Me & McQueen
Off with her head! Off with her head! Off with her damn head! Those were the words that came to mind when I first laid eyes upon the furiously-ferocious fabulously-fantastic designs of Alexander McQueen! ←-Catch those Fs. Trained at an early age, by my dearly departed Uncle Darryl a.k.a. Renee Dove, to spot “the greats” of haute couture, I was confident that Alexander and I were in for a long lasting love affair of the extraordinary. One filled with a deep aura of art filled theatrics, passion and rebellion. I just met fashion, for real!
“When I'm dead and gone, people will know that the twenty-first century was started by Alexander McQueen.” ~ Alexander McQueen
During the fall of 1996, I began to evolve into something I knew not. I did not know what the hell I was going to do with my life. Only one thing proved true to me, which is that I was a single mother of two “great” boys that owned a Gateway computer and a subscription to just about every fashion magazine in the world. Although as a child, I’d visited over twenty different states, attended numerous black power assemblies and read hundreds of books, I did not know where to start. This is because I was never actually taught to know - only told to know. So, I was really oblivious as to what is to come. But by divine design, I was naturally intelligent, resourcefully gifted, eager, adaptable to change and most importantly, a problem solver for everyone except myself. I could learn just about anything in a short period of time. But like the thought provoking lyrics to the U2 song, 'I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For'… “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.”
One night in 1997, while watching the ‘Style Channel’, I was beastly ranting about the lack of beautiful African-American and plus size women not represented in haute couture runway shows. However, on the flip-side -think about it- African designs can be spotted throughout all modern day fashion and, at the time, roughly 65 million American women wore a size 16+. The passionate somewhat racially motivated professed argument was abruptly interrupted when across my then, now ancient, 52” RCA television came the words Givenchy Haute Couture Spring/Summer 1997. The presentation of Givenchy’s Collection intrigued me only because talk of John Galliano’s successor Haute/Hot designer by the name of Alexander McQueen was nonetheless “A Fashion God”. I had to see for myself, whether or not the affirmation of my friend Carlie Hardy (R.I.P) was in fact ...keeping it one-hundred!
The music starts - a cackling witchery sound implodes with the typical runway genre music playing on the track. An ancient Greek mythology inspired theme was instantaneously obvious considering the backdrop was of Greek statues, gold writing and fit blonde hair fair skin attractive men sitting on columns wearing what I would like to call a diaper. Appearing as if they were equipped to wrestle the Gods, I live but I died as well. Alexander gave me my Brad Pitt, but failed to give me my Idris Elba. Why? With his controversial repertoire, I assumed that Alexander would have staged at least one drop of chocolate. Oh, but he did! And he did it in the form of angelic royalty, the beautiful Alek Wek. Now there were other African Americans, such as Naomi Campbell, gracing the catwalk, but none with a more a powerful exotically estranged look as that damn Alek.
Although knowing now that the Givenchy Haute Couture Spring/Summer 1997 collection by Alexander was watered down like a shot of scotch on the rocks from a local bar in an undesired neighborhood, you can tell that he had put his signature of what is to come to the House of Givenchy. Every single piece that came out that night screamed “Buy me Nicky!” I remember, yes I remember wanting every piece from that collection to decorate my small closet of my East Trenton, NJ townhouse. However, unfortunately for sales, revenue and me, the clothes were not made in size 14/16.
Dramatic as I may sound, (and you will all learn that I can be quite the drama queen) at that time the collection mimicked me; affectionate, empowering, unstable, sexy, passionate, pompous, amazing, rebellious, demented, urban sophisticated, beautiful, blessed, downright damn fun and bordering on insanity all while trying to grasp perfection. A concocted mess of a juicier mess! And I loveeeeedddd it! That collection was so fashion-forward and rebellious that even in 2015, you can see traces of it in both commercial fashion lines and indie designers. I tell you; everyone who loves fashion and was not afraid to push the sociopolitical and economic boundaries that existed in fashion embraced Alexander McQueen as though he was the coming of a new wig for Ronald McDonald.For many seasons, I looked forward to what was to come next from Alexander’s artistic mind of design. He had now become one of my favorite love affairs as well as one of the reason that in 2000, I finally purchased a new sketch book. At times, while sketching, I would envision myself as being his spiritual protégé. Notoriously aiding Alexander in creating eternal theatrical runway memories but this time for the plus size woman; I envisioned me being under that same fashion week tent with him and he would look at me and say “Well done biotch! Well done!” Yet sadly, unbeknownst to everyone but Alexander, our love affair of pushing the fashion boundaries to heights of unimaginable proportions and downright scaring people into an awestruck delightful moment of Godliness with every piece we created, would abruptly come to an end with his untimely suicide in February 2010. For the love of me, I will never understand how someone so incredibly gifted and loved could do something as extreme as commit suicide. I digress. Only to remember the creative awesomeness of Alexander McQueen and how he inspired me to shout out “The Queen is coming!”
Curtains
