{"id":171682,"date":"2018-07-18T00:52:56","date_gmt":"2018-07-18T04:52:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=171682"},"modified":"2018-07-18T00:52:56","modified_gmt":"2018-07-18T04:52:56","slug":"mcqueen-examines-career-of-a-brilliant-troubled-designer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2018\/07\/18\/mcqueen-examines-career-of-a-brilliant-troubled-designer\/","title":{"rendered":"‘McQueen’ examines career of a brilliant, troubled designer"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\u201cI<\/a>
\u201cI don’t want a show where you come out feeling like you’ve just had Sunday lunch,\u201d (Photo<\/a> by By Ed Kavishe \/ fashionwirepress.com – E-mail to photosubmission@wikimedia.org by Ed Kavishe, CC BY 3.0<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

NEW YORK \u2014 The London fashion world didn’t know quite what hit it when Alexander McQueen’s disheveled models staggered down the runway at his 1995 \u201cHighland Rape\u201d show, their Scottish-inspired clothing ripped to expose breasts and nether regions.<\/p>\n

It was exactly the reaction that McQueen, then in his 20s and subsisting on McDonald’s and unemployment checks, was seeking. \u201cI don’t want a show where you come out feeling like you’ve just had Sunday lunch,\u201d he said at the time. \u201cI want you to come out either feeling repulsed or exhilarated.\u201d<\/p>\n

McQueen would go on to provoke, repulse, inspire and exhilarate \u2014 often simultaneously \u2014 until he was 40, when he tragically took his life. How did a taxi driver’s son from working-class London make the unlikely journey to the top of the fashion world, and what made him end it all at the height of his powers? For filmmakers Ian Bonhote and Peter Ettedgui, the two questions proved irresistible; their resulting documentary, \u201cMcQueen,\u201d opens this week.<\/p>\n

Fashion is a compelling topic for documentaries \u2014 indeed, few subjects are so enticingly visual. But the challenge is always to peel away the well-polished \u2014 and well-guarded \u2014 facade. \u201cThe fashion world is a bubble,\u201d says Ettedgui, who wrote and co-directed the film. \u201cThey don’t necessarily take kindly to outsiders coming in and revealing their secrets.\u201d<\/p>\n

The filmmakers approached close to 200 sources, says Bonhote. Finding footage was painstaking work, but they were fortunate to secure key parts of McQueen’s most dramatic runway shows, along with some strikingly candid interviews with the designer \u2014 a rarity at fashion shows.<\/p>\n

They also found some valuable archival footage \u2014 including some private footage that McQueen and his associates captured for fun, trying out a new camera as they travelled to Paris for the designer’s new, high-profile post at Givenchy in 1996, looking like grinning kids taking their parents’ car for a spin.<\/p>\n

The filmmakers were also able to convince some key McQueen family members to speak, namely his older sister, Janet, and her son, Gary, a designer himself who worked for his uncle. And they interview some of McQueen’s former colleagues, though not all: Sarah Burton, for example, who succeeded McQueen at his namesake label, doesn’t appear.<\/p>\n

At the heart of the film, though, is McQueen’s work \u2014 and the way his bracing talent reverberated through the fashion establishment. Watching now, one can almost feel the gasps in the audience as the designer places model Shalom Harlow on a revolving platform in a plain tulle dress in his 1999 show \u201cNo. 13,\u201d then has two robots spray yellow and black paint on her as she turns and turns. It was a mesmerizing effect that brought McQueen himself to tears.<\/p>\n

The film is divided into chapters, each focusing on a particularly influential McQueen show. The first, \u201cJack the Ripper Stalks His Victims\u201d in 1992, was originally his final project at Central Saint Martin’s, the well-known London fashion school.<\/p>\n

Even getting to the school was unlikely. The young Lee McQueen (he reverted to his middle name, Alexander, later because it sounded posh) was supposed to become \u201ca mechanic or something,\u201d but he was obsessed with drawing clothes. His mother encouraged him to knock on doors on Savile Row for an apprenticeship, and there, he became a superb craftsman.<\/p>\n

Isabella Blow, a prominent fashion figure, bought up his entire \u201cJack the Ripper\u201d collection and helped him make his way. But it’s clear that, as an associate says: \u201cNo one discovered Alexander McQueen. Alexander McQueen discovered himself.\u201d<\/p>\n

At first, there was no money. A friend describes how the two went to McDonald’s after a major show, dropped the food on the floor, but had to pick it up and eat it because they couldn’t afford to buy more.<\/p>\n

Things changed radically when luxury conglomerate LVMH hired McQueen for Givenchy. But McQueen didn’t just sit back and enjoy his financial windfall \u2014 he poured it back into his own label. It was a time of enormous pressure; McQueen says in one interview that he produced an astounding 14 collections in a year.<\/p>\n

For a man often called the \u201cbad boy\u201d or \u201cenfant terrible\u201d of fashion, there was much else to learn about McQueen, the filmmakers say. Among the things that surprised them: his sheer technical craftsmanship, and a constantly developing business savvy.<\/p>\n

They were also struck by how McQueen’s personality contrasted with the myth. \u201cHe had this reputation for being abrasive, punk,\u201d says Ettedgui. \u201cBut what we see in the archive is McQueen with friends, with his parents, even his beloved dogs, being very human and very tender at times.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the end of his life, two deaths devastated McQueen. Blow took her life in 2007 \u2014 we see him at her funeral, looking destroyed. And in early 2010, McQueen’s beloved mother died. Only days later \u2014 on the eve of her funeral \u2014 the designer killed himself.<\/p>\n

The filmmakers can only speculate why McQueen, who struggled with drug use, took his life. \u201cFashion does come with a very unique set of pressures,\u201d says Ettedgui. But, he adds, \u201cPeople we spoke to said, ‘Don’t try to make him a victim, because ultimately the person who put the most pressure on McQueen was McQueen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bonhote also notes the designer’s ambivalence about the world he had chosen, clearly expressed in shows like his famous 2001 \u201cVoss,\u201d in which he forced the assembled fashion world to literally stare at itself for long minutes into a mirrored cube \u2014 which in turn represented an insane asylum.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo some degree, he was always a misfit in the world he found himself in,\u201d Bonhote says.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK \u2014 The London fashion world didn’t know quite what hit it when Alexander McQueen’s disheveled models staggered down …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":171713,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[44168,53574,53575,53578,53577,53576],"class_list":["post-171682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fashion-and-beauty","tag-alexander-mcqueen","tag-highland-rape","tag-ian-bonhote","tag-isabella-blow","tag-lee-mcqueen","tag-peter-ettedgui","mauthors-jocelyn-noveck","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171682"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171682\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/171713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}