McQueen’s Savage Beauty to Make World Tour?
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It was the fashion exhibit for those of us who’d never bothered with fashion shows.
This summer, Alexander McQueen’s Savage Beauty exhibitionat New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art drew in over half a million visitors, making it the most viewed fashion exhibition in the museum’s history. It was also one of the hardest exhibits to get into — I personally made four unsuccessful trips to the Met. But a recent Twitter campaign may help the showgo global.
In August, Melanie Rickey, fashion editor-at-large for British magazine Grazia, created a petition calling for the exhibit to be brought back to “its homeland.” To date, the #bringmcqueenhome initiative has received 2,478 signatures.
But why should the Brits have all the fun? Vancouver-based Fashion Observed blogger Darryl Warren teamed up with Selena Norris, an independent designer based in Columbus, Ohio, to create a campaign highlighting the financial benefits of a global Savage Beauty tour. According to the Met, Savage Beauty generated $908 million in spending in New York City, while providing an additional $90.8 million in tax revenue for the state. With these figures in mind, Warren and Norris ask, “why not share the wealth and make Savage Beauty, a testament to the genius and beauty of Alexander McQueen’s work, travel worldwide to aid other cities in economic growth?” Their campaign can be found trending on Twitter as #AlexanderMcQueen and #MakeSavageBeautyTravel.
The McQueen brand has resisted allowing Savage Beauty to travel because the exhibition was conceived and curated specifically for the Met. But the fashion label appears to be reconsidering, announcing they “have been in discussion with a number of major venues in London for some time now[,] however nothing has been finalized.”
On the show’s final day, I waited in line for 45 minutes before abandoning my quest. I had overheard that the estimated wait time was roughly four hours — and that was just for Met members who got to bypass the rest of us peons! I was sure to be waiting all night.
A flight to London may have been my quickest option all along.
Slideshow: Alexander McQueen’s Savage Beauty
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