Inspiration of the week: Alexander McQueen

Tracing Alexander McQueen, without saying something shallow and ubiquitous, is a quest: his life and art are strictly interconnected, it’s almost impossible to talk about one without mentioning the other. He began serving an apprenticeship with Savile Row’s tailors, and learned rigour and orderliness (very important aspects for his methodic work and for his personal life), while finding shelter from his abusive father. His pursuit, as Creative Director for Givenchy and then with his own brand, was a journey into beauty, that disorientating beauty always on-the-line between light and darkness, tied among life and death (the death of his muse Isabella Blow was a fact he never accepted). Alexander McQueen fills the word “Fashion” with sense and reference qualifying it as a form of art: every show was a performance and a visual experience for the eye and mind, as the collection was only a mean to a further end. Just like the artist is eternally bound to its art, McQueen lived through his creations and as they became, year after year, darker and deeper, agony and depression pushed him to find timeless peace in the darkness of which he always tried to show as a mysterious beauty. While in London Alexander McQueen Savage Beauty, the largest retrospective of his oeuvre, just opened,we tribute his outstanding-groundbreaking career and life with this gallery.

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Alexander McQueen by Tim Walker

90's McQueen at Romeo Gigli

Spring/summer 1999. White cotton muslin spray-painted black and yellow with underskirt of white synthetic tulle.

He let it rain on the runway during his Fall Winter 2004 show

Isabella Blow, the one who discovered him and then became the muse of the designer

For the Spring Summer 2008 he homages his mentor, Isabella Blow, with butterflies headpieces

He impressed the crowd with a fire presentation for the Fall Winter 98 show

McQueen's make up details for fall/winter 2009

Alexander McQueen 2003 show

Alexander McQueen supporting Kate Moss after the 2005 show.

Aimee by Nick Knight

Holographic Kate Moss for the Alexander McQueen Fall Winter 2006 show

Armadillo boots embroidered with iridescent enamel paillettes

McQueen's provocative bumster trousers

Photography Jason Evans

90's Alexander McQueen for Givenchy

Kate Moss in McQueen. Photography Tesh

Alexander McQueen Fall Winter 2006

Raquel Zimmermann

Photography Emma Summerton

Alexander McQueen Fall Winter 2009 show

Alexander McQueen, Spring Summer 2009

From The Girl Who Lived in the Tree, autumn/winter 2008–9

Savage Beauty NYC, Alexander McQueen exhibition. A retrospective of the late designer's visionary fashion-art work.