Alexander McQueen: Deliverance Spring/Summer 2004

The Venue: Salle Wagram - a grand nineteenth -century dance hall.

The Collection: Deliverance, Spring/Summer 2004

The Designer: Alexander McQueen

The Inspiration: The 1969 Sydney Pollack film, They Shoot Horses Don't They? based on the book by Horace McCoy

'The marathon dance was held on the amusement park pier at the beach in an enormous old building that had once been a public dance hall.  It was built out over the ocean on pilings, and beneath our feet, beneath the floor, the ocean pounded day and night.  I could feel it surging through the balls of my feet, as if they had been stethoscopes.'

They Shoot Horses Don't They, Horace McCoy

The lights come up on seven couples, each in their own spotlight, dancing to big band music.  The women are in evening gowns, tattered patchworks of silks, sparkling crystals that catch the spotlight, and in feathers that fall to the floor.  

The lights fade and the music dies...

"McQueen's show, offering both emotion and fine clothes, was at the summit of the 2004 collections."

Suzy Menkes

I am so thrilled to be able to offer for sale a rare and exquisitely beautiful Alexander McQueen Spring/Summer 2004 Deliverance Collection silk dress identical to the one in the runway show.  Available for purchase here.

The dress has torn bits of silk chiffon squares sewn onto the bias of the skirt.  The patch work bodice has inserts of sheer nude silk chiffon and the shoulder straps are twisted.

For the right person, for the right wedding, this could make a dream wedding dress - or for rehearsal dinner dance...

xo, Juliana

Where Angels Tread: Alexander McQueen Fall 2010. Look 7.

"He was looking at the Dark Ages, but finding light and beauty in it."
Sarah Burton on Alexander McQueen's last collection for Fall 2010.

McQueen had ordered fabric with complex digitally transferred photographs of paintings of church angels and Hieronymous Bosch demons into hand-loomed costly silk jacquards.

"He was coming in every day, draping and cutting pieces on the stand.  He wanted to go back to the handcraft he loved and the things that are being lost in the making of fashion."

Sarah Burton on Alexander McQueen's last collection for Fall 2010.

I am quietly honored to have received this Alexander McQueen fall 2010, look 7,  jacket with its golden angels soaring in couture tailored folds.  It is a reflection of the world Alexander McQueen inhabited: dark, romantic, beautiful, historical, futuristic and fiercely individual.

Alexander McQueen Fall 2010 collection 'Angel' jacket available at RARE vintage

This piece can be purchased here.

love, kisses and missing Alexander McQueen, Juliana

Raw Emotion: Sarah Burton for Alexander McQueen

Spring/Summer 2011 was the first collection by Sarah Burton for Alexander McQueen after McQueen's tragic death.

Tim Banks for Style.com said in his review: "The very first outfit could stand as a manifesto for the future: The tailcoat is a traditional McQueen piece, but here it is softened, its edges unfinished, and the hard, peaked shoulders that were another McQueen signature had been slashed opened, relaxed."

This beautiful and romantic tailcoat, which is the piece Tim Banks refers to in his review, is a mille feuille of bias cut silk layers.  It's edges are raw as the emotions most certainly were at this point in time at the studio of Alexander McQueen...

(sorry I am not sure why the photos are so dark but the tailcoat is a snow white silk)

Sarah Burton for Alexander McQueen S/S 2011 tailcoat available for purchase at RARE vintage.

and from the runway:

love, kisses and vintage, Juliana

Playing Dress Up #1: Alexander McQueen

Fashion is fantasy.  Fashion is playing dress up.  Fashion is role playing.  Fashion is time traveling.  Fashion is fun.  Fashion lets you be whoever you want to be...

Today I am a Renaissance Queen:

Sarah Burton for Alexander McQueen Fall 2013 ad campaign

The Ice Queen and her PUNK Rock Court: Alexander McQueen Fall 2011

From Sarah Burton's for Alexander McQueen fall 2011 'the Ice Queen and her court' collection is this punk rock inspired minaudière with a mohawked and jeweled skull.  The bag is heavily studded on velvet and lined in black leather.

This bag obviously goes with our previously posted McQueen dress but can definitely be worn on its own with a black sheath, leather pants, jeans, pajamas - well maybe not pjs : )

Just the thing to carry when you go see PUNK: Chaos to Couture at the Metropolitan Museum of Art!

Sarah Burton for Alexander McQueen Fall 2011.  Only available at RARE vintage.  

For more information or to purchase, please email info@rarevintage.com or phone 212.581.7273

The Ice Queen and Her Court: Alexander McQueen Fall 2011

After Alexander McQueen died and before Sarah Burton designed Kate Middleton's wedding dress, Burton designed her first full collection for Alexander McQueen.  The theme was the 'Ice Queen and her Court'.  And the setting was the La Conciergerie - which was Marie Antoinette's prison and also the site of an earlier Alexander McQueen show with live wolves.  This show had a tough, icy feeling with lots of fur edged pieces but always with an underlying feeling of romance - a darker romance with Alexander McQueen and a more optimistic sense of romance with Sarah Burton.

This dress from the Ice Queen and her Court collection is heavily studded and also spectacularly studded on black pony skin, lined in black silk and leather laced over the decollate and with two high slits on the skirt.  

Sarah Burton for Alexander McQueen Fall 2011.  Only available at RARE vintage.  Size 4.

For more information or to purchase, please email info@rarevintage.com or phone 212.581.7273

RARE vintage's Weekend Style and Inspiration: Beauty is my Creed: Backstage at Alexander McQueen Spring 2013

For all of you out there for which beauty is your creed too.  Backstage with beauty.  Alexander McQueen Spring/Summer 2013. 

RARE vintage Weekend Style and Inspiration: If It's Not Vintage, It's Not In Fashion

From Harper's Bazaar 1966 

Or is it Alexander McQueen Fall 2012

Or Louis Vuitton Spring 2013

If it's not vintage, it's not in fashion!

My Heart Goes Boom Boom Boom. Paris Fashion Week. Part Two. Alexander McQueen.

I think there is no doubt that one of the strongest shows for Spring 2013, was Sarah Burton's collection for Alexander McQueen.  It was brilliant, beautiful and bold.  Maybe Sarah Burton had nesting on the mind as she is pregnant with twins, but her nest of bees collection really solidified her position as the right person to take over and carry the mantle of Alexander McQueen and do it with grace, creativity, beauty and with a wild and unfettered imagination.  I think McQueen would be proud.

Clothing is really about falling in love.  A mad, passionate affair that makes you want to whip about your credit card and go shopping - or at least dream about going shopping.  And this collection was full of dreams...

Did you know that you would desperately desire a wasp-waist jacket in a small gold honeycomb pattern?  No?  Nor did I. But there it is.  Sarah Burton has given us what we did not even know that we wanted.  But want it we do!

Worn with dark amber belts with jeweled bumble bees

Wouldn't you love to find the perfect place to wear this entire outfit??!

Beautiful.  So many things here you could take apart and wear many different ways.

Victorian, panniered sexiness.

Dark amber resin corset with a honeycombed textured dress. 

Shoes with heels filled with rattling, gold crystals

Do you see how crazy gorgeous the details are?!  How astounding the craftsmanship is?!

And a baroque Marie Antoinette busy as a bee in her gilded and caged garden...

Golden honey colored fabric

The show closed with The Archies Sugar, Sugar.  Sarah Burton is our candy girl and has gotten us wanting her!

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Books for your Burgeoning or Bursting Fashion Library

My fashion library is both bursting and burgeoning.  Depends on who you ask.  My husband would say bursting - but I say he is Cray-Cray and my fashion library is just burgeoning.  There is so much I have yet to acquire but of course my husband thinks I already have so much!  Glass half full/half empty kind of thing.

But as my click and order on Amazon Prime can not be stopped, here are a few good books I will be buying this fall (just don't tell my husband : )

Property from the Estate of Brooke Astor.  Not so much a book as an auction catalog.  You know.  Brooke Astor: the doyenne of philanthropy.   There may not be much that is cutting edge or modern to be found in her Park Avenue apartment or Holly Hill estate in Briarcliff Manor but Albert Hadley did the New York apartment and it will still be fun to have a look at a genteel woman in her genteel homes.

Property from the Estate of Brooke Astor.  Sothebys.  Available now here.

and following on the heels, or is it the eyes of Diana Vreeland: The Eye has to Travel is: Love Looks Not With The Eyes.  A look back at the spectacularly dark and romantic career of Alexander McQueen.  The photographer, Anne Deniau was the only photographer allowed back stage by McQueen beginning in 1997 up until McQueen's final show in 2010.  Get ready to be shocked and awed by his brilliance and the premature loss of that brilliance.

He will not know what all but he do know.

And as he errs, doting on Hermia's eyes,

So I, admiring of his qualities.

Things base and vile, holding no quantity,

Love can transpose to form and dignity.

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,

And therefore is winged cupid painted blind.

-William Shakespeare.  A Midsummer Summer Night's Dream.

Love Looks Not With The Eyes.  Available for pre-order here

The Antonio Lopez Book by Mauricio Padilha and Roger Padilha.  You may remember awhile ago we had a sale of Stephen Sprouse culled from the collection of Mauricio and Roger Padhila at RARE vintage available on 1stdibs.com.  Mauricio and Roger wrote the defining catalogue raisonée on Sprouse (which is also a must have for your fashion library - and if you are really obsessive then you must own all four covers - each in a different shade of neon).  Now they have turned to illustrator Antonio Lopez who brought Pat Cleveland to Paris and where they all danced the nights away and drew fashion during the day.

Antonio: Fashion, Art, Sex & Disco, by Roger Padilha and Roger Padilha.  

Available for pre-order here

Karl Lagerfeld remembers Antonio Lopez in the September issue of Bazaar:

"In the summers we would all go down to St Tropez by private train.  It was easier to get to St. Tropez that way because there was no airport.  It was very funny.  We had tons of luggage.  We would keep a boat there, and I had a house and my mother had a house.  My house was in the center of the city, so it was easier to get to the clubs.  I remember the first summer we went together in 1970, the big musical hit was "In the Summertime".  Everybody danced to it.

It was a free time; in a way, it was more innocent.  I don't see anyone like Antonio and his crowd today.  No one else will ever compare."  Karl Lagerfeld on Antonio Lopez in September Bazaar.

So those are just a few books I will be reading this fall...

In a kingdom by the sea, there lived a man you may know, by the name of Alexander Lee

The exhibit, Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty is beyond beautiful.  It is a cabinet of curiosities, quite literally.  It is a journey to lands near and far, places dark and light.  

One of Alexander McQueen's favorite poems according to his friend Annabelle Neilson was Edgar Allen Poe's Annabel Lee:

It was many and many a year ago, 

In a kingdom by the sea, 

That a maiden there lived whom you may know 

By the name of Annabel Lee; 

And this maiden she lived with no other thought 

Than to love and be loved by me.

Alexander McQueen Oyster Dress Spring/Summer 2003

I was a child and she was a child, 

In this kingdom by the sea; 

But we loved with a love that was more than love - 

I and my Annabel Lee; 

With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven 

Coveted her and me. 

And this was the reason that, long ago, 

In this kingdom by the sea, 

A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling 

My beautiful Annabel Lee; 

So that her highborn kinsman came 

And bore her away from me, 

To shut her up in a sepulcher 

In this kingdom by the sea. 

The angels, not half so happy in heaven, 

Went envying her and me 

Yes! that was the reason 

(as all men know, In this kingdom by the sea) 

That the wind came out of the cloud by night, 

Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

1997 Alexander McQueen la Poupée collection

But our love was stronger by far than the love 

Of those who were older than we 

Of many far wiser than we 

And neither the angels in heaven above, 

Nor the demons down under the sea, 

Can ever dissever my soul from the soul 

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee. 

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams 

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; 

And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes 

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; 

And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side 

Of my darling, my darling, my life and my bride, 

In the sepulcher there by the sea, 

In her tomb by the sounding sea.

I am proud, excited and honored to be able to offer this extremely rare runway dress from Alexander McQueen's 1997 La Poupée collection when the models stormed the watery runway, 'In a kingdom by the sea...'

1997 ALexander McQueen La Poupée Collection Dress.

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Weekend Reading 10: When Phillip Met Isabella

"Isabella was an otherwordly creature of mythical proportions." Ebe Oke

We are a day away from the opening of Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty at the Met and the windows at Barneys which, besides having Daphne Guiness getting dressed for the Met Gala behind a screen, will also have pieces from the Isabella Blow collection, hats by Philip Treacy and objects by the jeweler Shaun Leane in the windows.  Daphne Guiness swooped in and bought  the entirety of Isabella Blow's collection from the family before it went to auction in 2010.  But there was one piece that got away and its owner was kind enough to share images of it with us.

Isabella Blow's unique way with fashion and the ability to be able to wear absolutely any kind of hat or head gear cleared the way for some of the hats we saw at this weeks Royal Wedding.  I do not believe that we would have seen Princess Beatrice in her much panned Philip Treacy Bow hat (though I thought she looked sweet and young in it - Princess Eugenie?  Well, poor thing, that was not a good look...) or any of the more whimsical hats if not for Isabella Blow.

Princess Eugenie of York and Princess Beatrice of York:

Santa Montefiore and Tara Palmer-Tomkinson:

Miriam Gonzalez:

When Phillip met Isabella.  Weekend reading for you from RARE vintage.  Read on...

Philip Treacy on Isabella Blow:

"Her fearlessness in an industry that runs on fear is legendary; she was a champion of young creative people without a voice.  While she endeavored to work within today's world of corporate fashion cannibalism, her ultimate ethos was a passionate belief that fashion is about the pursuit of beauty, elegance and creativity."

"I was so inspired by the way she wore my hats.  She wore them like she was not wearing them - like they happened to be there."

And of Philip, Isabella said, "He's like a cosmetic surgeon for your face.  Your face has a different personality for each one you're wearing."

The hats she wore did go beyond normal expectations, bringing to life visions of extraordinary and unexpected detail, whether it was a jewel encrusted lobster for Julian Macdonald's fashion show in 1998,

or a Japanese garden complete with temples and tress for Alexander McQueen.  

"Fashion is a vampiric thing.  It's the hoover on your brain.  That's why I wear the hats, to keep everyone away from me." Isabella Blow

The one Daphne Guiness did not get:

She gave this hat to someone while in the Goa hospital after trying to overdose on sleeping pills and walking into the Indian Ocean.

Isabella's hats in her Entrance hall  of her Eaton Square apartment:

 This is a wonderful tribute video to Isabella Blow:

Some text and images from Isabella Blow by Martina Rink.