McQueen at The Met

Though the exhibition will focus on the late Lee Alexander McQueen, rather than the designs of his successful-successor and royal-couturier Sarah Burton, some of the designs that will be on show serve as a reminder just how bizarre/ironic it really is to see the McQueen name catering for HRH. Collection titles like ‘Jack the Ripper Stalks His Victims’ and ‘Highland Rape’ demonstrate Lee’s love of controversy. And then there are the many anecdotes attached to his name (such as the time he turned up at a party with a bucket of cocaine), which will no doubt be omitted from the prestigious exhibition. It’s hard to think of anything further from the bland inoffensiveness of Kate Middleton.

But seen as though the Middleton/McQueen incompatibility has no doubt already been done to death on a million fashion blogs (even if the dress she wore was, admittedly, not too shabby), we’ll move on to the exhibition. The designs seem to be arranged thematically, with rooms devoted to different influences, all of which share the common link of romanticism: ‘The Romantic Mind’, ‘Romantic Nationalism’, ‘Romantic Exoticism’, ‘Romantic Primitivism’ and ‘Romantic Naturalism’. (See the way sticking the word ‘romantic’ on the front of otherwise politically incorrect concepts like Nationalism and Exoticism renders them more acceptable?)

If these illustrations by Joseph Bennett (all taken from the Met Museum website) are anything to go by, a lot of thought has gone into the curatorial process though: the rooms being utterly transformed to suit the garments on show within them. No ‘white cube’ display practices here. The end result should be pretty impressive. However I’m not sure any exhibition can ever encapsulate the awe I imagine would have accompanied seeing one of McQueen’s collections at Fashion Week. Crossing the boundary between runway show and performance art, creations like this can never be relived.*