The Grand Finale of Lee Alexander McQueen

Today the images were released from yesterday's memorial show for Alexander McQueen's final collection.  The collection was not open to the press and was shown in a small old fashioned couture style with each outfit being announced.  Even as I write this I feel corny and perhaps that I come off as disingenuous, but then again maybe this post is just for me so I will remember how I felt.  I didn't know him, I never met him, I was not his friend, I have no connection to him--but I feel a loss over the last weeks that hits me at odd moments.  He was my, our, Beatles, our Picasso, our Da Vinci, our Twain, our Fitzgerald, our artist.  The loss that I feel is personal because to me Mcqueen exemplified all that is right with fashion.

As I look over this collection I can't help but think in some way as Mcqueen put pencil to paper he knew he must put his heart, his soul, and all his artistic ability into these works.  The exemplification of his aesthetic and his abilities is so abundantly apparent.  I try to take in these beautiful works of art and I just can't.  I simply have to feel the love and care Mcqueen put into each piece he created. To him nothing was impossible.  Take a look back through his archives and you will see the evolution of an artistic mind that never ever told himself no, it just cannot be.  Never did details come off as contrived or messy.  Despite the fact that he only showed a RTW collection under his eponymous label, the collections far surpassed even the most advanced classic couture shows.  Perhaps it was his years spent with Givenchy surrounded by couture hands ready to make the dreams of an fashion prodigy become reality.

The above look is shows all that was the McQueen aesthetic.  He has always been called "gothic" but to me (though far from an experience critic) he was simply a culmination of a thousand years of British fashion.  The above outfit is so obviously inspired by styles and techniques of hundreds of years of British Monarchs, yet it is far from costumey or period with thigh high leather waders and a short hemline, the look is distinctly fresh and current.

So that's that.  Maybe I've said these things before or I'm rambling but I know if I don't write down how this all has made me feel, right now, I will be letting pass a moment in my life that deeply affected me and the world I care so much about.