THE FALL COLLECTIONS / NEW YORK : A New Star in the World of Artifice
Oh, to be present at a fashion moment, to witness talent not yet discovered by the masses. The buzz had crossed the Atlantic, identifying 27-year-old British designer Alexander McQueen as the new Gaultier, or perhaps the next Galliano, a gifted iconoclast who could as easily be creating art as fashion.
So late on a snowy night last week, the cream of New York’s professionally fashionable lined up outside a deconsecrated synagogue on the Lower East Side, waiting like social-climbing hicks hoping for admittance to a hot city club. Years from now, some in the crowd will tell the story of being among the cognoscenti in that freezing sanctuary, as people who heard Bruce Springsteen play in small clubs on the New Jersey shore reminisce about being present at the birth of a star.
But first they had to get past security guards who weren’t privy to the evening’s enchantment. While the fashion editors of New York magazine, Vogue, Vanity Fair, Harper’s Bazaar and Marie Claire were still at Todd Oldham’s show in Soho, a gaggle of style groupies, model bookers and hairdressers who had somehow procured invitations to the McQueen event filled the building. With fire marshals threatening to send everyone packed inside home, legitimate invitations were rendered as worthless as sloppy counterfeit bills.
A publicist stood next to the bouncer stationed at a tall iron gate. When he spotted Kelly Klein and photographer Steven Meisel in the street he whispered to the guard, “These people must come in.” The guard ordered those in line to make way, but in order to part the human sea and clear a path for Klein and her entourage, elbows jammed into neighboring necks, purses wedged into random thighs, bodies pressed against strange bodies.
Inside, candles lit the dank room, providing just enough light to read McQueen’s statement of purpose, printed under the title “Dante.” “This collection depicts the tragedy of war, fought in the name of religion,” it began. (I wondered if there would be any clothes dedicated to the tragedy of innocent people trampled in the crush outside.) “The collection completely absorbs the ambience and beauty of the synagogue whilst retaining the pure aggression, born of war and street mentality alike,” McQueen continued. One of my favorite definitions came to mind: Art should startle us into seeing the world anew. I was prepared to be startled, but I feared McQueen had swallowed a pretentiousness pill.
Organ music overwhelmed by the sound of gunfire signaled the start of the show. Zombie models just arisen from their graves did a slow dance of death in clothes that were punctuated with macabre images--an earring of dangling bird talons, T-shirts photo-printed with starving Somalian children and gun-toting Vietnam War soldiers, a face-covering, black lace hood befitting a hangman. There were a few elaborate embroidered lace garments and some expertly cut military jackets worn by models decked with deer antler headdresses and unicorn’s horns. More memorable were the dresses slashed with chevrons of transparent fabric, revealing a model’s pierced nipple. Trousers McQueen calls “bumsters” were slung so low they uncovered rear cleavage. The evening’s nadir was reached when a bare chested, skinny teenage boy came out in bumsters that exposed most of his pale tushie as well as a forest of pubic hair.
Many in McQueen’s audience have attended more than 100 fashion shows since the fall collections began early last month. A jaded little voice within all of us begs, “Shock me, thrill me, surprise me.” But such an attitude too easily celebrates ridiculous clothing that only pretends to be art. There is indeed something perverse about a would-be subversive designer who makes very pricey garments. Comparisons to the Emperor’s New Clothes would be obvious. However, I reserve the right to invoke metaphors as heavy-handed as McQueen’s.
