Three pieces on Alexander McQueen, made over five years and in three different mediums: a thread installation, a portrait for a fashion magazine, and a painting.
None of them copies him. Each one is a different reading: of his symbol, of the man, and of the house he left behind.
A fashion installation built around the two things most recognisably his: the Q of the logo, and the skull. The idea was a skull with real depth, made from layers of thread and held inside the Q.
The approach came from Gabriel Dawe’s thread installations, where thousands of strands read as a single solid form. Designed and built with Dharini G, Lajavi M, Nancy B, and Pahini D; I led the design.
The full-size structure was a 5 by 5 foot cuboid, 7 feet deep, divided into 8 layers one foot apart. Square rods formed the main frame, L-angle rods the divisions.
Each of the 8 layers was strung by hand. The back layer is the densest, with thread through every hole; the others use alternate holes, so the layers stay light enough to see through.
Knots were secured with M-seal and masking tape to keep every line taut.
The Q and skull were printed on a 5 by 5 foot flex at the back of the structure. The skull itself was split into 6 sections by tone, from the darkest shadows to the lightest planes of bone.
Each section was traced onto black sheet over a light board, cut out by hand, and glued onto its own layer of thread with fabric glue.
Seen from the front, the fragments line up and the skull resolves inside the Q. The layers of thread do the rest: each one in front of a cut-out softens it a little more, so the skull gains depth the further back it sits.
Under blue UV light, the thread glows and the whole piece flattens into the image it started as.
A portrait of McQueen, published by currentMood alongside “The Turbulent Mind of Fashion Designers”, a piece on the pressure the industry puts on the people who shape it.
He sits with a cigarette, beside a skull smoking the same one. A bird takes off from his wrist, flowers burst out of a split in his head, and the paint runs down the canvas.
Made for #McQueenCreators, the house’s open invitation to recreate its work at home. I chose a look from Sarah Burton’s Autumn/Winter 2019 collection and painted it in oil on the back of a ceramic tile, so the tile’s own grid shows through the dress.
Made for fun, and liked by the official Alexander McQueen account.