231027 Collection Digital Cover 1 - Flipbook - Page 33
“Over the next decade, the young designer set
about building his fledgling design house into
an international empire”
Constantly challenging his audience and his critics, McQueen both
disgusted and amazed. His fashion shows were filled with a complexity
so rare that it was breathtaking, mixing hard realism with soft
romanticism, unadulterated beauty with the ugliness of cruelty.
McQueen’s shows and, indeed, his own personal life, were steeped
in controversy and he revelled in it.
Never one to shy away from the media, McQueen was always on hand
to spice up a slow news day with an expletive-filled rant about anyone
and everyone from Madonna to the Queen of England. A complex man
of many faces, this uber confident, ‘mouthy McQueen’ persona was
the media’s favourite but there were other, darker personalities in the
McQueen repertoire. At the other end of the spectrum was the tortured
McQueen, whose reputedly violent upbringing played itself out in his
fashion shows, and the vulnerable McQueen who found refuge from
his self-vilification in a torrent of drink and drugs.
“I don’t want to do a cocktail party. I’d rather people left my shows
and vomited. I prefer extreme reactions,” he famously once said.
After wowing the world with a series of presentations that stood on
the knife-edge between taste and vulgarity that saw models descend
the catwalk twisted by torture apparatus or besmirched with mud
and blood, McQueen was faced with an offer that he could not refuse,
no matter how much he wanted to. In 1996, McQueen took over from
his formal rival John Galliano at Givenchy in a move that was reportedly
instigated by McQueen’s mentor, Isabella Blow.
McQueen had been reluctant to make the transition. Working for
Givenchy would mean betraying some of his strongest principles and
toning down his attitude, but it would also finance him in continuing
to design under his own professional moniker. The French couture house
was willing to pay a pretty penny for raw, British talent and in the end
it was this that lured McQueen across the Channel.
McQueen’s first collection for Givenchy was met with criticism, largely
from the French press who branded him a “British hooligan,” the designer
himself later admitting that the collection was “rubbish.”
By the time McQueen exhibited his second collection, he had reinvented
the old Givenchy style in a way that both flattered the brand and, at the
same time, seduced his critics. McQueen’s design method was changing;
growing and evolving alongside the Givenchy and Alexander McQueen
brands, transforming from a forceful, hard style into something a lot
more subtle and understated. But still, his collections were considered
too inaccessible by the clientele; Givenchy was garnering more press
whilst under his control than any other brand, but the clothes just
weren’t selling.
Under immense pressure to deliver spectacle after spectacle, McQueen
was churning out over ten collections a year both for Givenchy and his
own label and growing increasingly bitter and frustrated about the
negative comments and poor publicity he received. After four years
at Givenchy, McQueen sold a 51 per cent stake of his own company
to the Gucci Group for a rumoured £80 million, enabling him to leave
the French fashion house, where he had admittedly not performed
his finest.
Over the next decade, the young designer set about building his fledgling
design house into an international empire, picking up the British
Designer of the Year award four times along the way. His extraordinary
technical skill and the sheer variation, and wildness, of the sources
from which he drew inspiration — from English paganism to the forces
of nature and ancient folklore — lent his designs an edgy quality that
resonated within the global fashion community.
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