ARTE Distribution

In an attempt to understand a genius like Alexander McQueen, Loïc Prigent retraces the breathtaking career of the English fashion designer, whose life was abruptly cut short by his suicide in February 2010.

A year before he died, the highly controversial Alexander McQueen presented a collection that revisited all the codes of an oeuvre that began in the 1990s. Morbid and excessive, he ridiculed fashion, and would crush and throw everything out, in order to start all over again, better. Six months later, he presented what critics hailed as a visionary masterpiece: Plato’s Atlantis. His previous collection had spoken of a planet invaded by waste; this new collection evoked an amphibian world, in which faces and bodies had mutated. From the cut of the clothes to the wild shoes, everything was new. Finally, on 18 January 2010, 3 weeks before he committed suicide, he put on his last fashion show The Bone Collector. With a catacomb backdrop, men were covered in shinbones, skulls and ropes. It was a premonitory show.
 
This enlightened and inspired documentary features remarkable images of McQueen’s many fashion shows - dances of death and political commentary shot through with multiple references – as well as previously unseen archive footage, offering a fascinating insight into the designer’s career and personality. His work is now collected, and celebrated in sell-out exhibitions. It provides the keys to understanding why he left us.