An inside look at a rebellious outsider

FASHION REVIEW

‘Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty’ heart wrenchingly recalls late designer

June 23, 2011|By Christopher Muther, Globe Staff

ALEXANDER MCQUEEN: Savage Beauty At: the Metropolitan Museum of Art,

1000 Fifth Ave., New York,

through Aug. 7. 212-535-7710,

www.metmuseum.org

NEW YORK — I’ve never cried in a museum before. Museums are for languid strolling while gazing, often, at lovely objects. But the experience inside the sprawling maze of gowns at “Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty’’ put me in a very different state of mind — dark, sad, and stunned by McQueen’s interpretation of clothing as pure imagination.

McQueen took his life last year at age 40, and he left behind nearly 20 years of collections that rebelled against and snubbed the world of his Brit contemporaries, such as Christopher Bailey of Burberry and Stella McCartney. Despite a few brushes with commercial success, his work was that of a disenchanted and playful outsider. The exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is a grand and exhaustively curated forum for this tortured and inventive perspective. It would be too easy to say that these designs are a reflection of McQueen’s inner conflicts, both beatific and nightmarish. And yet it’s difficult not to dwell on the imaginative and ethereal gowns without fixating on their creator’s state of mental health.

While looking at a billowy silk coat from the Tim Burton meets Balenciaga-inspired “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious’’ collection of 2002, I spotted a quote from McQueen which reads: “It is important to look at death because it is a part of life. It is a sad thing, melancholy but romantic at the same time. It is the end of a cycle — everything has to end. The cycle of life is positive because it gives room for new things.’’

This is where my weeping began. Attempts to hold back my tears were useless, and a petite, elderly woman who barely reached my shoulders hugged me tightly. For those who dismiss fashion as nothing more than an upper-class folly, “Savage Beauty’’ is a stinging slap, a demonstration of fashion’s power to both provoke and entice.

McQueen was a master of both, as evident by the 45-minute line to enter the exhibit on a Tuesday afternoon. Some women walked around in shopping mode as they listened to the audio guide voiced by Sarah Jessica Parker, muttering “I would wear that.’’ Others somberly and silently studied the pieces in deep thought.