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The Victoria & Albert museum is to host the Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty exhibition. The exhibition starts on the 14th of March of this year and will be hosted at the South Kensington museum until the 2nd of August. It is considered the biggest yet exhibition of the designer’s work in Europe and it will highlight his vision and innovative nature through dramatic staging and a recreation of his impressive runways. The pieces exhibited will be from all the years when Alexander McQueen was active starting with his 1992 MA graduate collection up to his Autumn/Winter 2010, which remains unfinished.
The exhibition is an evolution of the 2011 exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. It is noteworthy that in New York, the exhibition attracted approximately 500,000 visitors, became one of the 10 most visited exhibitions of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and also its most visited fashion exhibition. The exhibition in London will feature an additional 30 garments and a whole new section focusing on the designers early shows, which were often conceived as controversial.
Over 30,000 tickets were put on sale in advance, since April 2014 and 50,000 more have just been made available for booking. 200 tickets will be available on the door at the museum on a daily basis too, strictly on a first come – first served basis.
Just two weeks after the Alexander McQueen is launched, the V&A museum will be lending ten Vivienne Westwood outfits to the Danson House for the Vivienne Westwood: Cut from the Past exhibition. The exhibition will feature garments by the designer that demonstrate an 18th century aesthetic, influenced by the Rococo movement in art and especially by the painters Watteau and Boucher. Outfits will also be borrowed from private collections.
The Danson House is a Gregorian country villa built by John Boyd and is located in Kent. It just reopened in 2005 after 10 whole of restoration and it is managed by the Bexley Heritage Trust. The exhibition opens on the 1st of April and runs through 31st October of this year.
Even though both designers are considered British revolutionaries in their industry, according to the Sunday Times in 2000, Vivienne Westwood made the following remark about Alexander McQueen: “His only usefulness is as a measure to zero talent”, to which McQueen replied “I kind of had high regard for her, but I think she’s starting to sound as naff as Malcolm McLaren”.
Words by Marios Pitsillidis