Book Review: Savage Beauty

• Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Photograph © Sølve Sundsbø / Art + Commerce
• “There is no way back for me now.” —Alexander McQueen

Lewis Carroll’s Alice—who couldn’t see the use of books without pictures or conversations—probably would have dug the new book Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty by Andrew Bolton. Not only is it dominated by pictures and conversations, but the images themselves would have saved Alice the trouble of a trip down the rabbit hole. Hallucinatory, outrageous, theatrical, otherworldly and creepy, the designs of Alexander McQueen are currently on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute in New York, an exhibit which is breaking attendance records and seems to be gathering the cumulative force of a cultural watershed moment. The exhibition catalog—with its gorgeous images placed alongside provocative, incisive, and often puzzling conversational quotes from the designer himself— makes for an interesting way to get a peek at the show for those of us who won’t be lucky enough to make it to New York this summer.