When I read about the exhibition, Savage Beauty: Alexander McQueen, a collection of clothes, archives, collection videos, accessories of the talented designer, I knew that I could not miss this one. With the Met just a short walk from my former address, I could taste it. A little background. I'd often thought, as a girl, that I would be a designer. I loved clothes, breathed them. Bought fashion magazines at twelve, before all the twelve year olds of the world were doing so, and dreamt of the clothes I could create. I loved the artistry, as I'd loved all art then, and was especially drawn to the expressiveness of a collar, cut of a garment as it clung to the figure or gently caressed it, making the wearer even more than when naked. It was the 80s and there was color and androgyny, accessories and shoes. There was athleticism and energy and newly adored bodies hitting the gym looking for something to showcase themselves. I could feel the change in my stride, in my mood when I wore different clothes and I loved that feeling.
Home economics, 7th grade changed all of that when I struggled with the "car pillow." Nasty little stitches, broken threads, tough times threading that bobbin, pattern making, using patterns. All of it. I didn't have the patience, nor the talent for it. I continued to love fashion, however, and looked out for new voices, visions, leaders. I loved Jean-Paul Gaultier, Claude Montana, respected the perfection of Valentino, Givenchy, Chanel though I didn't quite see my place in it. And then there was Alexander McQueen.
When I first discovered Alexander McQueen I thought, this is one of mine. He was shy and crude and elegant and tortured and so extraordinarily talented and skilled. He was such a true artist that I whispered to myself, I want to wear that, even from the very first. I waited for every collection, went into the boutiques selling his clothes to see them up close. I worried for his gentle soul hiding inside that rough exterior. And when he seemed to get himself on track for the "dream"--new love, weight loss, good looks, sales=money--the mile markers for happiness by most of our friends and family, I sighed with relief that maybe he had really found it. I knew about emotional and spiritual pain, knew how it ate away at joy and achievements and milestones, knew how it could kill any sense of hope, success, love. I saw it in his eyes, maybe loved him more for being a "tortured artist" unable to enjoy the mundane and routine.
But I didn't want it to end. Never thought it would. At least not as it did. Those beautiful, beautiful clothes. And I had to see them. Today, with my cousin Kelley, after waiting two hours in a line snaking through Mesopotamia and Persia at the Met, I opened my eyes to Savage Beauty. We must find a way to love and nurture artists. In the creative, there is everything. In the exploration, desire, longing can come magic. Artists are wizards and no matter the medium, they ask/demand of us to consider the world differently. Reading McQueen's thoughts on his collections, what inspired him, what worried him, called to him, all the things from which he drew gave a glimpse at a man not just tailoring. He had the technique, the skill, the craft and he had the magic.
I came home living in his dream, wrapped in the world he'd created when my husband called to tell me that another of my beloved artists had passed. Young Amy Winehouse. Tragic, flawed, insanely talented, wounded. The tears came not in a trickle, but bursting out of my face like Pop Rocks contained in a soda can, then suddenly released. I was bawling in seconds, my cousin sitting next to me afraid something had happened to one of my girls.
And something had. Amy Winehouse was one of my girls. One of the many artists, female voices that moved me forward, onward, through it when I knew I just could not get through. She had gravel and pain and heartache and longing and love and dreams. She got locked in her world, a sensitive creative soul who just could not work out the every day. She was an addict and that seems to have made it easier for people to take potshots. Don't. She just wore the wounds on the outside. She got ridiculous because she hurt so much and looking at her made us see, whether we wanted to or not, that it's hard, no matter the money, the fame, the accolades, and attention, this thing called life.
They can both be viewed as reckless, Alexander McQueen and Amy Winehouse, in different ways, but they had genius. They were artists. Their beauty was savage, natural and wild and from it, they fashioned something we could all claim, see reflected in our own souls, the beauty and the pain. The beauty and the pain. Rest in peace.
(c) Copyright 2011. City Mom in the Jungle.
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