In 2008 Alexander McQueen commissioned photographer
Nick Waplington to document the creation of his Fall
2009 collection--all the way from inception to runway
showing. Unfortunately, it was to be the last
Fall/Winter collection that McQueen would stage before
his untimely death. This show, which he titled The Horn
of Plenty, found McQueen revisiting his 15-year archive
of work and recycling it into a new collection. In
effect, it was his personal survey of his work to date.
The set was composed of broken mirrors and a giant trash
heap made up of all the sets from his previous shows;
critics have commented that this reflected McQueen's
feelings towards the fashion system and how it pressures
designers to be creative geniuses while relegating each
collection to the garbage bin of history as soon as it's
sold. Waplington was given unprecedented access to
McQueen and his staff, which included the current
Creative Director of the brand, Sarah Burton. Every step
of the creative process is documented in fascinating
detail and readers receive a rare insight into the inner
workings of McQueen's creative process. Most notably,
McQueen himself placed the book's layout, picture by
picture, on storyboards. The book was ready for
publication when McQueen died, then was put on
hold--until now. This substantial overview, with more
than 120 photographs, is published just as McQueen
edited it, commemorating the most personal of his
collections. It includes an essay by Susannah Frankel,
Fashion Editor at Grazia (U.K.). Lee Alexander McQueen
(1[zasłonięte]969-20), CBE, was one of the most important fashion
designers of the last two decades. He was the recipient
of four British Designer of the Year awards, as well as
the CFDA's International Designer of the Year award,
2003. In 2011, following his death, the Costume
Institute in New York organized an enormously successful
retrospective of his work at the Metropolitan Museum of
Art. Artist and photographer Nick Waplington (born 1970)
has published several monographs including Living Room
and The Wedding (Aperture), Safety in Numbers (Booth
Clibborn) and Truth of Consequence (Phaidon). He lives
in London and New York.
|
|