The Alexander McQueen collection based on Jack the Ripper
Whether you were Alexander McQueen, Richey Edwards, Sarah Kane or Damien Hirst, if you were a British person who made art, it wasn’t enough to be good; you had to shock audiences.
The Young British Artists were a microcosm of that phenomenon. Art was suddenly the new rock ‘n’ roll, and you were just as likely to see Hirst or Tracey Emin staggering out of the Groucho Club with a globule of chang up their snout as any Gallagher brother. However, that attitude went far beyond the world of visual art and into everything else, from music, theatre, film and especially fashion. No one summed this attitude up better than the 22-year-old wunderkind, Alexander McQueen.
The story of McQueen remains incredible. After leaving school at 15 with only one O-level to his name in Art, obviously, McQueen made it through a route that seems to have died out in the past four decades.
Quite simply, he made a career in the medium he wanted to work in by working in it. He worked as an apprentice for a Savile Row tailor, made costumes for West End shows like Les Miserables and eventually took a Master’s level course on fashion design at Central Saint Marten’s college on the strength of his portfolio alone.
Already, McQueen was a name that the entire fashion world was paying attention to while he was still finishing his degree. While several fashion design students get to present their graduation show at London Fashion Week, his was a collection that was marked out as a possible highlight of the entire week, which rarely happens. The pressure would have been too much for hundreds of other 22-year-olds, but McQueen aced it by chasing his masterful craftsmanship with an eye for spectacle.
After all, why else would he call his debut show Jack the Ripper Stalks His Victims?
His mix of the macabre and the beautiful caused an immediate stir. One that McQueen justified by saying he had family connections to the Ripper murders. A quote from the time saw McQueen saying, “I had a fascination with Jack the Ripper. My mum’s a genealogist and found out that one of the victims had been staying at one of my relatives’ inns in Whitechapel. I was ready to solve the whole bloody mystery.”
Investigations since have shown that McQueen was stretching the truth to breaking point here, but in terms of adding a viscerality to the show, the best was yet to come.
For each of the show’s pieces, McQueen sewed a lock of his hair into the lining. This was a tribute to the fact that Victorian sex workers, the kind that The Ripper targeted, would often sell locks of their hair as part of their business. This shows that there was real thought being put into the show, rather than merely relying on shock tactics. That’s not to say they weren’t there, though they were targeting someone different.
McQueen infamously had a troubled relationship with one of his professors at CSM, Louise Wilson. She was the professor to whom all the reports each student made regarding their final presentation went, which might be the reason why the cover of McQueen’s report wasn’t just decorated with his hair, but more specifically, with his pubic hair. Never was one to turn down an opportunity to stick it to the man, our Alex was.
All of this would be nothing more than publicity stunts if it weren’t for the fact that nearly 35 years later, all the pieces that make up Jack the Ripper Stalks His Victims are still pretty incredible. A mix of modern tailoring with a Victorian sensibility and a subtly aggressive, punkish styling. One can see the influence of this show in particular on the next 20 years of British fashion. What else is the aesthetics of The Libertines and The Horrors but slightly more obvious takes on McQueen’s breakout show?
Deservedly (probably not in the eyes of Wilson, though), Jack the Ripper Stalks His Victims was a star-making turn for McQueen. Legend has it that the entire collection was bought by magazine editor and high society mainstay Isabella Blow, who became a mentor and patron of his work as McQueen moved from student to fashion superstar.
Not bad for a 22-year-old from Lewisham, right?