By Sophie Weinstein ’13, Life&Style Editor
Lee Alexander McQueen was a British fashion designer who took his own life in February 2010 and left behind a bevy of artistic creations that were as bizarre as they were beautiful. After his untimely death there were countless tributes to his life and work, but none gathered so much press and people as the exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, “Savage Beauty”.
By mid-July, the closing day for the exhibit had already been pushed back and the MET opened its doors special on Mondays for viewers to see it. After reading countless rave reviews I decided I had to see it for myself.
After I convinced my parents that the show was history in the making, they agreed to send me to New York City in late July. Arriving at the MET around 11:00 a.m., I thought it would be early enough to beat the crowds, but I was sorely mistaken. When I bought my pass to the museum the staff warned me that the wait in line exceeded two hours but I brushed them off assuming they were exaggerating.
They were not exaggerating. As I waited I learned two things: First that my iPhone could only entertain me so long, and second, many around me had stood in this line before. Although it seems like it should’ve been the worst, one of my favorite memories of the exhibit was getting to know the McQueen and fashion fanatics waiting alongside me. Two hours of standing later, I finally reached the velvet rope and security guard that separated me from the exhibit I’d traveled to see.
Being jostled amongst various twenty-something women in back-breaking heels whose boyfriends trudged along gloomily behind, I realized I needed to get aggressive to properly see the exhibit. So I pushed my way through the throng of people to the front to get a closer look at the creations I had only seen through a computer screen or on the pages of magazines.
My expectations were reached and then exceeded. From the famous Oyster dress to the gown from the Sarabande collection, which featured real flowers, I was entranced by these pieces of art that truly belonged in the same museum that housed Rembrandts, Monets, and Pollocks.
The exhibition set records becoming one of the most popular shows at the Met in the past 141 years, proving true my prediction of history being made: 661,509 people viewed this exhibition.
As I was swept up into the glamour of the exhibit I couldn’t help but laugh at the completely unglamorous line I had stood in for two hours. The long wait which could’ve broken my enthusiasm only increased it ten-fold and the strong contradiction between the line and the show was just like a McQueen creation, Savagely Beautiful.
Photo courtesy of alexandermcqueen.com
