Forget Floyd, the Surreal Show Must Go On

It was a one-two fashion punch for Manhattan last week. First, Hurricane Floyd forced the rescheduling of a batch of fashion shows. Then, within hours, Hurricane McQueen hit the scene.

That’s Alexander McQueen, the 30-year-old British designer often referred to as the “bad-boy couturier” because of his eccentric designs and George Lucas out-of-this-world fashion shows.

McQueen defied Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s order to suspend all nonessential business and held his show Thursday night--in a warehouse on the Hudson River.

It was a hit with the jaded fashion crowd.

To show his own line in the U.S. for the first time, the designer snubbed his hometown of London, where he will be missing from the fashion shows that begin there Tuesday. McQueen, the son of a cabbie, has been designing for Givenchy for three years.

His show, the most anticipated of the spring season here, presented surreal and bizarre images inside the warehouse (which smelled of manure) at Pier 94.

Clothes ranged from the dominatrix leather look with lots of revealing flesh to models totally covered up, only their eyes and lips exposed through holes in silver-sequined masks and elaborate leather headgear that looked like armor.

Models in long-haired black wigs sloshed through a shallow pool of water created for the show, drenching metal-studded ankle boots and soaking the hems of long coats and trousers that looked as if the Cookie Monster had taken big bites out of them.

Hip-hugging long and short skirts and flared trousers were slit up the side to the waist. Pantaloons looked as if they had been inflated. And tight-fitting pants were cut out slightly above the knee in the front and left long in the back for a reverse-chaps effect.

Though most of his clothes were outlandish--and pure fantasy--he did show several elegant coats embellished with sparkling embroidery and sleeves slit up the arm. Other standouts included sleeveless quilted dresses with puffy layers of white tulle underneath, and a crocheted cashmere gown tassled with crystals.

McQueen’s New York act didn’t stop there. Soon big silver spikes rose up through the pool, creating a bed of nails. From above, models drifted through the air, suspended on cables. They walked in slow motion, gyrated in convulsions under a strobe light and executed aerial acrobatics in striped capes and pantaloons--again, totally covered.

It was cirque du McQueen. The bad boy did good.

Michael Quintanilla can be reached by e-mail at socalliving@latimes.com.