A film as haunting as the man it seeks to capture, this Alexander McQueen documentary, which came just three years on the heels of Loïc Prigent‘s The Legacy Of Alexander McQueen, uses runway footage as the backdrop of his life story, meticulously grafting in interviews with his close-knit team and family members throughout. There’s the obvious melancholy of watching a film about a figure who ultimately cut their own life short, but there’s also the tremendous beauty of visiting (or revisiting) the breadth of his work and getting a more rounded sense of the person beyond the tortured soul he’s often presented as.
Among the highlights of the film are look backs at some of his most awe-inspiring collections, including VOSS, his 2001 Spring/Summer collection, which had his audience seated around a mirrored cube that revealed itself to be a mental-hospital filled with models. Of particular fascination for the fashion-obsessed will be the time the doc spends on Lee’s tenure at Givenchy, which includes learning that tailors weren’t allowed into the design atelier at Givenchy until McQueen, never one to concern himself with hierarchy, took over in October 1996.
