Chapter III Methodology
3-1 Research Subject
1. Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty
Running from march 4th to August 2nd 2015 in Victoria and Albert Museum, London, Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty exhibition is a retrospective exhibition featuring the late designer’s fashion design since its earliest Central Saint Martins postgraduate collection to his posthumous autumn/ winter 2010 collection. This exhibition was first staged at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in May 4th to July 31st, 2011.
The original curator Andrew Bolton thematized McQueen’s work into seven themes, presenting McQueen’s aesthetic and philosophy in an analytical categorization.
The V&A curator Claire Wilcox, with 66 additional pieces, divided into 10 theme rooms: London, A Romantic Mind, A Gothic Mind, Romantic Primitivism, Romantic Nationalism, Cabinet of Curiosities, Romantic Exoticism, Voss, Romantic Naturalism, and Plato's Atlantis. The V&A portrayed Alexander McQueen’s identity mostly through his work and his explanations on his philosophy. The first room is a projection of McQueen’s face, gradually transfiguring into a skull, shifting between life and death, it symbolizes the paradoxical elements in his aesthetics and a metamorphosis for the audience as well. Each room, from the walls, the ceiling, to the ground is meticulously staged to relive McQueen’s spirit as shown on these images below, retrieved from the V&A’s website(http://www.vam.ac.uk/).( Figure 3-1-1 to 3-1-4)
To fully represent his theatrical, provocative, and dramatic catwalk design, the exhibition adopts tech-heavy multimedia installation, including a room-size screen featuring his catwalk videos, rotating mannequins, holograms, a one-way mirror,
soundtracks with McQueen’s vocal remix audio animated with 240 ensembles and accessories. The tech-heavy and highly thematic approach brings out the emotional depth and the aura of McQueen’s catwalk shows.
The fashion exhibition dedicated to contemporary hero-artist was once
controversial in the field of museum. The exhibitions of clothing in the exhibition tend to be “antiquarian in their approach and chronological in their organization” (Steele, 2008). It was Diana Vreeland, the famous magazine editor and columnist, and the special consultant to the Costume Institute, who first initiated the ground breaking theatrical curatorial approach. However mesmerizing it is, this spectacle-like curatorial approach was often criticized as historical inaccuracy, or commercial advertisement in the past when Vreeland first adopted it (Steele, 2008). Even though the public responds
Figure 3-1-1 London. © Victoria and Albert Museum
Figure 3-1-3 A Gothic Mind. © Victoria and Albert Museum Figure 3-1-4 Cabinet of Curiosities. © V&A Museum Figure 3-1-2 Romantic Primitivism. © V&A Museum
more to the spectacle, the content shouldn't have to make a compromise with institutional ethics.
When Diana Vreeland was in charge, Harold Koda, the junior assistant of that time was under the influence of the imaginative and dramatic approach. He once commented on the curatorial approach of that time, “she was perfect for the museum— the way costumes were being shown needed a little bit of shaking up “(Hyland, 2015). Harold Koda himself went far more beyond the bar of exhibiting the historic dress, began to exhibit modern fashion (Steele, 2008). Andrew Bolton worked closely with Harold Koda ever since 2002, including Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty exhibition. His curating style is close to the theatric approach just as his mentors. With larger exhibit rooms and featuring 66 more pieces, Savage Beauty in the V&A is more exquisite, decorative and theatrical under Claire Wilcox’s guidance, hoping to bring the visitors back to the magic of McQueen’s runway show once again. Fashion and its immersive experience often be criticized as “a form of entertainment” that attract the crowd and doesn’t necessarily contribute to the educational function of the museum (Anderson, 2000). Notwithstanding, regarding to the museum's function in their attempt to popularize, the fallacy of entertainment and education bifurcation is not necessarily opposite each other and will be further discussed in the following chapters.
2. Victoria and Albert Museum
Victoria and Albert Museum was named after Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, was founded in 1852, one year after the great success of the Great Exhibition. Often considered as the result of imperialism, the V&A and its name gives an impression of a treasure house collecting the dominant high culture and art. However, since the beginning, the V&A has already gone on an alternative pathway of museums of that time. The V&A’s
places its emphasis on collecting, metalwork, furniture and textiles and also the ceramics of East Asia.
The primary principle was to make the work of art available to all, to educate the working class and to inspire British designers and manufacturers. According to the Brief History of the V&A from their website, Sir Henry Cole, the key figure of the development of the Great Exhibition, the first V&A director, aimed at building V&A a “schoolroom for everyone” did show interest in the design of dress fabric and collecting textile.
Although Victoria and Albert Museum, the world’s leading museum of art and design, has collected both textiles and dress since its earliest days. The textiles, as the basis of dress collection, can only enter the museum with unique quality of fabric and the representation of crafting technique (Melchior, 2014). As for the dress, according to V&A’s Furnitures, Textiles & Fashion Department’s introduction, “For many years garments were only acquired if they were made of significant textiles, as fashion had a low status within the decorative arts” (the V&A). Fashion was less worthy of preserving than the furniture, metalwork, ceramics and sculpture to the curators’ judgments at that time. To be specific, according to the V&A, ” The history of dress figured nowhere in the hierarchy of arts when [the V&A] was founded. It was not until well into the 20th century that the discipline of dress studies became firmly established and not until 1957 that the first curator for fashion was appointed.” It is evident that fashion is not art in a museum’s context. However, with more visitors are respond enthusiastically to fashion and more scholars engage in this discipline, fashion is gain more legitimacy as a study and museum’s subject.
In the V&A, only in the later 1970s did the collecting of contemporary fashion and accessories come to be seen as a major responsibility of the Department. The trend of
exhibiting modern dress started with Fashion, an Anthology by Cecil Beaton exhibition in 1971. This exhibition was only the second exhibition on modern dress at the V&A. It followed the museum’s 1946 Britain Can Make It exhibition on British wartime utility clothing. Fashion, an Anthology by Cecil Beaton exhibition is considered as an universal groundbreaking shift in fashion curatorship among museums in many aspects (Clark &
De la Haye, 2014). In 1999, Claire Wilcox, the Senior Curator of Fashion and also the curator of Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty exhibition, initiated Fashion in Motion exhibition, live runway shows on site in the V&A galleries. These avant-garde breakthroughs on the boundary of fashion and museum can be seen as strategies to the international trendsetter on exhibition display from the 1970s on (Melchior, 2014). This research will investigate on museum's role in exhibiting fashion design with an extensive observation on V&A’s fashion exhibition history.
3. Alexander McQueen: British Rebel Fashion Designer
Alexander “Lee” McQueen CBE, stood at the helm of British Fashion for 15 years, yet he remains something of a paradox. ”He was a working-class boy with haunt couture sensibility, an iconoclast with a reverence for tradition”(Fox, 2012). His extraordinary career started from a humble beginning as an apprentice on Savile Row to the creative directors of his own global brand. His is a story of hard work, ambition and preternatural talent. He is quite experienced at generating controversy as an art of self-promotion;
turning the result of publicity to his advantage wherever he could.
For McQueen, his craft was always about much more than clothes; it was about conveying a message. He would never fail to imbue his work with a psychological relevance. McQueen’s fashion shows had always been more of a dramatic performance
than a runway parade. Alexander McQueen, an articulate storyteller, always started every collection with an idea or a concept for the runway presentation, to “make sure the works are not reduced to piece of clothing that have no context” (Kroening, 2012). His collections often reflected paradoxical relationships such as life and death, lightness and darkness, melancholy and beauty. His design has often been commented as a work of art, a theatrical performance and a spectacle. Moreover, with heavy references to the historical context, art history, literature, play, music, dance and his Scottish heritage, his works are highly reflective and goes way beyond shallow entertainment. Claire Wilcox the curator composed the exhibition catalogue with 28 essays from fashion commentators, cultural scholars and McQueen collaborators delve into the cultural features of his design. These aspects of McQueen’s design are worth meditating within the context of museum.
3-2 Research Methods
This research adopts qualitative research approach, investigating late fashion designer, Alexander McQueen’s exhibition––Savage Beauty in Victoria & Albert Museum as a case study, applying multiple data collection methods–– discourse analysis, fieldwork and semi-structure interview. This thesis examines the cases with the research questions and motivations raised in chapter I and the theories reviewed in chapter II in order to develop a thorough interpretive analysis.
n Discourse Analysis
Our way of thinking and our knowledge is developed in the social process. How the museum officials, the academic journals as well as the media discuss the exhibition can influence our perceptions. As Rosalind Gill analyzes, "the constructive use of language"
shapes the way we perceive the social event and cultural practices (2000). There are many ways of describing the phenomenon of Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty exhibition.
It is crucial to be skeptical and look into the intention of the reason why the discourses were organized to persuade and guide our thinking. Discourse analysis is an approach to skeptically examine the texts with the context of valid data, read between lines, explore the possible motives, and offer an interpretation to the intention.
The objectives of this research attempt to understand the cultural construction of the cultural construction of the phenomenon of exhibiting fashion in the museum through the case of Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty exhibition. The discourse analysis is to look into the exhibition- related document and investigate the meanings that people assign to them, exploring hidden motives and detecting the power/knowledge displayed in these materials.
Documents about Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty exhibition both in the V&A and in the Met and the designer will be collected from three major ends ––official sources, academic journals and the media.
l Official sources: the V&A official website, exhibition catalogue, museum publications, exhibition flyers, the exhibition introduction and panels in the exhibition rooms and the curatorial thesis (Appendixes A).
l Academic journals: the journals that explore the critical issues related to Savage Beauty.
l The media: local and international online coverage of the two exhibitions, including the Met’s exhibition. For example, The Guardian, BBC, Telegraph, Economist; and the fashion magazine including Vogue, Fashionista, ELLE and so on.
Table 3-1 The Document
Source Source & Publisher Type
1 The Victoria and Albert
Bolton, A. (2011). Metropolitan Museum of Art. Official source Alexander McQueen V&A Magazine 36 Spring 2015
3 Press release
Exhibition Flyer The V&A Official
source
Exhibition Panels Appendixes A Exhibition Panels Official
source Exhibition Map and Poster Figure 5-1-1 and Figure 5-1-2 Official
source Alexander McQueen:
Savage Beauty
Valerie Steele (2013) Fashion Theory, 17:4, 419-430 Acade mic journal SAVAGE BEAUTY: The
performance fashion of Alexander McQueen.
Julius, Corinne.(2015) Craft Arts International. 2015, Issue 94, p72-75
Dan Jason Calinao & Hui-Wen Lin (2017) Journal of Heritage Tourism, 12:2, 204-217
Acade mic journal
Fox, C. (2012). Quadrille Publishing Ltd The Media Alexander McQueen: Gleason, K. (2012). Race Point Pub. The
The Guardian Press Association (2015. August 3) https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2015/aug/03/alexa
Watt, J. (2012).. Harper Design. The
Media
n Fieldwork
Field Observation was conducted on-site during the end of July for six times to engage in the exhibition, visitors’ reaction, engagement and interpretation to the exhibition. I observed the exhibition and visitors on the following aspects:
1. 10 theme rooms: the outline, the texts, labels, panels, the atmospheres, the lightning, the background music, the mannequins’ gesture, color, texture, the multimedia installations.
2. Visitors: visitors’ ages, gender, outfit, behavior, reaction, engagement and interpretation and comments on the exhibition.
n Semi-structure interviews
Semi-structure interviews were conducted to acquire in-depth information from 15 visitors in order to understand the personal information, opinions about V&A and the exhibition and Alexander McQueen. The reason I didn’t interview the museum staff or the curator is because the media coverage is heavily involved in the fashion industry.
Therefore, analyzing the message such as the curatorial philosophy, the budget, the original expectation, the struggles the museum’s staff revealed to the media is more crucial to the study.
Table 3-2 The Interviewee Background
Date Nationality Occupation Gender Age Relation to fashion industry
1 7/24 Liverpool, UK
Student female 20 Interested in fashion and art
2 7/24 Liverpool, UK
Researcher female 24 Fashion communication and promotion
Anthropologist female 35 Is fascinated by
McQueen’s bold type of
female 58 Interested in fashion in general
Retired female 69 Interest in fashion.
12 7/29 Birmingham, UK
Dress designer female 53 A friend suggested it and she is interested in fashion.
13 7/30 North of England
Photographer female 42 Interested in McQueen’s fashion
14 7/30 London, UK Student female 16 Was working on fashion related project before 15 7/30 London, UK Student female 16 Was working on fashion
related project before
The questions to the visitors are as follow. The new questions emerged during the conversation are not listed here.
Table 3-3 Semi-Structure Interview Questions
Visitor’s personal information
1. Where are you from? Do you mind telling me your occupation and age?
(optional)
2. Why do you attend this exhibition? Is it because of your interest in art or fashion? Or Alexander McQueen especially? Or simply visiting the V&A? Or any other reason?
3. What is your relation to fashion industry? Do you read fashion magazine often? Watch runway show online? Or you work or study in fashion related industry or school?
About the museum
1. Do you visit museums on regular basis? Which museum do you normally pay a visit to? Have you visited other fashion exhibitions before? For example?
2. How do you think about museums exhibiting fashion culture? Is it suitable for the museum’s educational aim? Or is it related to promotional culture?
What’s your view on an ideal fashion exhibition in the museum? (Should it be more like the runway show or exhibiting design history? Or more like art master exhibition?)
About the exhibition
1. Did ‘Savage Beauty’ help you understand contemporary fashion or simply Alexander McQueen better? What is the major surprise you find from your exhibition visiting today?
2. According to your opinion, is there any special meanings of exhibiting Alexander McQueen in London, especially in V&A?
Legitimacy
1. From your viewpoints, do you consider fashion design as art? Do you think V&A try to justify McQueen’s work as art? Do you agree?
2. Are you familiar with Alexander McQueen’s work before? Do you like the way V&A shape the image of Alexander McQueen and his work?
3. After attending this exhibition, do you love the brand Alexander McQueen more? Does the exhibition make you want to purchase their design? Did you shop in the museum store?