind family trips, fun and games, and maybe a couple of lighthearted mimes.
But once the lights went down and the blaring soundtrack began, it became perfectly clear that there was nothing even remotely candy-coated about his lascivious carnival crashers. Cavorting and gyrating around poles, a posse of hard-as-nails girls took over the stage wearing shiny patent-leather jackets and jeans, scalloped coats and skirts, S&M overcoats, skintight leather pants and ornate military jackets that would've put Napoleon to shame. A nearly naked princess turned up in little more than a feathered headdress, a net gown and a few chains; her cohorts wore frayed sweaters with giant skulls and bones, and long suit jackets that became dresses as they wrapped around the body and then draped at the side.
When the frantic pace finally slowed down, it was to reveal an eerie backdrop of gigantic stuffed animals, discarded dolls, puppets, balloons and ragged circus paraphernalia, out of which several macabre characters emerged, wearing massive ruffles, centuries-old suits and beat-up lace. The perfect accessory? One of McQueen's otherworldly creatures dragged around a golden skeleton with her foot.– By Armand Limnander

http://www.style.com/fashionshows/collections/S2001RTW/review/AMCQUEEN

LONDON

LONDON, September 26, 2000 – Alexander McQueen's show was nothing short of monumental. The audience sat around a mirrored cube, which, when lit from inside, revealed itself to be a mental-hospital holding cell. Demented girls, wearing hospital headbands and everything from extraordinary mussel-shell skirts to impossibly chic pearl-colored cocktail dresses, slithered and strutted while uselessly attempting to fly over the cuckoo's nest.
McQueen was at his very best: There were gothic, theatrical pieces, like a dress with a miniature castle and rat posing as a shoulder pad; a top made out of a jigsaw puzzle; and a huge feathered creation with stuffed eagles suspended over the model's head, poised to attack à la Hitchcock. But amidst all the insanity, there was a cornucopia of startlingly elegant—and wearable—pantsuits, flouncy party dresses, and even a spectator pump or two.
How to top off such a climactic presentation? After everyone thought it was all over, another cube within the psychiatric ward-cum-runway opened up to reveal a portly nude woman, her face covered by a mask, breathing through a tube, surrounded by fluttering moths. It was a truly shocking and enthralling tableau: Francis Bacon via Leigh Bowery and Lucien Freud. In a word, sublime.– By Armand Limnander