McQueen developed a host of new shapes, tailored to mimic marine features: pronounced hips and shoulders gave way to amorphous forms; a fluted miniskirt resembled the folds of a jellyfish; puffed sleeves were folded and pleated to connote gills. Like Byron, Beethoven, and Delacroix, McQueen is an exemplar of the Romantic individual, the hero-artist who staunchly followed the dictates of his inspiration. As a designer, he doggedly promoted freedom of thought and expression and championed the authority of the imagination.” The lenticulars are manufactured in Italy and each one is secured to the book by hand with strong, double-sided tape. The bindery is in Calenzano, near Prato, which had a strong textile industry. Some of the materials that McQueen used were made there, so it was nice for the book to have this additional connection to his work. There has to be a sinister aspect, whether it’s melancholy or sadomasochist. I think everyone has a deep sexuality, and sometimes it’s good to use a little of it – and sometimes a lot of it – like a masquerade.’ The final images, which kept the hands and eliminated the hardware, worked. Their focus is on the clothing, and the garments look natural because they were photographed on living bodies. The shots are dramatic and better reflect how McQueen’s clothes are made to be seen.

As evolution advanced and each model charted the progression from life on land to life under the sea, their features changed. Hair was either plaited tight to the head in mounds or sculpted into fin-like peaks, while the contours of models’ faces were distorted with prosthetic enhancements, both features connoting biological adaptation. Colours and textures shifted with the transition from species to species. Camouflage prints of roses, and jacquards depicting moths in green and brown tones, referenced life above the sea; amphibious snake prints suggested a transition to water; and designs in blues and purples incorporated images of ocean creatures, such as stingrays and jellyfish. Here McQueen perfected the use of digital printing techniques with each design engineered specifically for individual garments. Published to coincide with the exhibition the title opens with a preface from Andrew Bolton, curator of The Costume Institute of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and an introduction by Susannah Frankel, Fashion Editor with The Independent newspaper and friend of McQueen. After this, the book is divided into sections such as ‘The Romantic Mind’, ‘Romantic Primitivism’ and ‘Cabinet of Curiosities’, mirroring the layout of the exhibition.

Savage Mind

What do you think most contributes to the popularity and longevity of this book over the past decade? The collection featured a number of exoticised garments, including a coat and a dress appliquéd with roundels in the shape of chrysanthemums. A fragile, blood-red glass and ostrich feather gown offered a meditation on life's transience, while a thermal image of the designer's face was woven into the fabric of a silk coat. After his tailoring apprenticeship, he went on to learn exact military tailoring and then the detailed art of the Japanese kimono. This is a fine tribute to a fashion designer and conceptual artist who died far too young but whose contributions to contemporary fashion and art will live on. This book is likely to become a collector's item, so handsomely designed and present as it is.

It's hard to find garments like that amid the high street's shapeless viscose and denim. McQueen's collections were art. As Burton says: McQueen's romantic sensibility propelled his creativity and advanced his fashion in directions both unimagined and unprecedented. His individualistic and defiant vision was augmented by an acute sense of time and place, and a preoccupation with the exotic and the untamed. Filtered through a powerful modernity McQueen's work was, above all, driven by his fascination with the beauty and savagery of the natural world.The installation curated by Andrew Bolton at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is absolutely wonderful, astonishing, extraordinary! I would give this book five stars if it contained photographs from the actual installation -- raw concrete stages, aged mirrors, Cabinet of Curiosities room, etc. This 8.5 minute video will give you a good overview of the "experience": http://blog.metmuseum.org/alexandermc... Published to coincide with an exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art organized by The Costume Institute, this stunning book includes a preface by Andrew Bolton; an introduction by Susannah Frankel; an interview by Tim Blanks with Sarah Burton, creative director of the house of Alexander McQueen; illuminating quotes from the designer himself; provocative and captivating new photography by renowned photographer Sølve Sundsbø; and a lenticular cover by Gary James McQueen. Alexander McQueen's dashing creativity was expressed through the technical artistry of his designs and the dramatic intensity of his fashion shows. Drawing on avant-garde installation and performance art, these were also emphatically autobiographical. McQueen fearlessly challenged the conventions of fashion. Rare among designers, he saw beyond clothing's physical constraints to its conceptual and imaginative possibilities. I do not follow fashion closely by any stretch of the imagination, but found Alexander McQueen's craftsmanship breathtaking and his complex ideas expressed about Nature, culture, politics, gender, sexuality and beauty really fascinating. Despite these heartfelt declarations of his Scottish national identity, McQueen also had a deep interest in the history of England. This was most apparent, perhaps, in The Girl Who Lived in the Tree (Autumn/Winter 2008), inspired by an elm tree in the garden of McQueen’s country home near Fairlight Cove in East Sussex. Influenced by the British Empire, and drawing on a recent trip to India it was one of McQueen’s most romantically nationalistic collections, albeit heavily tinged with irony and pastiche.