Eye (Alexander McQueen collection)

British fashion designer Alexander McQueen was known throughout his nearly twenty-year career for his imaginative, sometimes controversial designs. His fashion shows were theatrical to the point of verging on performance art. As a British designer, McQueen presented at London Fashion Week for much of his career, although he had reprised his early shows Banshee (Autumn/Winter 1994) and Dante (Autumn/Winter 1996) in New York City at the behest of fashion promoter Derek Anderson. McQueen drew inspiration for his clothing and shows from a broad range of sources, including history, world religions, art, and his own life. He often used his work to explore themes of female victimisation, resistance, survival, and empowerment, although his aggressive, sexualised designs sometimes drew accusations of misogyny. He examined religious ideas throughout his career: religious motivations for warfare in Dante (Autumn/Winter 1996); martyrdom in Joan (Autumn/Winter 1998), and religious persecution in In Memory of Elizabeth Howe, Salem, 1692 (Autumn/Winter 2007). He often played with notions of clothing as armour and vice versa. == Concept and creative process ==

Eye (Spring/Summer 2000) was the fifteenth collection by British designer Alexander McQueen for his eponymous fashion house. Inspired by Turkish music McQueen heard in a taxi as well as the London Arab community, the collection explored the culture of the Middle East, particularly Islamic clothing. McQueen stated that he wished to examine the oppression of women in Islamic culture and their resistance to it. To this end, the collection took traditional Middle Eastern and Islamic garments such as harem pants, baggy trousers fitted to the ankle; Islamic veils including the yashmak and niqāb; and the burqa, which fully covers the body and the face, and infused them with elements drawn from Western fashion styles such as sportswear and fetishwear. There were also frock coats and low-rise trousers with keyhole cutouts or scooped hems. Fetishwear concepts included face masks, body-conscious silhouettes, and leather harnesses. Sportswear was presented in the form of football jerseys bearing red crescent moons, and boxing shorts with McQueen's name in faux-Arabic script. The collection's primary palette was red, black, and white, with metallic and embroidered elements. As was typical for McQueen, tailored items featured heavily, including coats and suits. There were also a number of draped dresses in lightweight jersey. Many items were made from brocade fabric and embroidered leather. Some items had prints resembling traditional Islamic art. The designs were cut to either conceal the body, in the Middle Eastern tradition, or reveal it, in a more Western manner. Garments were decorated with sewn-on coins, bells, and ribbons, reminiscent of belly dancing costumes. Accessories included headdresses made from coins, provided by milliner and frequent McQueen collaborator Philip Treacy. Pieces using diamonds were created by winners of an international jewellery competition. Another longtime associate, jeweller Shaun Leane, created a yashmak made to look like chainmail, consisting of aluminium plates inset with red Swarovski crystal cabochons. According to Leane, McQueen showed him an antique belt made of filigree metalwork, set with red jewels, which Leane has variously recalled as Ottoman or Moghul, and asked him to produce something inspired by the belt which covered the entire torso and head. That was the extent of the creative brief: McQueen trusted Leane to produce something suitable, and McQueen did not see the finished item until three days before the show. The nose and eyebrow pieces for the yashmak were hand-carved by sculptor Annika Hellgren. == Runway show ==

Move to New York City Eye was the first show McQueen had premiered outside of London. The decision was somewhat controversial in the British press, as McQueen's departure left London Fashion Week without one of its largest-drawing names. Lisa Armstrong at The Times of London speculated that McQueen might have been feeling spiteful toward the British Fashion Council, as he believed they had "never properly recognised his part in transforming British fashion over the past few years". McQueen had initially requested permission to stage the runway show for Eye on the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City, but the New York City Police Department declined for safety reasons. In the days leading up to the runway show, Hurricane Floyd was threatening New York, prompting closure of schools and businesses. Several other designers cancelled shows, but McQueen decided to go ahead with Eye. Announcing McQueen's decision not to cancel, his publicist, Pierre Rougier, reportedly claimed that the storm "will add atmosphere". Some joked that McQueen had arranged for the hurricane to coincide with his show for the effect. Despite the weather, more than 1,000 guests attended, including several major fashion industry figures: Anna Wintour of Vogue, Kim Hastreiter of Paper, Katherine Betts of ''Harper's Bazaar, Hal Rubenstein of InStyle'', and Patrick J. McCarthy, editorial director of Fairchild Publications. The show was unusually expensive. Estimates of the budget varied widely; pre-show rumours projected that it would cost anywhere from to . McQueen told The Times in January 2000 that it had cost roughly , while ''Harper's Bazaar'' reported in December 1999 that the show had cost . Sponsor American Express, in their third year as McQueen's backer, contributed approximately to the show's budget. Other backers included Onward Kashiyama, Swarovski and MAC Cosmetics. Overall styling was handled by Katy England, while Gainsbury & Whiting oversaw production. Hair and make-up were handled by Guido Palau and Val Garland, respectively. Catwalk presentation Models walked down a catwalk filled with several inches of water, dyed black to resemble crude oil, a major Middle Eastern resource. McQueen had previously used liquid runways in Bellmer La Poupée (Spring/Summer 1997) and Untitled (Spring/Summer 1998). The primary make-up look was heavy black eyeliner. The models had their skin darkened with fake tan lotion. Many of the models were styled with headdresses which covered their whole face except their eyes. Others wore black wigs. Sixty-eight looks were presented in the main show, with an additional nine looks presented during the finale. Finally, "Can You Handle It" by Sharon Redd played while McQueen walked out for his final bow in blue jeans. At the top of the runway, he dropped his pants to display boxer shorts styled to look like the American flag. The show reportedly received a standing ovation. == Reception ==

Eye drew a varied reception from contemporary critics, and retrospectives differ in their assessment of the critical consensus. Author Andrew Wilson reported that the show earned "rave reviews", albeit more for the performance than for the clothes. In contrast, author Katherine Gleason and curator Kate Bethune each reported that reception was mixed, with Gleason writing that critics felt McQueen had "overdone the theatrics". Presentation A number of reviewers regarded the clothing and show as an overall success. Rebecca Lowthorpe at The Independent called Eye "the highlight of the week" and predicted that it would draw the attention that McQueen was looking for. Michael Quintanilla of the Los Angeles Times wrote that with Eye, "The bad boy did good." For The New York Times, Cathy Horyn called Eye "a great show, as circus goes", describing it as "art for fashion's sake". The staff writer at ''Women's Wear Daily (WWD) and Robin Givhan of The Washington Post remarked on the irony of staging a fashion show that involved purposely dragging expensive high-end clothing through water. Colin McDowell, writing for The Sunday Times, dismissed Eye as a retread of things McQueen had done before. WWD ultimately concluded that they would have preferred to see "more fashion innovation" and less bombast. Lowthorpe felt the seizure-like movement of some of the dancers in the finale "had a nasty pointlessness to it", while Givhan found these movements disturbingly like "death throes". McDowell called the finale a "sinister and dreary" attempt to distract from the "mediocre" clothes. McDowell described it as a "cheap stunt" and said he could not imagine other designers needing to resort to such tactics. WWD'' found the dresses and coats "highlighted the designer's brashness as much as his technical skill". John Davidson for The Herald of Glasgow was ambivalent, saying that, although the clothing featured "clever cutting and magical decoration", it lacked McQueen's usual "finesse". Armstrong worried that McQueen's interest in increasing sales in the United States might lead him to undercut his creativity in pursuit of commercial gains. Scott found that the runway items "defied description, if not reasoning" but noted that McQueen's retail clothing was usually "more realistically wearable". Alexander appreciated the "precision cutting and elaborate detail", and felt that the loose harem-style trousers and tops "showed his softer side". However, she was strongly opposed to the fetishwear, calling it "grotesque and unnecessary". Some critics questioned the commercial viability of the designs for Eye, particularly of the fetishwear shown on the runway. Jean Fraser of the Edmonton Journal enjoyed the performance but wrote of the designs: "As fashion that might actually sell, it's dubious." Mimi Spencer of the Evening Standard sarcastically said that "leather restraining hoods are not top of my shopping list for spring". Similarly, David Graham of the Toronto Star remarked that "there was very little to wear to the office". == Analysis ==

(c. 1790); the painting is an example of the fashion for turquerie|alt=Refer to caption Critics have typically interpreted Eye as a statement about the contrast between the values of the Western world and the Middle East. Writing in retrospect, authors Judith Watt and Andrew Wilson both regarded Eye as a commentary on contemporary American foreign policy in the Middle East and the resulting cultural conflict. Others felt it was an exploration of the way Islamic and Western cultures choose to conceal or reveal the female figure, respectively. Textile curators Clarissa M. Esguerra and Michaela Hansen criticised the way McQueen mixed and matched ideas from various cultures into one "sensational vision", calling Eye a form of turquerie, an 18th-century European trend for a romanticised version of Turkish culture and fashion. They found that despite McQueen's goal of exploring religious repression of women, the collection "offered no clear commentary on women's agency", in part because the pieces actually sold in stores lacked the religiously provocative stylings included in the runway show. Esguerra and Hansen compared Eye to McQueen's Scottish-inspired Autumn/Winter 2006 collection, The Widows of Culloden, because of the way both collections drew from history. They argued that Widows succeeded where Eye failed because of McQueen's "intimate knowledge of and personal attachment to" the subject matter. They also contrasted Eye with Between, finding that Eye lacked "cultural sensitivity" in comparison to Chalayan's personal experience with the culture he was examining. Critics have noted the ambiguity of Shaun Leane's chainmail yashmak. It can be viewed as both armour and jewellery; Leane described it as "jewelry covering the body to create this formidable structure". It combines a reference to the armour worn by Christian soldiers of the Crusades – a series of religious wars in which Christians fought against Muslims – but also the traditional dress of Muslim women. Curator Soyoung Lee wrote that the yashmak "signals mystery and forbiddance" by concealing the wearer's body and face yet possesses a "sensuous fluidity" in its movements. == Legacy ==

The original chainmail yashmak by Shaun Leane was reworked for McQueen's The Horn of Plenty (Autumn/Winter 2009), where it was presented as part of Look 42, underneath a silk gown printed with milk snakes in red, black, and white. The Victoria and Albert Museum (the V&A) in London owns a replica version of the yashmak made in 2015. Leane's yashmak was one of several items that appeared in the October 2001 Fashion in Motion event at the V&A, which served as a retrospective of their creative relationship. The yashmak also appeared at the 2006 exhibition Love and War: The Weaponized Woman at The Museum at FIT. Three of the coin headdresses from Eye appeared in the exhibition Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty, originally staged in 2011 at The Met. The V&A's replica yashmak appeared in that museum's 2015 version of Savage Beauty. The Alexander McQueen brand returned to New York Fashion Week for Autumn/Winter 2022; it was their first show there since Eye. == Notes ==