As a model, particularly if you are a fashion model it’s important to know your designers and to know their style of work. Having your own background knowledge of their work will help you know what to expect. Learning how they may have done things before and what they may be looking for. Of course, this changes season to season and through-out their collections.
One of the most inspirational and talented designers to have ever entered the fashion world is Alexander McQueen. His work earned him many awards including British Designer of the year 4 times over and International Designer of the Year in 2003. One of his many memorable catwalk moments was the Spring 1999 show when he used Shalom Harlow as his canvas while she was spray painted by industrial robots.This is one of my all time moments in fashion and I can not even begin to imagine what it must have been like to have been there witnessing it. Fall 2006 was also a breath-taking show which featured a holographic image of Kate Moss inside a huge pyramid. This really reinforced his reputation as fashion showman.
Following his death in February 2010, McQueen’s long-term assistant was announced the new creative director of the brand and launched her first womenswear collection in Paris, September that same year.
The V&A museum in London launched the Alexander McQueen, Savage Beauty exhibition and is the “first and largest retrospective of McQueen’s work to be represented in Europe”. The museum presents McQueen’s work starting from his 1992 graduate collection all the way through to his Autumn/Winter 2010 unfinished collection. Once quoted as saying ” that’s what I’m here for, to demolish the rules but keep the tradition”, perfectly sums up his work and demonstrates what kept him so consistent through-out his time in the industry. His interests in historical art-work, the natural elements, memento mori (Images and symbols that remind you of death), tailoring and of course his love of London are all common themes in his work and make his collections so unique and original. It is his use of themes that has made him so cutting-edge in modelling.
The exhibition takes you through the parts of his mind (including the darker sides) and his fashion journey including A Romantic Mind, A Gothic Mind, Romantic Primitivism, Romantic Nationalism, Cabinet of Curiosities, Romantic Exoticism, Voss, Romantic Naturalism and finally Plato’s Atlantis.
This amazing, once in a life time exhibition opened in march and is running until the 2nd of August 2015. If you have the opportunity to go, make sure you take because you will not be disappointed. Going to a fashion show and broadening your understanding of fashions most influential designers is a must for any model.
