Lee Alexander McQueen was born in 1969 to a working class family. He was the youngest of six. His father was a taxi driver. By the age of 27, the self-proclaimed  “East End yob who used a needle” ran French couture house Givenchy. The British Fashion Awards named McQueen British Designer of the Year four times. In 2010 at the age of 41, at the top of his rocketing career designing sexy, rebellious, thrilling clothes and having just finished a highly praised show Plato Atlantis, Britain’s bad boy of fashion ended his life.

The documentary spans McQueen’s early days to his time learning the craft on Saville Row to his pivotal Central St Martin’s end-of-year fashion show when the eccentric, hat-wearing fashion-promoter Isabella Blow spotted him. She fell in love with the controversial, edgy clothes coming down the runway blending beauty with violence, classical with modern. Born ‘Lee”, Blow renamed him the more upper-class sounding Alexander, like “Alexander the Great”, she said.

The film’s directors – Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui – talked to me about the making of the movie and why the often overused term ‘genius’ is on target in McQueen’s case.

You got access to never before seen home movies, audio tapes, and footage- how easy was it to get all that?

Bonhôte: It was very difficult, not easy at all. None of the archive was available so we started by looking at books, looked as much as possible at what was available on line… We probably contacted two to three hundred sources. All of our archives are made up of more than 160 sources.

How many years were you two working on it?

Ettedgui: When we talked to the producers they said it’s the kind of film that you need three years for. We did it in a year (big laugh). We started thinking about it properly in January 2017. And we had to deliver the film end of this February. It was a good pressure to have. It was the kind of insane pressure that McQueen had to do  several times a year. There’s something about being under that kind of pressure that really forces you to work with instinct, to be spontaneous.

Cool Brittania- How did McQueen help usher that era of the nineties in?

Bonhôte: Lee drew expression from everywhere, he started collaborating with musicians, with artists, with photographers and this was the time that everything was possible… Lee directed videos for Pure, he reinvented the art and form of photography in fashion. Lee influenced as well as was influenced by loads of his contemporaries. Even in the publications, the new crazy magazines coming out – ID, The Face, Dazed and Confused –

Ettedgui: McQueen was something of a moving spirit behind that. For example, when he was at St Martin’s, most of the fashion students stayed in the fashion studio. McQueen, apparently from what we’ve heard, was with the photographers and the graphic artists, the print people, the jewelry designers. He moved around the building constantly and took things from everywhere and brought people together, like he did throughout his career.

He also took influences, he was very influenced by arts and crafts, by renaissance, by photography. He was a real force of nature. The time was right for it. We’d had Thatcher in the 80’s, fashion had become quite beige in that time, the time was right for something new to happen and McQueen was absolutely at the forefront of that.

McQueen said “If you leave my show without an emotion then I am not doing my job properly. I don’t want you to walk out like you’ve just had Sunday lunch….I want heart attacks, I want ambulances”- What was your favorite show?

Bonhôte: We have plenty of shows that we really like, but Widows of Culloden…

Ettedgui: For me Number 13…

The whole show is just so beautiful… I was particularly moved by it because in some of the archives my dad was sitting there in the front row. So it had a very special place in my heart.

But also interesting because people think about Lee as being a bad boy, and the dark side and all of that. But without discussing this together, we both picked shows that are really expressions of light and joy, when everything was working, everything was coming together and he was happy. We are very keen to emphasize that. People say why don’t you go more into the drugs or the this or the that. For us we’ve had lost the balance then between this man’s angels and his demons. It’s crucial to get the balance because if you don’t get it there’s no way that you’re going to understand quite how significant this man was.

 What do you think he thought of women. I know with the Highland’s Rape show people said he was a misogynist?

Bonhôte: He wasn’t, he was so close to his mom, his sisters. Lee wanted to shock and he shocked people. He put that on the catwalk. If you look at his clothes, the way he changed women’s silhouette, the way he made women feel and the way he dressed them up. He made clothes for women who knew what they wanted and women who wanted to dress for themselves. It wasn’t like the husband was buying them clothing so he was very much designing for the independent woman.

Ettedgui:  The women in his life, not just his relations, he was surrounded by women who absolutely loved him because he empowered them.

How would you summarize McQueen’s contribution to fashion and art?

Bonhôte: I think he inspired so many people. There were so many tableaux and visuals and strong elements. His shows and his fashion were way more than his clothing. Not only did he manage to create the real only haute couture house in England, but his vision and all his ideas and all his collaborations have been used by a lot of people, actually, by a lot of creatives. And then further than that he established a business that five years later he ended up creating the most famous wedding dress in the world for the Duchess of Cambridge.

Ettedgui: Peter- The show at the Met showed that there was a huge interest for his work in the US as well. I think his story can touch a huge amount of people who have no clue what fashion is. We had people coming up to us at the screening in New York and saying, “I had no idea who this man was and I fell in love with his story and his life.”

Do you think he was a genius?

Ettedgui: Mozart once said ‘why does everyone call me a genius, don’t they understand how f…cking hard I work to get where I am right now?’ I think it’s the same with McQueen. Those years of apprenticeship McQueen mastered every aspect of the technique and craft of making clothes… And he wasn’t just a craftsman, he had things he wanted to do when he mastered the technique. He wanted to turn it inside out. He wanted to respect tradition, but break all the rules. And communicate emotions and change the silhouette. All of that is encompassed by the word genius.

June 2018

This article also appeared in The Women’s Room Blog.

The post New Film Captures the Angels and Demons of Alexander McQueen appeared first on Elena Bowes.

I become another person when I land at JFK – Superperson. No time to smell the daisies, no time to chill in the park.

I switch to a New York pace.  sprinting across the highway that is Park Avenue when the green light says there’s five seconds to go, zigzagging the city when the light turns red. No stopping for lunch. Only breaks allowed are for blister pads,  battery charging and the bathroom.   I am a woman on the go, and yet nothing ever goes to plan. I get distracted, sidetracked by the city.

Turns out, I’m not the only one. My sister Diana who lives in Connecticut joined me a few weeks ago to look at art. I had a list of shows for us to see based around women artists, starting with the Museum of Modern Art. Pretty straightforward. Not when the shop Belgian Shoes lies between us and the museum.

This will only take a second, Diana promised as she disappeared through the door.

The handmade leather shoes are known for their second skin comfort and rainbow of colours. Each size comes in four different widths.

It’s the next best thing to wearing nothing, says Pat, the store manager. The Palm Beach crew go for the pastels, anything pink and blue.

You can (and we did) spend valuable art viewing time sampling faux-lizard, croc, camouflouge, leopard and Palm Beach pastels.

The 55th street shop is  the only Belgian Shoes in the world. The company was started more than sixty years ago by Henri Bendel, the nephew of the founder of Bendel’s Fifth Avenue department store.

From there we went to see  Making Space:Women Artists and Abstraction at MOMA focusing on the often unappreciated achievements of women artists between the end of WWII and the late 1960’s start of the Feminist Movement. More than 50 artists and 100 works are shown, including pieces by Lygia Clark, Helen Frankenthaler, Joan Mitchell, Agnes Martin, Louise Bourgeois and Ruth Asawa (see below)

Next on my list was the Brooklyn Museum to see We Wanted a Revolution:Black Radical Women, 1965-85. But as Diana pointed out, the Manolo Blahnik shoe shop is so close to MOMA that it’s practically another wing.  By the time we’d finished browsing Manolo’s witty designs, my sister had shoes on the brain. So we nipped into Bergdorf’s 5th floor where the less pricey shoes are.

Time’s up – Diana needed to catch her train home. But NY-me never   stops.  To Brooklyn I went.

Funny, there are no people or lights on, I thought as I approached the pretty Beaux Art Building.

Then I spotted the sign …

Who knew museums closed on Tuesdays? This is often how my trips go – two steps forward, one step back. The city is not quite as 24/7 as it proclaims. Determined not to let this setback discourage me, I went to see my friend Jussara Lee  in her  lovely West Village boutique. Apart from Jussara’s gorgeous hand-tailored fashion label often made from recycled or leftover fabric,

she is also starting a monthly “Hand-Me-Up” sale where friends can bring unwanted clothes, and Jussara will retweak and update them and then sell them on.  She got inspired to do this after reading that people don’t wear 75% of their clothes. She wants to inject some glamour and love into second hand clothes.

While it’s slightly annoying that I never see as many shows as I had planned, I do always leave the city excited to return. I guess it’s all about the journey, the detours are the journey.

Here are the women-artist shows I missed:

Rei Kawakubo Art of the In-Between at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, only the second time in the Institute’s 70-year history that a living designer has been honoured.

The modernist founder of  fashion label Comme des Garçons is a complex woman, whose life obsession gives her as much pleasure as pain.

Designer Paul Smith interviewed the forward-looking designer for Dazed  several years ago. Here’s a brief illustrative excerpt of that Q&A as re-reported in The Business of Fashion:

PS: What do you fear the most?

RK: The next collection.

PS: What do you feel you’d still like to achieve in life?

RK: The next collection.

PS: What is your favourite month and why?

RK: The ones that do not have collections.

The closest I got to the exhibition was a Barney’s window display tribute to her along with the late sculptor Louise Bourgeois…

Next trip I am taking the ferry to Governors Island, just off the tip of Manhattan, to see British artist Rachel Whiteread’s Cabin sculpture. It’s her first installation in the city in nearly twenty years. I can’t wait to go back!

May, 2017

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Who doesn’t love a touch of glamour, plenty of backstage access and visuals, plus some intriguing background from Harper’s Editor Justine Picardie?

Shot over six months, Waldman captures not just the breathtaking clothes, models and star power behind the $12 billion dollar brand, but the personalities that make it all possible.

Part One of the documentary focuses on the fashion house’s colourful past when Christian Dior’s ‘New Look’ reclaimed Paris as the fashion capital after WWII.

The visionary designer died unexpectantly at 52, just ten years after establishing the brand, leaving his 21 year old genius protegé Yves Saint Laurent to take the helm. Picardie is full of insights about Saint Laurent, as well as subsequent creative directors – including enfant terrible John Galliano –

Each left  their personal mark on the fashion house over the next several decades.

Part Two looks at Dior today,  following Creative Director Maria Grazia Chiuri as she rushes to prepare for her debut show at the Rodin Museum with only a few week’s notice.

Unlike her intense Belgian predecessor, the Italian Chiuri seems to take the pressure in stride. With cropped dyed blonde hair, baggy jeans nipped at the waist with a big belt, sneakers and an infectious laugh, Chiuri is a joy to behold, a woman at ease in her job.

I like a fairy tale, I love a fairy tale, laughs Dior’s first-ever female creative director.

Chiuri jokes and smiles a lot on camera, especially  with her 20-year old daughter and muse Rachele.

Dior’s head seamstress is equally charming. Asked whether she’d ever like to wear one of the couture dresses she spends hours making, she replies,

No, they are for princesses. I am of  ‘le terroir’ (the earth)

The documentary captures every level and occupation that make the brand what it is from the fourth generation family member who heads Dior Fragrance’s jasmine-picking operation in Grasse, France to the Danish model who reads One Hundred Years of Solitude between fittings to the boss, not Springsteen but Bernard Arnault – France’s richest man who controls Dior through his stake in LVMH.

Perhaps most compelling is Waldman’s footage of the real boss – Anna Wintour, who Waldman was told he could not film.

Undeterred, the director learned surreptitiously  that Wintour was visiting Dior for a private viewing. Waldman and his camera man hid in the atelier above the showroom. Waldman held the camera man’s hips steady as the latter dangled from the rafters above the showroom grasping his heavy equipment trying clandestinely to film the unsuspecting Wintour. He catches her without her signature dark glasses, smiling and perhaps most coup-worthy, taking two chocolates.

This is my lunch, Wintour apparently told an assistant.

Get it on film first, ask for permission later – Waldman’s winning strategy.

February, 2017

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Does the idea of shopping make you feel like this?

Well, read my detailed round-up in Indagare about the shops that will bring a smile to your retail-worn weary face.  Highlights in the article include the talented Isabel Ettedgui at Connolly,

the equally delightful Audie at Anderson & Sheppard,

Drakes for ties and shirts …

and the unique Mr. Schnieder at Schnieder Boots for the closet horse lover in you …

Clifford Street brings the therapy back into retail, the smile into spending. Promise.

December 2016

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Enter Isabel Ettedgui, owner of the re-launched Connolly shop on Clifford Street in Mayfair, my new favourite go-to spot as much for what it does do, as for what it doesn’t.

Full disclosure, Isy, as she’s known to her friends, is one of my favourite people. Effortlessly chic,  warm, wise, hard-working and very funny, it’s no surprise that Connolly is terrific.

I sat down with Isy last week in the upstairs living space where the furniture is designed by the same people who designed the shop – Parisian architects Patrick Gilles and Dorothée Boissier –  and asked her about her vision for the brand, who her ideal customer is and what advice she would give to other women wanting to set up shop.

I wanted (Connolly) to be very personal. It’s not big, it’s not a huge flagship store. If you can’t explain a product to a customer because you’ve got 500 shops, then the mystery and the beauty of the product tends to be lost on them. I want people to discover and feel comfortable and very well looked after when they come. They’re coming into my space, my environment. I hope with Connolly that we’re more connected to the roots, to the manufacturers, to the designers, to our customers. It’s about giving something that’s a part of you.

Isy and her warm staff –  many of whom worked with her during Connolly’s previous incarnation several years ago when Isy’s husband Joseph was alive – know the stories behind each item sitting on a shelf or hanging on a rail. The Arran fisherman sweaters  are each handmade by one knitter,  six months from start to finish. Isy explains the origins of the Arran knits:

The cables were knitted by the fishermens’ wives. These jumpers … so that if they were lost at sea, each cable had a different pattern. (The wives) would be able to recognise a sailor if he drowned.

While Isy loves the past, she is a thoroughly modern woman. She discovered these vast bowls on Instagram, contacted their maker, an artisan named Joel Parks, and is now commissioning several pieces from him.

Parks finds dead wood in the forests of Devon, sands the pieces down to a rough shape, drills holes into the wood and then injects pewter and acrylic paint into the holes. Le voila.

Who is your ideal customer?

I don’t think they are into big status symbols … Connolly isn’t for everyone. It’s a very low-key brand. It takes a bit of confidence. It’s for someone who gets it, someone who says ‘Yeah,  I’m going to make an effort and go into the one shop in the world, because there’s only one and I am going to give my friend a present because it’s from Connolly and it means something.

What advice would you give other women wanting to open a shop.

Don’t, she laughs. Work with other women, get a good team of women. They’re multi-taskers … And try and find one thing, find something you really love because unless you love it, you won’t stick with it.

Not only does Isy have exquisite taste, she trusts her gut, doing things that might seem impractical, like having a sparsely designed living room upstairs.

It’s prime retail space, and I’ve got a bunch of flowers , she half-jokes, about the lovely first floor space. It’s very indulgent.

 For me it was very much about impact, the way people feel when they walked in.

On the ground floor, Isy made another bold move; the Classic Collection, created by designer’s designer Marc Audibet is limited to 19 pieces.

I didn’t want (customers)  to feel that it was just rows and rows of clothes.  The clothes are so beautiful that I knew I didn’t want to have 25 pairs of trousers. I’ll have three or four different styles. That’s more than enough … Ours is about the cut and the fabric, absolutely eternal pieces that don’t date. They’ll always be in your wardrobe. They’ll just work for you.

Do you have any fashion mentors?

Joseph for the way he merchandised and edited, his instinct for what women and men wanted to wear and the way he mixed brands.

Apart from launching Connolly fashion and leather goods,

the shop will stock other likeminded brands such as Charvet, Fedeli, Cedes, Car Shoe and Dixey eyeware.

Do you consider yourself a career woman?

A career woman is someone who is working for a large corporation, going up a ladder. There’s none of that here. The only ladder I go up is in the stock room. It’s not a career. It’s a life choice, really.

How scary was this opening?

It was the first time I was trying to do a build (18th c. Georgian townhouse completely gutted and redone) and build a brand. That was hard, and on my own, as a widow. There’s a certain freedom being on your own, but there’s also a certain anxiety. You miss that sounding board. It’s a double-edge sword.

What benefits does age bring?

Certainly not sagacity, she laughs. You kind of think ‘Well, I could die tomorrow, at least I’ve tried. It’s like youth. I think youth and age bring a kind of freedom. Youth because you’re naive and you don’t know what’s going to go wrong. And age, because what else are you going to do? You might as well give it a go.

Here’s to giving it a go. Bravo Isabel!

November, 2016

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