Alexander McQueen Retro-Respect-tive.

I F***IN LOOOVE AQ!!!!!
This guy is RADDNESS......Just wait. you will be all on him very soon. (Wink...Tastemakers)
Born in the East End of London, he is the son of a taxi driver, McQueen started making dresses for his three sisters at a young age and announced his intention of becoming a fashion designer.

Alexander McQueen's early runway collections developed his reputation for controversy and shock tactics (earning the title "enfant terrible" and "the hooligan of English fashion"), with trousers aptly named "bumsters", and a collection entitled "Highland Rape". It has also been claimed that he was on income support and that he needed to change his name for his first show so that he could continue to receive benefits. McQueen is known for his lavish, unconventional runway shows, such as a recreation of a shipwreck for his spring 2003 collection, spring 2005’s human chess game and his fall 2006 show, Widows of Culloden, which featured a life-sized hologram of supermodel Kate Moss, dressed in yards of rippling fabric.



Some of Alexander McQueen's accomplishments include being one of the youngest designers to achieve the title "British Designer of the Year", which he won three times between 1996 and 2003. He has also been awarded the CBE, as well as being named International Designer of the Year at the Council of Fashion Designer Awards. December 2000 saw a new partnership for McQueen with Gucci Group acquiring 51% of the company, and McQueen serving as Creative Director. Plans for expansion have included the opening of stores in London, Milan, and New York, and the launch of his perfumes Kingdom, and more recently My Queen. In 2005, McQueen collaborated with Puma to create a special line of trainers for the shoe brand.
McQueen became the first designer to participate in MAC's newest promotion: cosmetic releases created by fashion designers. The collection, McQueen, was released on 11 October 2007 and reflects the looks used on the Fall/Winter McQueen runway. The inspiration for the collection was the Elizabeth Taylor movie Cleopatra, and thus the models sported intense blue, green, and teal eyes with strong black liner extended Egyptian-style. McQueen handpicked the 3 cream shadows, coordinating eye shadows, two lip sticks, two lipglasses, three eyeliners, false lashes and Mineralized Skin Finish powder used in the

GOTHIC dark glamour....COTORTURE!!!!

I recently went to The Museum at F.I.T. The Fashion Institute of Technology for the Gothic (dark glamor) Exhibit. And I have to say it was EXCELLENT!!! My take on "GOTH" has changed forever & I from a fashion standpoint am really inspired be this exhibit curated by Valerie Steele. This is a must see. Here some information I got off their website. For those of you that are not going to be in NYC before Feb 21, I included some youtube links for you to have a peak. I hear there is a coffee table book due for release in Fall 09. Look for that too & get your Goth Bars up!
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Gothic is an epithet with a strange history, evoking images of death, destruction, and decay. It is not just a word that describes something (such as a Gothic cathedral); it is almost inevitably a term of abuse, implying that something is gloomy, barbarous, and macabre. Ironically, its negative connotations have made it, in some respects, ideal as a symbol of rebellion. Hence its significance for youth subcultures. Today the words "goth" and "gothic" are popularly associated with black-clad teenagers and mascara'd rock musicians. But the gothic has many layers of meaning.



Just as the "barbarian" Goths were perceived by the Romans as the antithesis of classical civilization, so did the medieval Gothic come to be seen as modernity's Other, its "dark side." With the rise of the Enlightenment, the entire medieval period was retrospectively envisioned as the Dark Ages, characterized by superstition and sorcery. The Gothic has long attracted cultural outsiders, from the homosexual aesthete Horace Walpole, author of the first gothic novel, The Castle of Otranto, to the habitués of today's Vampire Balls.



The imagery of death and decay, the power of horror, and the erotic macabre are perversely attractive to many designers. John Galliano, for example, has described the "Gothic girl" as "edgy and cool, vampy and mysterious." Alexander McQueen, Rick Owens, Yohji Yamamoto, and Riccardo Tisci of Givenchy have also created what could be described as gothic fashion. Ann Demeulemeester may reject the gothic label, associating it with the ubiquitous skull accessory, but Owens proudly recalls that he once was a goth, just as Vivienne Westwood was a punk.

DISCO UNUSUAL SOCIAL CLUB 02.14.09