Seeing McQueen: The Man

Cover for the famous Met Exhibit
"Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty"

I'm taking the hint.

I've been wanting to write on Alexander McQueen ever since I first discovered the label.

I even had a few drafts of various posts,

but I just wasn't getting around to it. If you know the House of McQueen, you can understand why the task was a bit... 

daunting?

But then Time Magazine had to go and make Sarah Burton one of its Top 100 'Most Influential People' of 2012. I mean, Sarah Jessica Parker wrote the darn article.

Yes.

It was the kick in the pants I needed.

So let's get started.

This is Alexander McQueen.

To be honest, it's hard for me to look at this photo.

He is intense. And I can feel the torture.

I understand torture. I've seen darker days than most.

And perhaps it's because I know this was once my mirror.

It's too close to comfort- to hard a reminder.

Because this torture lent to a short life for McQueen.

"...It was like exorcising my ghosts in the collections.

They were to do with my childhood, the way I think about life

and the way I was brought up to think about life."

-Alexander McQueen

I tear up just typing this quote. It resonates so deeply with me.

And it hurts even more knowing that the effort to "exorcise" his ghosts did not save him.

We lost McQueen by his own hand on February 11, 2011.

At, what some would call, the height of his fame.

And, as I learn and feed and grow upon his designs from the last two brilliant decades

of his remarkably young, yet powerful years...

I see his honesty. And I understand.

McQueen was reborn in his right hand, Sarah Burton.

She took over with grace and honored his name by not only bringing us

collections that lovingly covet his vision, 

but also made his name immortal with 

"the wedding dress"

of the century.

'til tomorrow,

xoxo,

Katherine