VOSS - Remembering Alexander Mcqueen's S/S 2001 Show
It's been twenty years since Alexander McQueen's highly celebrated Spring/Summer show “Voss” stunned audiences. However, in a time of rapidly shifting trends, body pressures, and increasingly unattainable beauty standards, the core artistic message of the show seems to resonate more powerfully than ever.
The name Alexander McQueen has been firmly cemented in the mind of the fashion world as one of the most provocative and laudable fashion designers. Throughout his 18 year career, McQueen disrupted the fashion world with his unique and subversive collections, which stretched preceding definitions, and blurred the line between the domain of fashion and the art world. It was this boundary-pushing impulse that became a hallmark of the McQueen name, changing the course of clothing history and inspiring countless others to follow his path.
However, there was a darker side to Lee Alexander McQueen, which manifested in the form of depression, body issues and ultimately led the London-born designer to take his own life shortly after the passing of his mother in 2010. This tragic event came as a surprise to many, shaking the fashion world and causing people to look back on the messages portrayed within his body of work with a deeper, more sensitive, and painfully tender eye. One show, in particular, was “Voss” (2001).
SETTING
At the turn of the millennium, McQueen's shows became increasingly extravagant performance artworks. Robotic paint-shooting arms, stages that burst into flames; the designer thrilled on eliciting a strong response from onlookers and critics (both the good and the bad), and Voss succeeded in achieving just this.
The show was named after a small Norwegian town known for its splendorous nature, denoting a theme of wildlife and the natural world. While these themes were definitely at play within the show, McQueen's spiralling mental health and the "dark side" of fashion were also ever-present ingredients, resulting in a much more haunting and harsh portrait of nature and the human spirit. Around this time, people close to McQueen had said that he had become deeply unhappy in the world he had become a part of and had also just undergone a liposuction procedure, seemingly seeking for that succour that appeared to be lacking.
Catherine Brickhill, friend and former design assistant to McQueen, tells of how he was becoming increasingly unhappy the more he achieved around this time. Recalling how he would order the most expensive caviar on the menu to not even eat it - falling victim to the rapidly rotating hedonic treadmill. However, this hapless outlook formed the catalyst for much of his work. And the result? A runway show teeming with the subject matter of self-reflection, torment, anguish and above all of this - the ebbing and flowing presence of beauty that pulses throughout the show.
Held in London, the attendees were instructed to take their seats around a large, black- mirrored-glass box. They were forced to look back at themselves for almost two hours before the show commenced, accompanied only by the silence that filled the air, prodding the critics and onlookers to analyse themselves, rather than the models for once, experiencing their own scrutinising stares. Those who were interviewed afterwards described the feeling as very discomforting.
When the lights burst on, observers were invited to peer into a padded room, mimicking the walls of a mental asylum, with a dirty glass box in the centre, immediately eliciting feelings of confinement, incarceration, and insanity. These feelings were only brought further to the forefront when the models began to walk. Acting in particularly unusual ways, the models displayed looks that were tormented, manic, unsettling and all the while confident demeanours, resulting in equally enthralling and distressing energy. Model Erin O'Connor recalls how, "The unanimous explanation among all the models who worked with him was that he actually gave you freedom of expression", which certainly is visible through the variety of poised and punchy attitudes displayed.
THE LOOKS
For the collection, McQueen effortlessly leans on his ability to use various materials and silhouettes to accentuate the energy embodied in his models, crafting a powerfully potent body of self-expression.
Kate Moss is the first model to walk out and, like all models, to
Look 1
follow, her head is wrapped in tightly bound bandages as if she has recently undergone a medical procedure. This brings forth questions around the examination and scrutiny of individuals dealing with mental health burdens while reinforcing this omnipresent feeling of claustrophobia.
She saunters confidently up to the one-way mirrored glass, displaying this intense and violent demeanour that had become somewhat of a motif for models in McQueen shows.
The theme of nature begins to gradually creep in after that as we are met with floral garments, dresses adorned in feathers, and mussel, oyster and razor-clam skirts. Look #10 heavily breathes this feeling of nature through an embroidered look accompanied by a headpiece garnished with a real amaranth plant. John Milton, who included them in his depictions of the Garden of Eden from his book Paradise Lost, described the plant as "immortal" due to the flowers ability to not wilt and retain their bright tones of colour, even when deceased. It's hard not to see why McQueen used this flower, particularly in a show that deals with themes of life and beauty.
Look 10
Look #24 is equally rich in symbolism as the model emerges in a dress made of hawk feathers, escorted by a taxidermy bird headpiece, making it appear as though they are circling and clawing at the model's hair. The birds, whose feathers make up the skirt, appear to move menacingly as the model they're attached to quivers and shakes nervously beneath them. This evokes the idea of our inner animal selves, reminding us of how nature, and indeed ourselves, can be destructive as if to say “the very things that make you you, can be what destroys you”. It's impossible not to draw the parallel between this and McQueen's relationship with the fashion world and fame, as the thing he sought out and surrounded himself in was simultaneously responsible for producing a vast amount of pressure and stress for him.
Look 24
We are met with another powerful look in Look #33 when model Erin O'Connor emerges in a dress made entirely of razor clams. The lights dim as she runs her hands through the scale-like dress before tearing clusters of them off and throwing them down in an almost therapeutic manner as if peeling off this layer of skin and showing the actual individual beneath in the act of self-acceptance. This almost mesmerising display elicits so many feelings in the viewer: vulnerability, self-destruction, transformation in a truly all-encompassing feat. Erin O'Connor laments how McQueen had told her to rip it apart and recalled cutting herself while doing this.
A similar spirit is portrayed by another model who shakes and pulls at her skirt made of mussels, causing them to splinter and fracture off, before tossing handfuls off them in the air, only adding to this chaotic yet alluring energy. Looks like these and others, such as his samurai armour resembling look #56, really showcase how McQueen wanted his models to look - powerful, strong, and verging on inaccessible.
Look 33
Though, McQueen's use of unconventional objects wasn't strictly bound to natural materials. Decks of cards and jigsaw puzzles were used to create ornamental accessories (most likely a reference to the games patients at mental institutions are given).
Glass Top Look 74
Miniature castles made of wood rested poised on models shoulders, and a stunning glass cuirass was worn by model Laura Morgan in look #74. This piece was made entirely of glass by East London manufacturer Colombia Glassworks after McQueen provided them with the necessary sketches to create it. Morgan recalled how terrifying the piece was to wear, being told before walking the catwalk that “If you trip, you're a goner!”
The crimson red piece, apart from bearing a visual resemblance anatomically to flesh and blood of the human body. It also mimics the delicate nature of mental health through its physical fragility. For many, like the model wearing this look, mental health is a quite literally a balancing act, a constant pressure of trying not to fall and break.
The cuirass also really serves as a demonstrative reflection of the variety of creative collaborations that McQueen would employ within his work (blacksmiths, woodcarvers, glassblowers). While also showing McQueens continued loyalty to his home town and the importance it held for him throughout his career.
The themes of the human body, mind and vulnerability are continued through the final look. Again, worn by Erin O'Connor, look #76 resides as one of the most powerful examples of expressionism in fashion. The dress's skirt is made up of dyed ostrich feathers, which blend from charcoal black to ruby red before meeting the body of the dress, which is comprised of microscope slides, hand-painted with a lustrous blood-red tone. The contrast of the soft feathers against the clinical glass slides reminds us of the duality within us all, as the microscope slides bring feelings of scrutiny and analysis to the viewers' minds once again. As O'Connor walks backstage once more, she turns on her heels, reaches her arms outstretched and strides away confidently, exuding a feeling of self-acceptance and ultimately accomplishment, like a phoenix rising from ashes to flame.
Look 76
FINALE
The catwalk had finished, the lights had dimmed, and at a time where most people would have thought the show had concluded, the most powerful moment was in fact still to come. A beeping heart monitor sound creeps through the darkness which has cloaked the room, before the lights burst back on. The heart monitor flatlines and the sides of the dirty box which resided forgotten in the centre of the padded cell fall and crash to the floor exposing an overweight lady (fetish writer Michelle Olley) wearing a rubberised cement breathing mask, reclined on a chaise longue, covered in live moths. This hauntingly mesmerising look, closely referencing Joel Peter Witkin’s Sanitarium (1983), comes as a shock, especially after watching a slue of slender models strut through the room.
Finale
This unorthodox visual, accompanied by the moths which are typically seen as the “ugly” butterfly, really thrusts a combination of emotions on the viewer, as while the visuals immediate emotional response is somewhat of an unsettled one, it quickly morphs to one of beauty, forcing us to question beauty, and what it really is. Perhaps McQueen was really feeling these emotions potently due to his recent liposuction procedure. Perhaps he himself was questioning his feelings of regret which he had expressed around it, leading him to really ask himself what is beauty, and why should there only be one avenue which it should be bound to? As in this closing, with all the conventionally “beautiful” models around the edges of the box, it is in fact not them who our eyes are drawn to and fixated on, but rather the overweight lady in the centre; McQueen’s vision of beauty.
Look 77