Savage Beauty

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.


I want to be purveyor of a certain silhouette or a way of cutting, so that then i'm dead and gone people will know that the twenty-first century was started by Alexander McQueen.

The inspiration behind the hair came from Victorian times when prostitutes would sell theirs for kits of hair locks, which were bought by people to give to their lovers. I used it as my signature label with locks of hair in Perspex. In the early collections, it was my own hair.

I like to think of myself as a plastic surgeon with a knife.

I want to empower woman. I want people to be afraid of the woman i dress.
It's almost like putting armor on a woman. It's a very psychological way of dressing.

It is important to look at death because it is a part of life. It is a sad think, melancholic but romantic at the same time. It is the end of a cycle - everything has to end. The cycle of life is positive because it gives room for new things.

There's blood beneath every layer of skin.

I don't really get inspired [by specific woman].... It's more in the minds of the woman in the past, like Catherine the great, or Marie Antoinette. People who were doomed. Joan of Arc or Colette. Iconic woman.

[In this collection ] the idea was to turn people's faces on themselves. I wanted to turn it around and make them think, am i actualli as good as what i'm looking at? (spring-summer 2001)

Remember Sam Taylor-Wood's dying fruit? Things rot.... i used flowers because they die. My mood was darkly romantic at the time.


Let me not forget the use of my own hands, that of a craftsman with eyes... that reflect the technology around me.

(c) A.Bolton Alexander McQueen Savage Beauty