New Doc Looks Into the Enigma That Was Alexander McQueen
One of the many extraordinary images in "McQueen," the new documentary on the life of fashion designer Alexander McQueen, models are seen walking a runway unlike any other: a wind tunnel in which they face what appear to be hurricane force winds. It is what you would likely see in an art installation, not a fashion show and is part of what made McQueen, who died at his own hand at the age of 40 in 2010, such a sensational and (some say) divisive figure in the fashion world.
He came from a working-class background (his dad, like Amy Winehouse's, was a cab driver). He was said to have been abused by his brother-in-law as a child - a trauma that may have had an effect on the dark nature of his work later in his life. His controversial shows, for which he was labeled "the hooligan of English fashion," aimed to get a rise out of anyone that saw them. "I want you to come out [of a fashion show] feeling either repulsed or exhilarated, as long as it's an emotion."
That may be a description that drives this moving, exquisitely made documentary, co-directed by Peter Ettedgui and Ian Bonh�te. The pair were inspired to make the documentary after seeing "Savage Beauty," the posthumous 2011 show of McQueen's work at New York's Metropolitan Museum that was one of the most successful shows in the museum's history. But when they set out to make the film six years later, they found that neither McQueen's family or those behind his fashion brand were willing to cooperate.
We had "zero access and zero original archive at our fingertips," Ettedgui told Vogue Magazine earlier this year, but they spent 14-hour days for a year making a film that would "immerse viewers in the passion and the energy of McQueen, and the journey that his inner circle went on with him." With copious footage of his runway shows at their disposal, they follow his rise from his bad boy early days through his stints at Givenchy and Gucci. They also interview his colleagues and friends for their observations on the enigma that was Alexander McQueen.
Peter Ettedgui and Ian Bonh�te
EDGE recently spoke to Ettedgui and Bonh�te about McQueen, his work and his legacy.
EDGE: Peter, I have read that you have a personal connection with the British fashion scene...
Peter Ettedgui: My father was Joseph Ettedgui and he started the Joseph chain of stores in the early 1970s. In London they were almost considered at the hub of the British fashion industry. And what my father loved doing more than anything else was to discover new talent and bring them to the UK. One of the main protagonists of the film, Isabella Blow, compelled my father to go to see a very early McQueen fashion show. And from the moment McQueen started producing his collections, Dad stocked them. They knew each other fairly well.
Ian and I were both in London in the 1990s and McQueen was very much at the epicenter of the whole cultural scene in London. You couldn't pick up a newspaper in London without reading of McQueen's latest shocking show or the scandalous "bumster" trousers he created. Whatever it was, he utilized constant shock tactics. I remember my father saying to forget about all that stuff -- what you need to know about McQueen is that he is the most brilliant craftsman and tailor. Even though I wasn't part of the fashion world at all, I found him the most intriguing figures of all the people my dad worked with. He possessed that strange mixture of having mastered the tradition then breaking all the rules and coming up with outrageous collections. It struck a chord. There as an enigma to look at there, so many years later I was so grateful to get the opportunity to work on this particular film and explore that enigma.
Isabella Blow and Alexander McQueen.
EDGE: Alexander McQueen got the reputation as the bad boy of fashion in the 1990s. It brought him fame, but did the shock value obscure his artistry?
Ian Bonh�te: I think the shock tactics that he used helped to carry him. You have to put things in perspective with Alexander McQueen, in the 1990s, the British fashion scene as someone said to us was very beige, and Lee brought a lot of attention to it. The money wasn't flowing to the UK. The UK wasn't known for an extremely successful fashion industry. And there were a lot of talent coming out, so I think Lee had to purposively shock to get attention. What is interesting in the film is to show the sensitive aspects of Lee (McQueen's nickname), which contrasts to what people thought of him as a person. So I think he played up the role of the bad boy of fashion - the anarchist. It came with the work, but he pushed that even more.
Peter Ettedgui: But I don't think it ever obscured the artistry. Maybe for some people, who were repelled by the presentation; but I think pretty soon people caught on that he was a genius tailor and the way that he cut and made his clothes was absolutely unique. Isabelle Blow immediately spotted it. She got the fact that they were a very beguiling mix of tradition and subversion in what he was doing.
A still from "McQueen."
EDGE: You co-directed the film. Were you friends before you worked on the project?
Peter Ettedgui: It was a marriage of convenience when we started the film because in a sense we both passionately wanted to make this story. We both were individually very moved by it. And we both saw an opportunity by working with each other we could achieve something. What happened over the course of making the film was that we realized that we had complementary skills and we get on extremely well. It has really become a partnership and a friendship that neither of us expected when we got started.
Ian Bonh�te: The film was very challenging in a lot of aspects and what was great about working with Peter and the whole team is that we put the film first and wanted the best for the film. Because if you do make a film about Alexander McQueen, it better be good. We had a limited amount of time - a year - and we had to be all hands on deck to make it happen. We both had the same feeling that this film should be an emotional experience for the audience. We wanted the audience to experience Lee on the big screen.
EDGE: I have read that you have said you wanted the film to be more like "Amy" and the recent "Whitney" than, say, "The September Issue" in that you wanted the audience to understand Alexander McQueen as both an artist and a person. Was that your intent?
Peter Ettedgui: I think for us, I can't really comment on "Whitney" because I haven't seen it, but with "Amy" - Amy Winehouse had very little creative output for the filmmakers to work with. For us it was the reverse. We had a cornucopia of shows - literally hundreds of shows to choose from. We wanted to tell the personal story through the artistry rather than the other way around. McQueen often said (and it is in the film): "If you want to know me, look at my work. My shows are autobiographical." We made that the manifesto for the film in a sense - to take that approach.
It would be very easy to make a sensationalized film about Lee - one that would linger too much on the salacious details. But we thought we would put what he created first because that's what he spent most of his life doing. We talked to Phillip Treacy (the hat designer) and he said that what we needed to know about McQueen is he worked. He worked constantly and that is what drove him. We wanted to show that in the film. We didn't want to whitewash him. Obviously, there's a dark side to him. Yes there were drugs. A fashion designer in 1990s London takes cocaine? That's a banal fact, so we didn't want to linger too much on those details. What we wanted to linger on was his work and these shows he lived for. They were unlike any other runway show imaginable. They were performance art. They were cinematic and theatrical. They were shocking but they were also utterly beautiful. And sometimes they would be savage and dark, and other times they would be full of joy and light. And when you have kind of material to work with and tell the story of your protagonist through, it's a gift from the gods really.
Alexander McQueen in a still from "McQueen"
EDGE: Alexander McQueen once said that "Gays don't do old." Was he being sardonic or did this reflect his depression towards the end of his life?
Ian Bonh�te: I wouldn't be able to answer that exact question, but I do really feel that growing old was in Lee's mind. And it wasn't just him growing old; Lee had contracted HIV. I know it isn't a death sentence anymore, but it does affect how you conduct your life. He came from a very humble, working-class background where he I think he was forced to hide his sexuality. Even after he was diagnosed, he didn't tell many people about it.
Peter Ettedgui: We were told by one of his boyfriends that he said, "gays don't do old." But more importantly, in terms of what tragedy in his life, I think there were other aspects. I think that in the fashion industry, being gay wasn't an issue. That didn't cause him any struggles. What was difficult for him was that he experienced this early trauma. (Note: he was said to be abused by his brother-in-law.) We wonder if this was true. This is speculation on my part, but we talked to a lot of people who absolutely suggested this as well, and I think it led to him finding it very difficult to trust people.
For him to have a long-term partnership was very difficult. One of his early boyfriends called their relationship a four-season romance - four-fashion seasons, ie two years. And it seems very few of his relationships ran beyond that two-year period. Someone else said to us he was such a lovely, charismatic person that you wanted to reach out and hug him, but there was something in him that pushed you away. So I think his developing intimacy with people was difficult for him and I wonder if that came from that childhood trauma and led to his decision to take his own life. Because he was alone and he was not happy, despite being surrounded by a very successful business and very loyal group of friends. I think he was fundamentally very alone.
A still from "McQueen."
Ian Bonh�te: I don't think being gay was an issue. He dealt with it, he embraced it and said as he said with his work, "Fuck the world. You take me for what I am. I don't care." Personally I disagree with the whole idea of gays don't do old. I am hoping that, moving on that, growing old as a gay man or a lesbian woman or a trans person is not an issue. We need to embrace it. And I am saddened if in the case of Lee that this could have been a factor in his death.
EDGE: Do you remember where you were when his death was made public?
Peter Ettedgui: I remember exactly where I was. I was with my father who died about three weeks after Lee. He was terminally ill at that point. I was sitting with him when the news of Lee's death came on the television and he was in tears. We talked a lot about Lee - and not because someday I was going to make a film about him. He told me that he had seen Lee on a flight from New York to London a couple of years before and congratulated him on his latest success. And McQueen said something along the lines of, the joy has gone out of it for me. And my Dad said he was worried about him at that point because he really didn't seem happy. I suppose because Lee's death is caught up with my father's illness and it all happened so quickly. That really stayed with me and I remembered it so strongly when we made the film.
Ian Bonh�te: I don't have the connection with fashion that Peter has, but I am a fashion fan and l love my clothing. I remember being able to get some of McQueen's Ulster shirts and I have a big collection of them. But when he died, I thought this was an end of an era because already then you could see how commercialization was taking over the fashion industry. In the 1990s, pure creativity was backed by money, but with the change money was the main aim and creativity had to back up money instead of the other way around. I remember thinking that it felt like an end of an era.
Alexander McQueen in a still from "McQueen"
EDGE: How did you work together?
Peter Ettedgui: It is difficult to describe. In the most simplistic sense, Ian is the proper director and I am the proper writer. I will obsess on the structure and I will obsess on the way the story is told and Ian is obsessed about making sure that the images deliver the right emotional quality. The fact is that is very broad. I come from the fiction/screenwriting/development background. Ian comes much more from a directorial background. There were times when we had to have separate edits. Ian would run one edit, I would run the other edit, then we would cross over and rework things and make sure they all had a unity. But what was uncanny, even at a very early point, is that we agreed with each other on everything. We weren't protective about our turf. Each wandered into each other's work and was very open about the collaboration and had a great deal of trust and belief that we could make the right film. Then it was weird in some ways because I would be thinking something and Ian would say it, and vice versa. I never had that before in a creative partnership. I have had in personal relationships, but not in a creative partnership, so that was a nice thing to discover.
Ian Bonh�te: And you have to think of a third person - our editor Cinzia Baldessari. In documentary filmmaking, the editor has a very big role. We had a little rule, that if two of us would agree on something the other one would have to agree. What we agreed upon was the emotional journey that we wanted to take the audience on. My friendship with Peter is rare and we joke about it. Other people in the office joke that we have a bromance. It's funny how people have described that. But what we put above everything else was telling Lee's story in the best way possible.
Peter Ettedgui: The other thing I will say about us is that in the interest of the film we pushed each other constantly. I would think something was fine, then Ian would push me to do it different; then there were times when I was pushing Ian. We both really wanted it to be great. We knew what we wanted an audience to feel because we knew we felt this story very deeply ourselves.
Ian Bonh�te: And when you make a documentary, people share their lives with you. People share memories and we feel very much responsible to all our contributors in what they shared with us. We haven't just let the film out of our hands, we are part of the process still.
"McQueen" is in limited release in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. It goes into wider release in Boston, Chicago, Washington DC, Phoenix, Atlanta, Minneapolis, and Dallas on August 3. For more information, visit the film's website.
Watch the trailer to "McQueen":