After the epic shopping trip so well documented by other fabbers, I spent the next day with my Mum at the V&A, where we were lucky enough to see the spectacular Alexander McQueen retrospective.
The sheer scope of this incredible body of work makes very clear that McQueen was much more than just a fashion designer. In fact, his visionary haute couture went so far beyond costume that sometimes it's hard to describe it as clothing. There's an artistry to his work that I've never seen anywhere else in fashion, and it deals with nature, politics, love and death. But he was also a master craftsman, famously apprenticed in his teens at Saville Row, and it informs his art in the virtuoso tailoring and meticulous detail of all his creations.
Perhaps most impressive is the breadth of influences he brought to the medium, which were always interpreted with a very consistent vision and purpose. Everything in there was very different from everything else, but all of it was unmistakably his. He achieved more in his relatively short career than lesser artists manage in a lifetime.
The whole thing left me with a huge sense of sadness that he took his life at a moment when he was so clearly at the top of his game.
Unfortunately, photography in the exhibition was prohibited, but the Met Museum blog has a huge feature on the exhibition from the original display in New York. I've pulled a few pictures from their page of selected objects.
