Alexander McQueen’s Iconic Designs to be Celebrated in a Spring 2011 Costume Institute Retrospective

Above, from left: Alexander McQueen (British, 1969–2010). Irere, Spring/Summer 2003; The Horn of Plenty, Autumn/Winter 2009–2010; Plato's Atlantis, Spring/Summer 2010. Images © Chris Moore/Catwalking.com

«The Museum announced today that the spring 2011 Costume Institute exhibition will be Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty. The exhibition, on view May 4–July 31, 2011, will celebrate the late Mr. McQueen's extraordinary contributions to fashion.» From his Central Saint Martins postgraduate collection in 1992 to his final runway presentation, which took place after his death in February 2010, Mr. McQueen challenged and expanded the understanding of fashion beyond utility to a conceptual expression of culture, politics, and identity.

Curator Andrew Bolton said: "Alexander McQueen was best known for his astonishing and extravagant runway presentations, which were given dramatic scenarios and narrative structures that suggested avant-garde installation and performance art. His fashions were an outlet for his emotions, an expression of the deepest, often darkest, aspects of his imagination. He was a true romantic in the Byronic sense of the word—he channeled the sublime."

Approximately one hundred examples of Mr. McQueen's work will on display in the Cantor Galleries, thematically reflecting McQueen's fascination with the nineteenth-century Romantic movement.

To celebrate the opening of the exhibition, The Costume Institute Benefit will take place on Monday, May 2, 2011. The evening's Honorary Chairs are François-Henri Pinault and Salma Hayek, and the Co-Chairs will be Colin Firth, Stella McCartney, and Anna Wintour, Editor-in-Chief of Vogue.