A few of the top runway models got together and refused to wear heels that tall, (if you didn't click on the link, they're 12 inches tall and pretty ugly) because they quite reasonably figured that it would be dangerous to walk in them. Although there were other models willing to risk the trip down the catwalk in the 12 inchers, there have apparently been a few recent attempts to organize runway models.
My initial reaction to the McQueen heels was to say that this guy is some kind of misogynist, because only someone who didn't like women very much, or who was completely indifferent to their suffering would conceive of and build a piece of clothing that is torturous and dangerous to wear. As it turns out, I would not have been the first person to draw that conclusion about Alexander McQueen. As a young designer, he became famous for his theatrical and risque fashion shows, including one called "Highland Rape" (see some examples here)which featured models wearing torn clothing adorned with tampon strings. When interviewed, McQueen said the show was about England's rape of Scotland. McQueen's catalog includes several other examples of shows depicting women as victims of violence and imprisonment. Another of his recent shows had all the models made up with super thick white makeup all over their faces and cartoonish red lips. They were basically indistinguishable from one another and apparently models were complaining backstage that they were being made to look ugly (watch that show here).
McQueen himself is the son of a cab driver from the London's East End. He left school at 16 and worked as an apprentice at London tailors for his early training. He has three sisters and he countered accusations of misogynism like this:
"I grew up with three older sisters, and I saw them go through a lot of shit, I always wanted to be able to protect them. They would call me up to their room and I'd help them pick out clothes for work. Just, you know, what skirt with what cardigan, but I was always trying to make them look strong and sheltered."
"I've seen a woman nearly get beat to death by her husband...I want people to be afraid of the women I dress."
Where to begin with someone like this? First of all, the fashion industry is based on the objectification of women, so the fact that a single designer contributes to this is probably not worth commenting on. Furthermore, the clothing that appears in Alexander McQueen's shows is like a lot of runway clothing, it's barely wearable and no ordinary person could or would spend the hundreds (thousands?) of dollars it would take to buy one of his outfits. But McQueen's particular brand of objectification in which the brutalization of women is theatrically presented is especially dehumanizing and disturbing. And I think that it is probably not much of a stretch to suggest that, despite certain positive instincts in relation to women, Alexander McQueen does in fact have more misogynistic tendencies than your average male brought up in the sexist world that we live in.
However, what might be more interesting about Alexander McQueen than his misogynism, is his willingness to convey his feelings about women in such a bald and uncensored manner and the fashion industry's apparently unconditional embrace of his work. The show he created as his final master's degree project in 1992 was called "Jack the Ripper" and involved styles and depictions of prostitutes of the Victorian era. Clearly this is a guy who is unbridled about glorifying the suffering of women, and yet the entire "Jack the Ripper" collection was purchased by Isabella Blow, described by Wikipedia as "an international style icon," an action that essentially made McQueen in the fashion world and which made Blow known for discovering him. McQueen's latest menswear show has driven the fashion press wild. Just google "Alexander McQueen menswear Jack the Ripper" and you will get dozens of gushing quotes like these:
"The standout show at Pitti Uomo was, in my mind, Alexander McQueen's "The McQueensberry Rules"...draped jackets combined with Jack the Ripper menace and Clockwork Orange swagger for a collection that was admittedly theatrical but anchored by impeccable tailoring."
Alexander McQueen showed an amazing collection of sinister Jack the Ripper fops swaggering down a streetlamp-lighted runway. The tailored windowpane and tweed suits and fitted black coats (and, yes, a cape) took on a very sinister yet sexy vibe.
Apparently, it is not possible for McQueen to go too far in glorifying a savage killer of women, at least for the fashion industry. Perhaps Alexander McQueen designs the fashion shows that convey the hatred for women that the industry in general feels but cannot bring itself to express so plainly. After all, barring a recent movement for "real-size" models, runway models are anorexically thin, they usually wear heavy makeup that deemphasizes their individual features, and they are taught to walk the runway like robots, expressionless, staring off into the distance. Going back to high heels, runway models are always tottering around in them, despite the fact that they are hard to walk in and bad for one's feet. Alexander McQueen just took this particular idea to a logical extreme. The actual clothing often runs the gamut, but no one is surprised if a fashion show outfit leaves a model basically naked or completely obscures her face. The models hardly look like real humans, and yet this is the industry that is supposed to be making women look beautiful.
The high fashion industry's idea of beauty for women is utterly at odds with the reality of being a woman. Real women can't get through their days half-dressed, expressionless, hardly eating a thing, tottering around on sky high heels. The image of women that the high fashion industry is communicating is one of self-obliteration; starve yourself, what you wear is most important, who you are is worthless. These are the ideas that drive fashion for women, that trickle down to lower priced fashion designers, that end up influencing the clothing and makeup that girls and women buy in stores. Along with the entertainment industry, the fashion industry is the principal propagandist for the idea that a woman's worth is in her appearance, in her ability to approximate the kind of woman that men are purported to want, and in so doing, destroy her own individuality.
This is not to say that women and girls blindly accept this message of self-obliteration whenever they buy clothes; I think that at the same time that they are influenced by the negative ideas about women they are often finding ways to subvert those ideas in shopping and dressing. But that is a topic for another post. As students and working people increasingly move into struggle against the tiny minority of capitalists that run our society, women will increasingly reject the dehumanizing trends developed by the fashion industry and create their own fashions that show the broad scope of what beauty really is.
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