Wild Beauty: Clothing as Art

In 2010, when Alexander McQueen, the renowned fashion designer, committed suicide at the age of forty, there was a moment of silence at London Fashion Week in his honor. However, there was still a short path left for his myth to be established; a myth that was created with a spectacular exhibition: 'Savage Beauty', an exhibition of his works organized by the Metropolitan Museum in New York in 2011, which became one of the most visited exhibitions in the history of this prestigious museum. Now, this exhibition has arrived in London, and long queues are forming at one of the city's most recognized art museums, the Victoria and Albert Museum, to see it. It is somewhat strange that London is welcoming one of its prominent fashion figures later than New York, especially since McQueen was born and raised in London and loved every corner of this city, considering its streets as his source of inspiration. The astonishing aspect of this exhibition is McQueen's depth and dimension in viewing clothing design as an art form. Before considering the practicality of the created clothing, he sees it - like a painting - as a work of art that must be created with heart and soul. Perhaps some of the garments in this exhibition will never be worn at any party or in a bedroom, but their different shapes and forms - just like a painting - tell the story of an artist who transforms his surroundings into a work of art through his perspective. Therefore, the catwalk for him is not merely a display of clothing but a performance; that is why he has no qualms about staging his shows in the strangest ways: in one, all the models move on water, creating a strange atmosphere with their high-heeled shoes in a shallow lake, and in another, a model is surrounded by fire. This reference to water and fire - and their mythical roles in creation and human concept - connects with his borrowing from the clothing of African tribes, resulting in a stunning outcome: a return to the past and traditions, creating a type of postmodern work from them. He himself states that he spent many hours of his life observing and researching the clothing of various tribes and countries; a task that Picasso also undertook, presenting an astonishing interpretation of them in his sculptures. The exhibition has a calculated arrangement and reflects the extraordinary efforts of the organizers to create a world close to McQueen's works. Each booth has its own shape, form, and music, and the largest booth in the middle of the exhibition, filled with garments in every corner and various televisions displaying each of his shows - all seemingly stacked upon each other, reaching the tall ceiling of the exhibition - reminds us of the restless world of an artist whose strangeness is part of his universe, and whose audacity is an inseparable part of it. The next booth narrates tranquility and the quest for beauty: the contemporary music gives way to the astonishing and unparalleled Adagio by Albinoni, and McQueen - like a 19th-century magician - uses a technique that was referred to as the spirit-summoning technique in the early days of cinema to poetically bring his beautiful model, Kate Moss, to life in an illusory manner, and the gradual disappearance of this woman reminds us of how the inevitability of life - perhaps a hint at his bitter suicide? - erases beauty before our eyes, and there is no escape from it.