User:Premeditated Chaos/Voss

Background
British fashion designer Alexander McQueen was known for his imaginative, sometimes controversial designs, and dramatic fashion shows. During his nearly twenty-year career, he explored a broad range of ideas and themes, including historicism, romanticism, femininity, sexuality, and death. The son of a London taxicab driver and a teacher, he grew up in one of the poorer neighborhoods in London's East End. During childhood, he witnessed his sisters experiencing domestic violence at the hands of her husband, which became a formative influence on his designs.

McQueen began his career in fashion as an apprentice with Savile Row tailors Anderson & Sheppard before briefly joining Gieves & Hawkes as a pattern cutter. His work on Savile Row earned him a reputation as an expert tailor. From October 1990 to 1992, McQueen was enrolled in the eighteen-month masters-level course in fashion design at Central Saint Martins (CSM), a London art school. McQueen met a number of his future collaborators at CSM, including Simon Ungless, with whom he later lived. His graduation collection, Jack the Ripper Stalks His Victims, was bought in its entirety by magazine editor Isabella Blow, who became his mentor and his muse.

From 1996 to October 2001, McQueen was also – in addition to his responsibilities for his own label – head designer at French fashion house Givenchy. His time at Givenchy was fraught, primarily because of creative differences between him and the label, and the press speculated that he would leave his contract early. In December 2000, before his contract with Givenchy had finished, McQueen signed a deal with Gucci, an Italian fashion house and rival to Givenchy, effectively daring Givenchy to fire him. Gucci bought 51 per cent of McQueen's company with McQueen remaining its creative director.

McQueen had a difficult relationship with the fashion industry and the press throughout his career, and several of his collections, including Voss, were intended as commentary and critique on how he was treated. He lacked confidence about his weight and looks, and the press preyed on his insecurities. Early on, the media accused McQueen of misogyny, an accusation that persisted throughout much of his career, although he consistently objected to it. With It's a Jungle Out There (Autumn/Winter 1997), McQueen connected the short lifespan of the Thomson's gazelle to the "fragility of a designer's time in the press. You're there, you're gone; it's a jungle out there." At the end of his career, he lashed out again with The Horn of Plenty (Autumn/Winter 2009), which satirised the concept of a runway show and the wastefulness of the industry.

Concept and collection
The collection is name for Voss, a Norwegian town well-known for its wildlife reserve.

Much inspiration from natural world Shell dresses - razor clam, mussel, oyster shells. Birds represented in feathered skirts, hawk headdress a la The Birds

"half-cyborg women now crossbreeding with the animal kingdom"

Accents of vermillion

Ideas of bodily perfection - who and what was beautiful

One top that appeared several times in the runway show was a halter top created from the type of silk fabric normally used for men's neckties. The halter portion was structured like a necktie, and was held on the body by knotting it around the neck. Textile curators Clarissa M. Esguerra and Michaela Hansen identified the item as an example of McQueen's clever "deconstruction of form and function".

Runway show


Voss deliberately started an hour late, which forced the audience to watch themselves uncomfortably in the mirror.

Models were styled to look unwell, like hospital patients recovering from surgery; the aesthetic both desexualised and dehumanised them. Their hair was covered with tightly wound bandages and the clothing de-emphasized their breasts. Makeup was used to make their skin look pale and unhealthy.

The styling erased the models' sexuality by hiding their hair and breasts and making them look unhealthy, like hospital patients.

Seventy-six looks were presented.

Model Erin O'Connor, who wore the clamshell dress in the show, recalled McQueen providing detailed directions for the models: "So, you're in a lunatic asylum, I need you to go mental, have a nervous breakdown, die, and then come back to life. And if you can, do that in three minutes and just follow the crescendo of the music."

For the show's finale, the glass box at the centre of the models' room shattered. Inside was fetish artist Michelle Olley, lying nude on a chaise. Her head was covered in a full-face mask connected to a breathing tube. Several hundred moths fluttered around her. The visual was a recreation of "Sanitarium", a 1983 photograph by Joel-Peter Witkin.

Reception
Response to Voss was universally positive, according to journalist Maureen Callahan

In retrospect, Voss is regarded as one of the best collections of McQueen's career. Journalist Maureen Callahan described it as "peerless" and called McQueen "the designed to beat" from that point onward. Author Karen Homer reports it as one of McQueen's "most celebrated theatrical achievements".

In a 2015 retrospective, Dazed magazine called it one of McQueen's darkest shows. The directors of the 2018 documentary McQueen described Voss as one of McQueen's most iconic shows.

Analysis


Sociologist Henrique Grimaldi Figueredo analysed several of McQueen's shows using a typology of fashion shows created by researcher Ginger Gregg Duggan. Grimaldi Figueredo argued that McQueen presented what Duggan called spectacles, which use "theme, the models, the scenario and the closing act" to create a commercial performance that borders on art. Grimaldi Figueredo wrote that McQueen used heroin chic fashion, which he terms the "wasted look", to create the spectacle of the Voss runway show. He identified four elements which aligned with Duggan's framework: the theme of hospitalisation and madness exemplified the "wasted look"; the models were de-sexualised to make them look unhealthy, like hospital patients; the setting inside the mirrored box played with unhealthy self-reflection; and the finale combined "beauty and horror". He concluded by arguing that the dress covered in blood red microscope slides "suggested the fragility of life" and was therefore an example of the aesthetic of the "abject", or that which "triggers disgust", a concept developed by cultural critic Julia Kristeva.

Maureen Callahan described the mirror stunt, which forced the audience to look at themselves and one another, as an act of vengeance against the fashion press, who had often criticised McQueen for his looks. She quoted McQueen as saying he had watched them "trying not to look at themselves" on a CCTV monitor.

Legacy
For Radical Fashion, a 2001 exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum, McQueen recreated the finale tableau from Voss in miniature.

One item from Voss appeared in the exhibition Lee Alexander McQueen: Mythos, Mind, Muse. It was a retail variant of several looks from the runway show.

Source dump

 * The Fantasy of Ugliness in Alexander Mcqueen
 * Fashion Cultures (&142)
 * https://www.fashionstudiesjournal.org/longform/2020/5/17/alexander-mcqueen
 * https://www.vogue.com/article/alexander-mcqueen-remembered-by-models-adina-fohlin-debra-shaw-jodie-kidd-laura-morgan-plum-skykes
 * https://blog.metmuseum.org/alexandermcqueen/tag/voss/
 * https://books.google.ca/books?id=CpEFEAAAQBAJ&pg=PA5&dq=mcqueen+voss&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiu1brAyaaHAxXcF1kFHanCCHQQ6AF6BAgNEAI
 * https://books.google.ca/books?id=Cm1NEAAAQBAJ&pg=PR12&dq=mcqueen+voss&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiu1brAyaaHAxXcF1kFHanCCHQQ6AF6BAgIEAI
 * https://books.google.ca/books?id=47iKDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT168&dq=mcqueen+voss&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiu1brAyaaHAxXcF1kFHanCCHQQ6AF6BAgMEAI
 * https://books.google.ca/books?id=WXoNBQAAQBAJ&pg=PT44&dq=mcqueen+voss&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiu1brAyaaHAxXcF1kFHanCCHQQ6AF6BAgGEAI
 * https://books.google.ca/books?id=AU-fDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT235&dq=mcqueen+voss&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiKiYnTyaaHAxWUFVkFHe7kD7Q4ChDoAXoECAQQAg
 * https://books.google.ca/books?id=tk9K2CNrsfgC&pg=PT14&dq=mcqueen+voss&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiKiYnTyaaHAxWUFVkFHe7kD7Q4ChDoAXoECAoQAg
 * https://books.google.ca/books?id=GTveEAAAQBAJ&pg=PT162&dq=mcqueen+voss&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiKiYnTyaaHAxWUFVkFHe7kD7Q4ChDoAXoECBAQAg
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 * https://books.google.ca/books?id=DwaZEAAAQBAJ&pg=PA223&dq=mcqueen+voss&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiP_PXgyaaHAxUDFlkFHd7CC0Y4FBDoAXoECAwQAg
 * https://books.google.ca/books?id=rL-19_S0-PMC&pg=PA91&dq=mcqueen+voss&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiP_PXgyaaHAxUDFlkFHd7CC0Y4FBDoAXoECAsQAg
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