One thing about Lee Alexander McQueen is that he always had something to say about the fashion industry, and ngl he was usually right. One of his more out there opinions that’s still talked about today is from a 1997 interview at his London Studio, which has been posted all over archive accounts lately. Specifically, we’re talking about the part where Lee says “fashion is not to be taken too seriously.” It’s controversial, but does he have a point?
On the surface, arguing that fashion isn’t meant to be taken seriously feels reductive. McQueen’s own runway collections sparked conversations about some incredibly serious subjects, like his infamous AW95/96 show, “Highland R*pe,” which was an allegory for the violence of the Highland Clearances against the Scottish, as well as the domestic abuse his own sister suffered.
However, if you know McQueen, you know there’s more to what he’s saying than just “fashion is never that serious.” At first it might appear that McQueen is saying that no designer can ever make a political or social comment through their work because fashion shouldn’t be taken seriously, but that’s actually not what he means.
Of course Lee McQueen believed in fashion as a catalyst for sparking serious conversations - he did this so many times with his own work. What he’s saying is that, at the end of the day, after the show’s over and the serious conversation’s been had, what you’re looking at is a pile of clothes. And what are clothes if not made to be worn?
In the OG quote we referenced at the start, McQueen goes on to say “[fashion’s] not gonna cure you of cancer or AIDS, it’s just clothes. … That’s why I take the piss out of it, because they’re just clothes at the end of the day. No matter what they look like, everything’s been done before.”
That’s something that today’s designers sometimes forget. You can put on the hardest show, with celebrities walking, viral moment after viral moment, and a political message that has the whole world up in arms, but at the end of the day, you’re designing fashion. What you’re left with has to be worn by someone.
Today, we see plenty of designers so set on dropping a collection that’s talked about that they neglect to create something people really want to wear. When virality becomes the priority, we lose sight of what really matters: that fundamentally, fashion at its core is about the person’s back it was designed to be put on.
Featured image via Salons Galahad Ltd 2008©
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