Alexander McQueen : pre-2000

[dior_couture1245]

(firstview.com)


To be honest, I don't really like this show...there's something a little off...

 

[dior_couture1245]

Here's another article about FW 00

"The Ghosts that Haunt Us" by Matthew Callahan

Despite the superficial veneer of the modern contemporary fashion industry, designer Alexander McQueen stands out as an avant-garde tailor of a strong social consciousness. Given McQueen’s autobiographical vocabulary and perennial love for nostalgia, he has consistently used memory and the phenomenon of haunting in his shows as bases for revealing the historic context of ethnic-cultural identity construction as well as the formation of different social locations. As most notably seen in his autumn-winter 2000-01 presentation entitled Eshu, by giving the experiences that have and still do shape social and ethnic identity of the Yoruba a physical manifestation, McQueen has not only provoked attention to issues such as ethnic-cultural identity formation but has contextualized them through his own aesthetic form of resistance.
...
In the fall season of 2000, McQueen moved his operation from London to Paris with a collection entitled Eshu, dedicated to the religious philosophy and iconography of the pre-colonial Yoruba people of West Africa. Despite rumors of a bomb threat, PETA activist demonstrations, and a
pending international fashion press conference, McQueen delivered an on-point, cohesive show. Set within an abandoned, industrial warehouse whose frame was gutted and deconstructed from within by renowned architect and director of photography Daniel Landin, the show space was sandwiched by two walled units of parabolic aluminized reflector lights. The catwalk itself, a two hundred foot floor covered in smashed slate and granite shards, was flanked by a set of Olympic-sized metallic bleachers. Models descended
from the ceiling’s metal walkway to the beats of traditional Dùndún drumming.

The raw aesthetic of the show space’s organic silhouette was yet another mechanism used by McQueen to preserve the pre-colonial cultural identity and actualize it to the West. The beautiful depiction of the Orisa-Ifa tradition of the West African Yoruba was free from any cultural appropriation of identity. Despite the confrontational vocabulary of his showmanship, the non-stereotypical celebration of the deity Eshu was an optimistic reflection of West African mythology while at the same time physically reflecting the economic sources of agriculture and craft directly in the clothing as a way to depict the Yoruba as they may have been prior to Christian conversion. The bodily decorations consisted of heavy steel and wooden bangles, pierced septa and lips, pubic aprons, and traditional Yoruba tattoo scarring called Kolo, all representing the body modification aesthetic of the Yoruba belief that scarification is pure and natural. Powder glass beads the color of the concrete rendering cascaded mud-spattered, transparent tunic dresses while the trickster Eshu deity was depicted in the form of carved horsehair headpieces. McQueen’s precision and objective execution of the Yoruba
tradition acted as a point of clarification of history as the Yoruba are rarely noted as the largest ethnic group in Africa whose religious tradition calls for a certain degree of absorption.
(zimbio.com)

Anyone know what this word(s) should say?
Dùndún...I want to know what kind of drumming was used for the soundtrack!!!

 

[Spike413]

That S/S 00 collection wasn't his best received show if I remember correctly. It is off for him, not up to par in terms of craftsmanship to his usual work.

 

[dior_couture1245]

The title of the SS 00 show is "Eye"
...from same article...

McQueen represented a multicultural approach with his spring 2000 show called Eye, to satirize the perceived closed mindedness of male domination and subsequent female oppression in Islamic society. Zodiac iconography embroidered over tunics and titanium-bound corsets made by jeweller Shaun Leane effectively conveyed his message about a politcal oppression of the feminine body. McQueen’s forms of aesthetic resistance have demonstrated how we come about understanding and processing the formations of cultural identity given the relations of our many social locations. In this case, McQueen yet again sought not to preserve but to mimic and therefore expose the structural inequality through a form of aesthetic resistance....

 

[dior_couture1245]

Another FW 00 review

Alexander McQueen went back to his roots for his London Fashion Week collection, unveiled last night in a show that was as savage as it was delicate.

Over the past few seasons, the capital's most high-profile fashion designer has established himself as a master of large-scale, super- slick production, thinking nothing of creating a volcanic runway that burst into flames one season and a giant Plexiglass snowstorm the next.
This time round, the proceedings were both more rough around the edges and more intimate, harking back to an earlier, more raw and less overtly romantic sensibility that concentrated less on seamless art direction and more on the drama of the clothes.

The show was named after Eshu, African goddess of creativity, and the models - their hair and faces caked in clay and daubed bright yellow, wearing wooden tribal head-dresses, vicious-looking silver face jewellery and arms full of heavy wooden bracelets - paid more than just lip-service to its namesake.
The clothes themselves were another step forward for a man who pushes at fashion's boundaries as if his existence depends on it.

Sinuous tailored trouser suits exploded into garlands of roses at the neckline. Woven raffia shell tops gave way to stiff, straw dolly skirts. A butter-soft, drop-waisted shirt dress looked the height of effortless elegance from the front; from behind it was shredded and printed with the face of a hybrid woman/big cat.
Knitwear, meanwhile, was so huge it looked as if it had been crafted by the world's most dextrous giants, working with huge coils of rope.

All day long there had been rumblings that threats from animal activists who had broken into the venue late the night before the show might call a halt to the proceedings. McQueen is not a designer to let something like this cramp his style, however. Despite a police presence and extensive searching of guests as they filed in through metal detectors, the designer left rabbit-trimmed jackets, pony skin boots and horse hair skirts proudly in place.

(the Independent)

 

[thejarc]

awesome work dior_couture1245

 

[dior_couture1245]

Fall/ Winter 1999

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[dior_couture1245]

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The first minute of this video is FW 99
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reK0A1XIjKA

 

[user500]

thanks dior couture!
it is all so wonderful! i havent yet seen these collections.