Posts Tagged ‘joel-peter witkin’
Alexander McQueen: Asylum (Spring/Summer 2001)
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For the Spring/Summer 2001 Asylum collection the audience sat around a mirrored cube forced to stare at themselves for a whole hour. When finally lit from inside, the cube revealed itself to be a mental-hospital holding cell. Demented girls, wearing hospital headbands and everything from extraordinary mussel-shell skirts to impossibly chic pearl-colored cocktail dresses, slithered and strutted while uselessly attempting to fly over the cuckoo’s nest. There were gothic, theatrical pieces, like a dress with a miniature castle and rat posing as a shoulder pad; a top made out of a jigsaw puzzle; and a huge feathered creation with stuffed eagles suspended over the model’s head, poised to attack à la Hitchcock. But amidst all the insanity, there was a cornucopia of startlingly elegant — and wearable — pantsuits, flouncy party dresses, and even a spectator pump or two.
How to top off such a climactic presentation? After everyone thought it was all over, another cube within the psychiatric ward-cum-runway opened up to reveal a nude Michelle Olley, her face covered by a mask, breathing through a tube, surrounded by fluttering moths. It was a truly shocking and enthralling tableau: Francis Bacon via Leigh Bowery and Lucien Freud. In a word, sublime.
“Ha! I was really pleased about that. I was looking at it on the monitor, watching everyone trying not to look at themselves. It was a great thing to do in the fashion industry — turn it back on them! God, I’ve had some freaky shows.” – McQueen on forcing his audience to stare at their own reflection for over an hour
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[inspired by] Joel-Peter Witkin’s photograph Sanitarium (1983)
Hat tip: AR
