#6 Fashion Videos

 

Watching Gareth Pugh’s Winter Collection for 2009 made me have goose bumps. This collection is very dark and somewhat scary. I do enjoy all the special features that were added. The music also ties in very well with the theme. It is definitely a video you cannot stop watching. Gareth Pugh’s collection for this season reminds me of Alexander McQueen’s, with the box hat and the ruffled flowing dress that was featured in this video.

Below the Alexander McQueen’s Fall/Winter 2006 Collection. This video is only the second part of his shoe. At the 2:40 time mark is where the ruffles start appearing, with long flowing dresses. At the end of his collection, there is a hologram of model Kate Moss in the middle of the runway, where she is twirling around in a flowing dress, which somewhat reminds me of a ghost.

 

Another Alexander McQueen’s show I enjoyed was his Spring/Summer 2001 Collection. I saw his collection when it was at the Metropolitan Museum of Art this past summer. I purchased the book Alexander McQueen Savage Beauty by Andrew Bolton. Here are some quotes from the book that pertain to the fashion shows I have posted and also some quotes that I think give some inside to his thought process –

“In this collection the idea was to turn people’s faces on themselves. I wanted to turn it around and make them think, ‘am I actually as good as what I am looking at?’ The show as staged inside a huge two-way mirrored box, whereby the audience was reflected in the glass before the show began and then models could not see out once the show started. These beautiful models were walking around in the room, and then suddenly this woman who wouldn’t be considered beautiful was revealed. It was about trying to trap something that wasn’t conventionally beautiful to show that beauty comes from within. There’s blood beneath every layer of skin” (Bolton 142).

When speaking about the shell outfit, McQueen states, “My friend, George and I were walking on the beach in Norfolk and there were thousands of ‘razor-calm’ shells. They were so beautiful I thought I had to do something with them. So, we decided to make a dress out of them. . . the shells had outlived their usefulness on the beach, so we put them to another use on a dress. Then Erin (O’Conner) came out (on the runway) and trashed the dress, so their usefulness was over once again. Kind of like fashion, really” (Bolton 146).

“You’ve got to know the rules to break them. That’s what I’m here for, to demolish the rules but to keep the tradition” (Bolton 30).

“My collections have always been autobiographical, a lot to do with my own sexuality and coming to terms with the person I am – it was like exorcising my ghosts in the collections. They were to do with my childhood, the way I think about life and the way I was brought up to think about life” (Bolton 142 ).

He was such an amazing and creative designer that will never be replaced. His collections were always a memorable work of art.


Reference:
Bolton, Andrew, Alexander McQueen, Susannah Frankel, Tim Blanks. Alexander McQueen: Savage beauty. New York: Metropolitan Museum Of Art 2011. Print.

Chanel also does an amazing job getting the views into the theme for each season by giving us the direction in which he shows on the runway. Chanel’s Fall/Winter 2008/09 Collection center piece was a very creative merry-go-round. Each model walked on the runway, each wearing unusual stockings – they were nude in the front and black on the back side. This gave the illusion that the models legs were skinny then they really were. Below is another Chanel Fall/Winter 2011 Collection show. This one is amazing using a winter-like atmosphere with ice. When the models come out onto the runway, they are actually walking on water, which represents the water that is melting from the icebergs in the background.