'Fashion is a big bubble, and sometimes I feel like popping it.'
Alexander McQueen, 2009
This definitive publication on Alexander McQueen (1969 - 2010) invites you into the creative mind of one of Britain's most brilliant, daring and provocative designers. Accompanying the V&A's landmark exhibition Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty, this comprehensive catalogue features 28 ground-breaking essays from expert fashion commentators and cultural scholars which examine the richness and complexity of McQueen s visionary fashion. The publication includes over 440 striking images, from intimate backstage portraits and editorials by leading fashion photographers to previously unpublished sketches and research boards from the McQueen archive.
At the centre of the book is a Cabinet of Curiosities gatefold with a specially commissioned photo shoot that showcases McQueen s breath-taking attention to detail. The book closes with an encyclopaedic survey of all of McQueen's London collections, from his 1992 MA graduate collection to his final collection, posthumously presented in March 2010.
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CONTENTS
FOREWORDS
Nadja Swarovski - Sponsor's Foreword
Jonathan Akeroyd - Foreword
Martin Roth - Director's Foreword
INTRODUCTION
Andrew Bolton - In Search of the Sublime
Claire Wilcox - Edward Scissorhands
No. 1 A SENSE OF PLACE
Christopher Breward - Su[i]ture: Tailoring and the Fashion Metropolis
Ghislaine Wood - Clan MacQueen
Louise Rytter - Central Saint Martins
Abraham Thomas - Drawing a Line
Susannah Frankel - The Early Years
No.2 ARTISTRY
Claire Wilcox - Plato's Atlantis: Anatomy of a Collection
Edwina Ehrman - Givenchy
Helen Persson - Walking Out
Anna Jackson - Refashioning Japan
Jonathan Faiers - Nature
Boy No. 3 SENSIBLITY
Catherine Spooner - A Gothic Mind
Eleanor Townsend - Memento Mori
Kirstin Kennedy - Layers of Meaning
Zoe Whitley - Wasteland/Wonderland
No. 4 VISCERA
Lisa Skogh - Museum of the Mind The Cabinet of Curiosities
Caroline Evans - Modelling McQueen: Hard
Grace Clare Phillips - Armouring the Body
Oriole Cullen - Crowning Glory
No. 5 SPECTACLE
Alexander Fury - Show, and Tell
Janice Miller - Making-up
Bill Sherman - Ghosts
Keith Lodwick - Coup de Théâtre
Jane Pritchard - Dance No. 6 Imagination
Alistair O'Neill - The Shining and Chic
Jefferson Hack - Fashion-able
Susanna Brown - Nightmares and Dreams
Encyclopedia of Collections - Kate Bethune
Chronology
Notes
Further Reading
Acknowledgements
Picture Credits
Index
Claire Wilcox is Senior Curator, Department of Furniture, Textiles and Fashion at the Victoria and Albert Museum and Professor in Fashion Curation, London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London
