It's called Alexander McQueen: The Genius of a Generation and I hope the text I've written is worthy to support such a lofty (and of course deserved) title--titan that he was and peon that I am. Picture researched by Pat, a wonder on both sides of the lens, this project was a true labor of love. 125 carefully (and I can attest personally to how carefully) chosen images chronicle the life and work of Lee Alexander McQueen, and I can tell you, while his aesthetic and sartorial narrative may have evolved over the years, in tracking this thing from his debut collection a la Isabella Blow in 1997 right through to the Plato's Atlantis Spring Summer 2010, the only thing that's really changed is the amount of money being poured in to bringing his dramatic catwalk creations to life--the infamously elaborate sets, the stunts, occasional bit of untamed flame or uncaged wild beast. That sort of thing. But McQueen was no diamond in the rough in need of polishing, whose skills and ethos evolved with experience. He was the real deal from the first instance he put scissor to fabric. It was only a matter of both the industry and the mainstream recognizing it.
I can't tell you the amount of respect I've garnered for this man over the course of the project. Of course I worshiped him, of course he was a genius--the force to be reckoned with, especially when I arrived in London. Ralph who? It's all Westwood and McQueen. But it's not until you spend weeks on end enmeshed in someone's creative psyche, pouring over each and every detail in their work, trying to hold an investigative discourse with someone who's no longer there, who can't speak for themselves, explain their work, verbalize their own thoughts that a truly intimate intellectual picture begins to gel in your head, the pieces start to fall into plaece and the narrative unravels. It's a lot like picking apart a bit of Paradise Lost or a Shakespearean sonnet, really. And maybe that's why, the more time I spent with McQueen, the more I lost myself in his genius. The more I realized the scope of the brightness of the star which has now forever been extinguished, which will no more shine down upon our little fabulous industry, forcing ourselves look at ourselves in a way which makes us uncomfortable (sorry ladies, fashion is at times--oftentimes--misogynist, brashly commercial, overtly political--not to mention hypocritical--and so on), question what lies at the very heart of our industry, subvert it, challenge it, expose its limitations and then push us to confront them. He used fashion as an art form, as a means of creatively expressing not only himself but his concerns about our society--from issues of gender and sexuality to addressing our value system to war to climate change.
He truly was the genius of our generation and his loss is insurmountable. If I knew this before, I really know it now. And, in seeing my name crop up on Amazon, something which, when I first left academia I thought would probably never happen, there weren't feelings of excitement or self-accomplishment that first surfaced. Instead, just feelings of gratitude, of thanks for the man and the epic scope of his vision without whom I would have never had this opportunity. I am indebted to his greatness and I always will be. I hope you will all enjoy it.
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