Oct 27, 2020 - Words Abraham ThomasAlexander McQueen's drawings provoke a particularly intriguing set of questions, given that the designer was so well known for. Alexander McQueen gave PAPER a behind-the-scenes look at the making of this dress. The students' dancing girl sketches were done on long white sheets during a life-drawing class led by Fashion Illustrator Julie Verhoeven at the brand's flagship store in London. Inspired by the German artist Hans Bellmer, McQueen’s spring/summer 1997 show The Doll. And because Alexander McQueen was such a phenomenal designer, I was curious to see what his sketches would look like. And OH Oct 27, 2020 - We're always oohing and aahing over beautiful catwalk dresses (or is that just me?), but I wanted to take a look at these dresses when they were still just 2.

• Alexander Mcqueen Original Sketches
• Melania Trump's Dress
• Alexander Mcqueen Sketches
• Alexander Mcqueen Drawing Dress

Alexander McQueen was one of the most celebrated fashion designers of his generation, known for his highly original designs that married artistry with exceptional technical ability.

Alexander McQueen (1969 – 2010), known to his friends and family as Lee, was born and educated in London. He left school at 16 to become an apprentice on Mayfair's Savile Row – the historic centre of British menswear tailoring – first at Anderson & Sheppard, and then at Gieves & Hawkes, where he learned traditional tailoring techniques. He later worked as a pattern cutter at the theatrical costumiers Angels & Bermans.

At age 20, McQueen began working as a pattern cutter for the avant-garde, London-based Japanese designer Koji Tatsuno, before moving to Milan to join Romeo Gigli, an Italian designer admired for his understated, romantic designs. McQueen returned to London to complete the prestigious MA in Fashion Design at Central Saint Martins. Already a proficient tailor, here he learned how to be a fashion designer, drawing inspiration from London's history, its world-class museums and emerging BritArt scene. His graduate collection gained him extensive press coverage, and was purchased in its entirety by the influential fashion stylist Isabella Blow.

McQueen launched his own label in 1992. He was appointed head designer at Givenchy in 1996, succeeding John Galliano. In December 2000, the Gucci Group (now Kering) acquired a majority stake in McQueen's company, and he continued to serve as creative director. McQueen's occasionally stormy relationship with Givenchy ended in 2001.

McQueen's work was admired for its highly original blend of subversion and tradition, evident from the outset in his 'Bumster' trousers, sharp frock coats, corroded fabrics, slashed leather and shredded, flesh-revealing lace.

You've got to know the rules to break them. That's what I'm here for, to demolish the rules but to keep the tradition.

Alexander Mcqueen Original Sketches

McQueen's Savile Row training would inform his career: 'Everything I do is based on tailoring', he said. This background in precision tailoring, combined with the more improvised dressmaking and draping techniques he learned in the atelier (the highly skilled workshops of couture houses) at Givenchy – paved the way for his innovative experiments with cutting and construction.

Because I was a tailor, I didn't totally understand softness, or lightness. I learned lightness at Givenchy. I was a tailor at Savile Row. At Givenchy I learned to soften. For me, it was an education. As a designer I could have left it behind. But working at Givenchy helped me learn my craft.

One of the defining features of Alexander McQueen's collections was their far-reaching historicism. The1995 Highland Rape collection was informed by his Scottish heritage, referencing the Highland Clearances of the 18th and 19th centuries, when tenants in the Scottish Highlands were forcefully evicted. McQueen was particularly inspired by the 19th century, drawing frequently on Victorian Gothic. Radical re-presentations of historical narratives continued throughout his career. 'I like to challenge history', he stated in the 2008 BBC television series British Style Genius, emphasising the semi-autobiographical nature of some of his historical subject choices.

As a student, McQueen would visit the V&A at least once a week, to go through the archives and take inspiration from the Museum's diverse collections – from textiles to woodcarvings. He said, 'The collections at the V&A never fail to intrigue and inspire me'.

McQueen was also inspired by global influences. Africa, China, India and Turkey were all places that sparked his imagination, though Japan was perhaps the most thematically and stylistically significant. The Japanese kimono was a garment that McQueen endlessly reconfigured in his collections.

McQueen's exploration of polarities – man versus machine, or nature versus technology – was a recurring theme in his work. His collections often featured fashions that took their forms and raw materials from the natural world, such as the Mussel Shell Bodice from VOSS (Spring/Summer 2001), or the Bird's Nest headdress developed by Mcqueen's longstanding collaborators Philip Treacy and Shaun Leane for The Widows of Culloden collection (Autumn/Winter 2006).

McQueen was known for the dramatic intensity of his fashion shows, inspired by performance art and theatre. His spectacular catwalk presentations included the likes of VOSS (Spring/Summer 2001), which was centred around a glass box that resembled a padded cell in a psychiatric hospital, Scanners (Autumn/Winter 2003), where models traversed wind tunnels suspended above the runway, and The Widows of Culloden (Autumn/Winter 2006), where the model Kate Moss appeared as an ethereal apparition within a glass pyramid, echoing a 19th-century stage trick, 'Pepper's Ghost'. In 2009, Plato's Atlantis (Spring/Summer 2010) became the first fashion show to be live streamed on the Internet, via fashion website SHOWstudio.

During his lifetime, McQueen featured in two V&A Fashion in Motion events – live catwalk presentations staged against the beautiful backdrop of the Museum. The first, in June 1999, showcased designs from McQueen's Spring/Summer 1999 collection, while the second, in October 2001, celebrated the years of collaboration between McQueen and the jewellery designer Shaun Leane. By then, McQueen's reputation was such that over 3,000 people gathered in the Museum's grand entrance, hoping to see the event.

McQueen worked with a loyal, close-knit team and was known for his ability to recognise talent in others, whether jeweller, milliner or filmmaker. For his spectacular catwalk shows, he commissioned an array of one-off creations, not intended for production. To realise this vision, he worked with a diverse range of materials and craftspeople – from skilled woodcarvers to 'plumassiers' (feather workers), embroiderers to leather workers. As well as his longstanding collaboration with Shaun Leane, McQueen worked closely with the milliner Philip Treacy.

Between 2000 and 2010, McQueen opened stores in London, New York, Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Milan. His collaborative projects included working with PUMA on a special line of trainers; launching McQ, a younger, lower priced diffusion collection (2006); releasing the fragrances Kingdom (2003) and MyQueen (2005); and a collection of cosmetics for MAC (2007) inspired by the actress Elizabeth Taylor in her film role as Cleopatra.

McQueen's accolades included being awarded the title of British Designer of the Year by the British Fashion Council four times between 1996 and 2001. In 2003, he was awarded a CBE for his services to the fashion industry and also named International Designer of the Year by the Council of Fashion Designers of America. Celebrities including Nicole Kidman, Sarah Jessica Parker, Bjork and Lady Gaga all wore his designs.

In February 2010, McQueen was found dead in his London flat. Over 1,000 guests attended his memorial service. His final, unfinished collection (Autumn/Winter 2010) was completed by Sarah Burton, McQueen's Head of Womenswear since 2000.

The career of Alexander McQueen was celebrated in the exhibition, Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty, first held at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art in summer 2011, where it attracted 661,509 visitors over three months. It subsequently became the V&A's most visited exhibition, receiving 493,043 visitors during its 21-week run in 2015.

Find out more about McQueen's work and influences in The Museum of Savage Beauty

As the major exhibition on the iconic work of British fashion designer and couturier Alexander McQueen, Savage Beauty, opens at the V&A, here we publish some of McQueen’s conceptual sketches and republish an essay by the director of the Sir John Soane’s Museum, Abraham Thomas. It appears with 27 other essays in the show’s catalogue book.

Words Abraham Thomas

Alexander McQueen's drawings provoke a particularly intriguing set of questions, given that the designer was so well known for his skill at working directly with materials. How does one interpret the distilled qualities of a flat drawing when considered alongside the textural and sculptural possibilities of fabrics?

Very few of these drawings, whether from his student days or from his professional career, have been published or researched before. Therefore, they offer a rare glimpse into McQueen's design process. Acting both as private musings and as tools of communication within the studio, the drawings performed a number of functions. They indicated McQueen's initial thoughts; facilitated conversations between members of the design team; and, at the outset, established the tone, atmosphere and creative direction of a particular collection.

Sketch, Irere, Spring/Summer 2003. Pencil on paper, London 2002. All drawings courtesy of Alexander McQueen

Sarah Burton, who joined McQueen in 1996, recalled how incredibly fast McQueen was able to sketch, and described how she would run after him desperately trying to make notes on the drawings as he went along. Indeed, many of the annotations on the drawings are in Burton's hand rather than McQueen's, reflecting their close collaborative relationship during these early design stages. Selected sketches were also copied and transmitted to the studio's textile partners in Italy in order to convey vital instructions for fabrication, as confirmed by the scattering of annotated faxes that exist amongst original drawings.

McQueen's drawings provide an important opportunity to understand how ideas were expressed at a stage prior to any cutting or tailoring using fabric on a mannequin. Highly accomplished and supremely confident, the boldness of these sketches creates a sense of equivalence to the bravery that was evident in his method of working with textiles and three-dimensional forms.

Sketch, Scanners, Autumn/Winter 2003. Pencil on paper, London 2003

The drawings that relate to his Central Saint Martins MA graduation portfolio are especially interesting in that they seem to provide a direct line of evolution from his early career as an apprenticed tailor on Savile Row. Many exude a refined, almost clinical, quality. Others demonstrate how his drawing skills were able to adapt to a variety of contexts and scales with a deftness and clarity of approach.

Sketch, Pantheon ad Lucem, Autumn/Winter 2004. Pencil on paper, London 2004

A fellow student, print designer Simon Ungless, recalls seeing McQueen's drawings in those early days:'I remember the drawings. I just thought, they are so chicken-feet scratchy. Chicken-claws turning into ink. Really scratchy, feathery, girls with really pointy noses, bald heads, turtlenecks that covered their faces. A really different vibe to all the other students ... A not very cool kind of thing. He really stood out tome. Here is someone with a point of view.'

Sketch, Pantheon ad Lucem, Autumn/Winter 2004. Pencil on paper, London 2004

In many design disciplines, sketch drawings often acquire a quasi-sacred status due to their representations of the initial moments of conception. Although it is true that early drawings can play a crucial role in articulating future design thoughts, such a simplistic analysis runs the risk of belying the true situation. For example, within architecture, designers often choose to explore initial design ideas through more physical material processes such as model-making, describing spatial concepts that later will be expressed more explicitly through formal drawings.

Melania Trump's Dress

Sketch, Pantheon ad Lucem, Autumn/Winter 2004. Pencil on paper, London 2004

One of McQueen's drawings for his Scanners collection (Autumn/Winter 2003) exhibits a particularly architectural aesthetic, with the fabric articulated as a series of interconnected flat planes, and the inclusion of notes indicating a 'fully embroidered fabric ... all engineered, no flat parts'. This interest in the volumetric qualities of a drawing might be compared to McQueen's deep engagement with textile fabrics, and his preference for directly manipulating tactile materials so as to express ideas in a way that might have been frustratingly difficult if relying exclusively on the mediated process of drawing on a flat page. Indeed, from some accounts it appears that McQueen drew less and less towards the end of his career, deciding instead to focus on working directly with fabrics, which offered him an outlet for creative expression that drawing never did.

Sketch, The Girl Who Lived in the Tree, Autumn/ Winter 2008. Pencil on paper, London 2008

However, in an interview with the photographer, Nick Knight, McQueen revealed that his earliest memory of wanting to design clothes expressed itself through the process of drawing. At the age of three, at a time when his family was living in a council house, he recalled outlining a sketch for a dress on an area of bare wall that had become exposed through the gradual peeling of wallpaper.

This sense of immediacy and gestural flourish permeates a number of McQueen's design drawings. Some are compelling for their minimalism and reduction, as exemplified in one example that provides the subtlest indication of an outlined silhouette.

Others are memorable for suggesting an approach towards abstraction, where the drawing seems to exist simply as a statement of pure materiality. Throughout all the sketches, though, there is a deft use of the medium to describe the various qualities of different fabrics. Subtle shifts in texture and weight are articulated through the delicate and precise application of smudging techniques.

Sketch, Irere, Spring/ Summer 2003. Pencil on paper, London 2002

Alexander Mcqueen Sketches

Laborious contour lines and crosshatching are employed to indicate the quality of workmanship required for detailed embellishments and other surface details, for example, becoming intently focused on the details of a frock coat. Perhaps most impressive is the way in which McQueen manages to suggest a sense of movement within the fabric, giving the gentlest hint as to how these textiles would behave once they were on a human body -- breathing life into what might have been a rather more static image in anyone else's hands.

Alexander Mcqueen Drawing Dress

Much of this was possible due to McQueen's profound sense of instinct when it came to working with fabric, and his ability to faithfully communicate his designs through his drawing techniques. He clearly strived to ensure that the emotional content of his designs would never be lost through the explicit articulation of the drawn line. These unique drawings are invaluable as records of a creative vision, capturing as they do a series of conceptual thoughts at a particular moment in time.

They are also crucial to an understanding of McQueen's creative process because of their ability to maintain a sense of poignant inference and poetic ambiguity.