Reflections of Alexander McQueen

_{Posted in Fashion » Fashion Blog » Fashion Events » Fashionable Culture}

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is currently holding a retrospective of British fashion designer Alexander McQueen. The lines of people waiting to get in to see the exhibition, Savage Beauty, far exceeds those for any other the Met has hosted, with hundreds constantly on line, and waiting time running to 30 minutes on weekends. And although the McQueen exhibition is free (with cover donation into the Met itself) on any other day, in July the special Monday tours will go up from $25 to $50 per person - an extraordinary amount for a museum exhibit.

Such sustained excitement about a fashion designer might seem a little bizarre. Fashion floats across our horizon every day, especially in big cities like New York. But McQueen was more than fashion. And the Met has done everything to make this more than an exhibit. The rooms holding the retrospective have been outfitted to reflect McQueen's often extraordinary fashion shows: holograms, video installation, large, Gothic mirrors, black walls, and a wallpaper of sketch-like drawings of skulls, roses, and dolls. The effect is slightly eerie; rather like stepping into a painting by the recently deceased surrealist painter Leonora Carrington, or perhaps into a dark fairy tale.

alexander mcqueen met museum