Savage Beauty

Fashion is beauty. Fashion is not simply clothes, proper tailoring, or draped chiffon. Instead fashion is a way of reconfiguring our perceptions of beauty, of challenging convention and forcing us, all of us, to see people and ideas in a different light. There was no one, I have recently learned, who did this better than Alexander McQueen.

McQueen was a fashion industry icon from London. Maybe you have heard his name, or have heard of Sarah Burton (now the head designer of McQueen), as she designed Kate Middleton’s dress for the Royal Wedding. Perhaps you are one who thinks that fashion is simply for affluent women, or for teenage girls looking for some way to express themselves. Perhaps you don’t understand the beauty of fashion, or you think the concept superficial and not worth the time exploring.

But what do you think of art? McQueen’s designs, every single one of them, were truly a work of art. I had the opportunity to view these exquisite designs firsthand at the Met where a temporary exhibit honoring his work is being held. There are over 100 designs in the exhibit, along with various accessories from famed designers McQueen collaborated with, such as Philip Treacy (who designed many of the curious hats for the Royal Wedding). The Armadillo shoes are also on display, easily recognizable from the many public appearances Lady Gaga made in these uncomfortable looking (but highly innovative) boots.

The exhibit is organized by collection, from the highly tailored and gothic to the more romantic and soft. Interesting quotes from the designer as well as small descriptions accompany each collection, which give the viewer a better sense of what inspired McQueen to create these, sometimes literally, out-of-this-world collections. One such collection details the end of the world by flooding and how human kind will have to evolve and accept nature in a different way in order to survive.

In an earlier collection entitled “VOSS”, McQueen created pieces that he hoped would force the audience to question society’s idea of beauty. This collection held one of my favorite dresses where the top was made of small red medical slides and the bottom was a red plume of feathers that reached the floor. The concept of using medical slides to make a dress is so unusual and therefore brilliant and inspiring.

While walking through the exhibit, I overheard a man ask his wife if she liked this sort of thing. She responded, “It’s not about liking it, it’s about appreciating it.” Her response stuck with me because you do not have to like or understand fashion to appreciate the beauty and complexity in McQueen’s designs. Instead, you have to be open minded and prepared to have your ideas about the definition of fashion and beauty changed.

The exhibit really inspired me to create some of my own work (writing, not fashion) and I have been writing short stories ever since I got back home. I wanted to try and create the idea of “Savage Beauty” (the title of the exhibit and an idea echoed in all of his pieces) because it is so tragically romantic. I have included a short snippet of one such piece of writing I completed recently (this is just the ending).

She came up to me one day and told me that she had found The One. God she sounded naïve. I told her that The One was made up by Hallmark because no one wanted to celebrate Valentine’s Day if they thought they were just celebrating it with Anyone. No one wants to belong to Anyone. They want someone so special, so beautiful to be able to call their very own. Like cattle. She called me cynical and jaded even though all I had seen of this world was crowded cities and lit store fronts and small towns that held crying babies and mothers on cell phones. I said to be jaded you had to know the feel of a cigarette butt on your skin and the taste of the last drop of stolen vodka. She told me I sounded like a pretentious poet. So she left me to find The One while I looked up colleges and dreamed of a future.

I told her later that I wanted her to be happy and that he was cute. I knew that’s what she wanted to hear. She ate up everything I said and little else because she was on The Diet to End All Diets and couldn’t eat my birthday cake or the bread we got fresh, so fresh that when we broke it we could still smell the flour and heat and aged hands that had rolled it all together. She wanted to fit into the prom dress she had already ordered months in advance, even though I warned her maybe The One would not be around by that time. She ignored me. She ignored my little comments and doubt because she was In Love and so In Love that she didn’t care that I was single and bitter and more and more like an old lady everyday. She was overflowing with youth and the carefree mentality they advertise on Coke commercials. She couldn’t hate me if she tried, as much as I wanted her to.

Prom came and Prom went and she attended it but I didn’t. There were pictures up on Facebook to show everybody who had fun and had the best dates. To show the backyards of manicured houses and the prom decorations people tore down by the end of the night. I stayed at home and watched movies with Audrey Hepburn and Carey Grant, and imagined their time had to be a simpler one. I tried to forget about the dancing couples and the burnt kernels accumulating on my sweatshirt.

I finished my popcorn and replayed the ending kiss to the movie a few times before I started to feel lonely. I still hand my phone next to me, waiting for that call from her. Because I wanted to hear about it all and have my suspicions proven wrong. I wanted to be wrong. I wanted her to be happy and tell me yes they danced and oh, it was wonderful.

I got a text later. Just a text. It wasn’t the lengthy, gushing call I was prepared for. Anticipating.

U were rite

So tell me. Tell me. Tell me again. About the boy and the girl who fell in love. About that time where love existed and was powerful and wasn’t the kind of thing just written about on the back cover of paperback novels. And now I will tell you a story of a girl who went to bed with a guy and made love (but it was really lust) with someone who gave her no promise of a future. He just told her she was so special, so beautiful until she thought what he said was the truth. Then after she went home and cried into a toilet and discovered a few days later, after peeing repeatedly on stupid plastic sticks her friend bought her at the grocery store, that she was pregnant.

You say what a sad story, and I say it’s not a story. It’s reality. It’s modern romance, modern love. I say it’s what happens to girls everyday, everywhere and maybe I’m being cynical but I pass it off as being realistic.

But sometimes I fall asleep and remember that dream about the princess and the prince and how they got to experience a Happily Ever After. I see their smiles and their laughter hover above them, because happiness clings to their love and swears it will never let go. And even though I say that would be boring and an unfortunate way to spend the rest of your life, being happy and dependent on someone all the time, I still find myself wanting that. Wanting that Happy Ending. Because I was brought up on fairytales and nursery rhymes that spoke of a heaven that was reachable on earth. I was brought up on magic, and I can’t quite let that wonderful idea go.