W

e at Alexander McQueen are honoured to be able to share the remarkable and unique vision and creativity of our founder, Lee Alexander McQueen, which is to be celebrated in a retrospective of his work, Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty, at The Costume Institute at The Metropolitan Museum in New York City.

"Alexander McQueen's iconic designs constitute the work of an artist whose medium of expression was fashion," said Thomas P. Campbell, Director of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "This landmark exhibition continues the Museum's tradition of celebrating designers who changed the course of history and culture by creating new possibilities."

Galleries will showcase recurring themes and concepts in McQueen's work beginning with "The Romantic Mind" which will examine his subversion of traditional tailoring and dressmaking practices through displacement and deconstruction, and "Romantic Gothic" which will highlight McQueen's narrative approach to fashion and illuminate his engagement with Romantic literary traditions such as death, decay, and darkness. Further galleries feature the themes Romantic Naturalism, Romantic Primitivism, Romantic Nationalism, and Romantic Exoticism, as well as a Cabinet of Curiosities.

Five of McQueen's landmark collections that explore his engagement with the Romantic sublime and the dialectics of beauty and horror will be interspersed among the galleries - Dante (autumn/winter 1996-97), # 13 (spring/ summer 1999), VOSS (spring/summer 2001), Irere (spring/summer 2003), and Plato's Atlantis (spring/summer 2010).

The exhibition will run from 4th May 2011 until the 7th August 2011.

The exhibition is made possible by Alexander McQueen™.
Additional support is provided in partnership with American Express and Condé Nast.

For more information, opening hours and admission prices please visit www.metmuseum.org (212) 535-7710

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