Athena at McQueen's Stele

The photo above, in close up, from Alexander McQueen's last show in Paris yesterday.

The image below, from the Acropolis Museum: Athena mourning fallen warriors.

McQueen found inspiration in everything--works of art, nature's patterns, the mindless beauty of machines in action. There's no saying whether or not the model's feathered headdress was inspired by the helmet of the goddess. It could have as easily come from 70s punks in London's East End.

But the echoing resonance, the unanswered questions, and the poignancy, are symptomatic of the turns the mind takes in the presence of high art. I'm certain that throughout this last collection, the phenomenon occurs again and again.

(photo above from The New York Times, Chris Moore/Karl Prouse. Photo of Mourning Athena (460 BCE) from the Acropolis Museum, Athens)

R.I.P. Alexander McQueen

The greatest designer of our time is dead at 40. The story here. He compulsively and relentlessly broadened the boundaries of his art and craft, and his influence on young designers past, present, and future will be everlasting.



(photos of Alexander McQueen Fall 2006 ready-to-wear via Style.com, by Marcio Madeira)

Paris Vogue Suggests: Knuckle Up

As the second in a series of how-tos based on Paris Vogue's "80 Essential Looks" for Autumn 2009, we turn to the genius of Alexander McQueen, even madder than usual with this jawdropping feathered dress, called "Cygne". A swan that is very black indeed--and without a good pair of binocs, liable to be misidentified as a vulture.

Between its panniered hips, humped shoulders, and sky-hooker boots, it gives little quarter to wearability in my world, but this is design with no time for the usual bourgeois drivers. (The photo, too, is transcendental--credit Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin and stylist Emmanuelle Alt.)

So the look, while stunning, is largely unwearable, except . . . .

Check out the model's hand. Doesn't that row of ultra-chunky rings look fantastic against the jewelled bag? (This may be an actual knuckle duster--McQueen's collection included them this season).

It's a look that can be replicated so very easily, with costume cocktail rings. Similarly, jewel-bedecked bags are an easy find at vintage fairs and other secondhand outlets.

Combine heavily embellished knuckles, sock-it-to-em red nails, bijou bag and a little black dress? You, like McQueen, will rule.

Will Somebody Please Padlock Davy Jones' Locker?

I think we all sensed--even before Jack Sparrow made it official--that pirates had a finely honed sense of humor. They'd have to. Week after week on pitching seas with no-one for company but a troupe of reeking, foul-tempered no-hopers--the only way to survive that scene would be to cultivate a fine sense of life's absurdity.

Hence their emblem, the Jolly Roger. Sure, pirate crews flew the skull and crossbones as a warning: "we're killers, y'all, so hand over your cargo without a fight, and there's a slim chance we won't make your decks sluice with blood."

But the emblem was also representative of the pirates themselves, who were, essentially, the walking dead. If caught, they were hanged, no questions asked.

Their devil-may-care moral code is why the skull emblem is today so popular with wannabe rebels, from Hell's Angels to Alexander McQueen bescarfed starlets to purchasers of the equally overpriced (and in his case hideous) Ed Hardy t-shirts.

The problem with this co-opting of a perfectly respectable symbol of terror is that its original message is drained of all power. The people (and toddlers!) I see everyday wearing skull and crossbones are flying a flag, alright, but if it's got a care label, really, how edgy can it be.