Bonaveri Magazine

Romantic Exoticism
“I want to be honest about the world that we
live in, and sometimes my political persuasions
come through in my work. Fashion can be really
racist, looking at the clothes of other cultures
as costumes… That’s mundane and it’s old hat.
Let’s break down some barriers.” Alexander
McQueen
McQueen’s romantic sensibilities expanded his
imaginary horizons not only temporally but also
geographically. As it had been for Romantic
artists and writers, the lure of the exotic
was central to his work. Like his historicism,
McQueen’s exoticism was wide ranging—
India, China, Africa, and Turkey all sparked his
imagination. Japan was particularly significant
to him, both thematically and stylistically.
The kimono, especially, was a garment that
he reconfigured endlessly. Remarking on the
direction of his fashions, McQueen said, “My
work will be about taking elements of traditional
embroidery, filigree, and craftsmanship from
countries all over the world. I will explore their
crafts, patterns, and materials and interpret
them in my own way.” As with many of his
themes, however, McQueen’s exoticism was
often expressed in contrasting opposites. For
McQueen, the body was a site for contravention,
where normalcy was questioned and the
spectacle of marginality was embraced and
celebrated.
Romantic Primitivism
“I try to push the silhouette. To change the
silhouette is to change the thinking of how
we look. What I do is look at ancient African
tribes, and the way they dress. The rituals of
how they dress… There’s a lot of tribalism in
the collections.” Alexander McQueen
romanticizing ethnic dressing, like a Masai-inspired
dress made of materials the Masai could never
afford.” It famously included a latex dress with locusts,
McQueen’s statement on famine. Indeed, McQueen’s
reflections on primitivism were frequently represented
in paradoxical combinations, contrasting “modern”
and “primitive,” “civilized” and “uncivilized.” Typically,
McQueen’s narrative glorified the state of nature and
tipped the moral balance in favor of the “natural man”
or “nature’s gentleman” unfettered by the artificial
constructs of civilization.
Romantic Naturalism
“I have always loved the mechanics of nature and to a
greater or lesser extent my work is always informed by
that.” Alexander McQueen
Nature was the greatest, or at least the most enduring,
influence upon McQueen. It was also a central theme,
if not the central theme, of Romanticism. Many artists
of the Romantic movement presented nature itself as
a work of art. McQueen both shared and promoted
this view in his collections, which often included
fashions that took their forms and raw materials
from the natural world. For McQueen, as it was for
the Romantics, nature was also a locus for ideas and
concepts. That is most clearly reflected in Plato’s
Atlantis (spring/summer 2010), the last fully realized
collection the designer presented before his death in
February 2010. For the Romantics, nature was the
primary vehicle for the Sublime - starry skies, stormy
seas, turbulent waterfalls, vertiginous mountains. In
Plato’s Atlantis, the Sublime of nature was paralleled
and supplanted by that of technology - the extreme
space-time compressions produced by the Internet.
It was a powerful evocation of the Sublime and
its coincident expression of the Romantic and the
postmodern. At the same time, it was a potent vision
of the future of fashion that reflected McQueen’s
sweeping imagination.
Throughout his career, McQueen returned to
the theme of primitivism, which drew upon
the ideal of the noble savage living in harmony
with the natural world. It was the focus of
his first runway collection after graduating,
Nihilism (spring/summer 1994). He said of
the collection, “It was a reaction to designers
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