Does anyone have pictures of the store?
This is from Independent
McQueen shuns celebrity culture as he opens in LA
By Susannah Frankel, Fashion Editor
Wednesday, 9 April 2008
You
have to hand it to Alexander McQueen: the designer has cojones. On the
eve of the opening of his flagship store on Melrose Avenue, Los Angeles
? and just when his contemporaries might be kowtowing to the city's
celebrity-driven culture ? he made clear that he was courting a less
brash brand of clientele.
Of LA's leading lady, Paris
Hilton, he remarked: "If she comes past the shop, hopefully she'll just
keep walking. I don't really covet that sort of thing." One can only
assume that the paparazzi princess speaks highly of him in return.
For
all the audacity of the gesture ? and let's not forget that McQueen,
39, an east Londoner born and bred, is not only unusually plain-spoken
given his profession but is also a media manipulator par excellence ?
the statement is nothing if not a sign of the times.
Because,
while the likes of Dolce & Gabbana and Giorgio Armani persist in
wooing Hollywood's finest, there is a growing feeling that the fashion
establishment needs a challenge. And McQueen, with his
none-too-diplomatic way with words, might just be the man to provide
it.
His new store, a sleek, futuristic 3,100-square-foot space
which opened yesterday, is expected to take the West Coast by storm
despite the economic downturn causing belts to be tightened in even the
most palatial of Hollywood villas. Alexander McQueen CEO, Jonathan
Akeroyd, said yesterday he expected the latest addition to the label's
expanding empire to be among the brand's top three performers in retail
sales.
The label is certainly making an entrance, with a
billboard above the store showcasing work by David Bailey, Nick Knight
and Sam Taylor Wood, and a nine-foot-tall metal sculpture of a naked
man, arms outstretched, emerging from the skylight. The lower half of
the figure, Angel of the Americas, by the artist Robert Bryce Muir,
extends into the shop itself.
Such eccentricities are perhaps
par for the course for the designer, who yesterday admitted that, "in
times of recession, I think fashion is escapism".
"When I started
in fashion, England was in a recession with Margaret Thatcher as prime
minister. I think it's a great time for new growth," he told the
American trade magazine, Women's Wear Daily.
It is now the stuff
of fashion folklore that, a decade ago, Alexander McQueen politely
declined to invite Victoria Beckham to his London show. His reason? The
occasion in question featured a guest appearance on the catwalk
courtesy of Aimee Mullins, the Paralympic athlete who had both legs
amputated from the knee down as a child, sporting hand-carved cherry
wood prosthetics designed by McQueen's own hand. He said then that VB's
presence would detract from Mullins' modelling debut, but suffice to
say that Mrs Beckham made no secret of being thoroughly displeased
nonetheless.
Last year McQueen reiterated his belief that fashion
was "not about celebrity". "I can't get sucked into that celebrity
thing because I think it's just crass. I work with people who I admire
and respect. It's never because of who they are," he told US Harper's
Bazaar. "It's not about celebrity; that would show a lack of respect
for the work, for everyone working on the shows, because when the
pictures come out it's all about who's in the front row. What you see
in the work is the person itself. And my heart is in my work." Fine
words indeed from the designer.
Neither is McQueen simply
averse to working with the famously beautiful per se. He has dressed
everyone from Gwyneth Paltrow to Sarah Jessica Parker, from Bjork to
Kate Moss in his darkly romantic and increasingly elaborate style. It's
perhaps more that the designer, who fought hard to get to where he is,
is less enamoured with those who are famous only for being, well,
famous, than many of his ilk.
In December 2000, following a
four-year stint as creative director of Givenchy, McQueen sold a 51 per
cent stake of his own company to the Gucci Group for an undisclosed
eight-figure sum. This February, the brand made a profit for the first
time following shop openings in London, New York and Milan. The Melrose
Avenue store will be followed by another in Paris in 2009.
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