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What Alexander McQueen Can Teach You About Fashion
If Alexander McQueen were to give a masterclass on design, creativity and attitude, what wisdom would he impart? Discover McQueen's life, work and legacy in this sharply curated biography focusing on artistic spirit.
Alexander McQueen will go down in history as the most talented and enigmatic 'bad boy' of fashion. But it was his drive and visionary perspective that secured his place in sartorial legend when his defying couture looks sent shockwaves through the fashion landscape.
But how did he think? And how was his attitude reflected in his work? What Alexander McQueen Can Teach You About Fashion breaks down McQueen's life and work into memorable maxims – including Don’t be Scared of Fear, Challenge Gender, Add Volume, then More Volume and Show Skin. This book uncovers McQueen’s creative flair, his inspirations, his business acumen and the details that make his designs so arresting.
With pithy, thoughtful text and inspirational photographs , learn something from McQueen and apply it to your own life, creativity and style. These are the things that really define what it means to be McQueen.
Small and beautifully formed – if you like this, What Coco Chanel Can Teach You About Fashion is also available.
Alexander McQueen will go down in history as the most talented and enigmatic 'bad boy' of fashion. But it was his drive and visionary perspective that secured his place in sartorial legend when his defying couture looks sent shockwaves through the fashion landscape.
But how did he think? And how was his attitude reflected in his work? What Alexander McQueen Can Teach You About Fashion breaks down McQueen's life and work into memorable maxims – including Don’t be Scared of Fear, Challenge Gender, Add Volume, then More Volume and Show Skin. This book uncovers McQueen’s creative flair, his inspirations, his business acumen and the details that make his designs so arresting.
With pithy, thoughtful text and inspirational photographs , learn something from McQueen and apply it to your own life, creativity and style. These are the things that really define what it means to be McQueen.
Small and beautifully formed – if you like this, What Coco Chanel Can Teach You About Fashion is also available.
- GenresFashionNonfictionArt
144 pages, Hardcover
Published October 12, 2021
5 people are currently reading
65 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
September 15, 2021
Developing my interest for fashion after Alexander McQueen left this realm, it was difficult for me to understand his genius and impact. This book answers any question one might have about his work and the influences that shaped it and his intentions.
This book takes the reader into the designer's most important themes. While being organized like this, I bumped into a lot of information and quotes that kept on repeating. Here I note the BDSM influence, his passion and intent for using tartan, his muses, etc. I would have loved for the book to get deeper, to explain more these recurring themes than mentioning them over and over. I also would have loved to encounter a visual for really all the outfits the book features.
This is a short book perfect to gift to fashion aficionados, it's a great introduction to Alexander McQueen's genius, there are so many details we take now for granted that he had the courage to bring forth. For learning this and understanding his extraordinary talent, stance and craft - this book is worth reading.
I received a copy of this in exchange for my honest opinion.
This book takes the reader into the designer's most important themes. While being organized like this, I bumped into a lot of information and quotes that kept on repeating. Here I note the BDSM influence, his passion and intent for using tartan, his muses, etc. I would have loved for the book to get deeper, to explain more these recurring themes than mentioning them over and over. I also would have loved to encounter a visual for really all the outfits the book features.
This is a short book perfect to gift to fashion aficionados, it's a great introduction to Alexander McQueen's genius, there are so many details we take now for granted that he had the courage to bring forth. For learning this and understanding his extraordinary talent, stance and craft - this book is worth reading.
I received a copy of this in exchange for my honest opinion.
July 23, 2025
Δεν με τρέλανε, με έβαζε στον κόσμο του McQueen, όμως πολλές φορες έμπαινε σε μια λούπα, σε μια επανάληψη. Δεν υπήρχε 100% ιστορική ροή ή ροή ώστε να καταλάβεις κατι παραπανω απο τις κολεξιόν και τον συμβολισμό του McQueen
August 16, 2021
Thanks to Frances Lincoln for an advanced copy of this title in return for an honest review.
Firstly, may I state this is not a “how to” book. It doesn’t contain tips from the late great Alexander McQueen on how to make or wear high fashion. Instead it is a story of his life and his creations, and how they mixed to make one tortured, haunted soul.
I’ll admit I still remember where I was when I heard McQueen had taken his own life. It was February 2010 and I was 16 years old. I was at school for parents evening waiting to see my philosophy tutor. We were early so my late father was browsing the news on his phone when he told me the news. Neither him nor my mother knew who he was, but I did, and I knew in that moment what a hole would from then on be missing from the fashion world. I visited his exhibition at the V&A in 2015 which was the t hauntingly beautiful experience I would have quite happily kept paying so I could stay in there.
I design my own clothes in my spare time - they haven’t gone any further than my sketchbooks - and am fascinated by fashion, even if I do spend most of my time in sweatpants. The main think I took from this is that McQueen showed us fashion isn’t always about the physical garment. It can be - the garment, the model, the material, the form, the fit - but it’s also about the setting, the meaning, the connotations, and most importantly, how it makes us feel.
There must have been thousands of images for Honigman to choose from and the ones chosen for this are just perfect for depicting McQueen’s inner turmoil. Ideally I would have loved a photo for each garment mentioned but you’d need a separate volume to fit them all in.
It’s not a particularly long book, perfect to read in one sitting if you’re lucky enough to have that spare time. It is informative and informative and interesting and important without being too heavy to read. I may have to buy a physical copy of it to add to my bookshelf.
As McQueen once said, “The world needs fantasy” - ain’t that the truth.
Firstly, may I state this is not a “how to” book. It doesn’t contain tips from the late great Alexander McQueen on how to make or wear high fashion. Instead it is a story of his life and his creations, and how they mixed to make one tortured, haunted soul.
I’ll admit I still remember where I was when I heard McQueen had taken his own life. It was February 2010 and I was 16 years old. I was at school for parents evening waiting to see my philosophy tutor. We were early so my late father was browsing the news on his phone when he told me the news. Neither him nor my mother knew who he was, but I did, and I knew in that moment what a hole would from then on be missing from the fashion world. I visited his exhibition at the V&A in 2015 which was the t hauntingly beautiful experience I would have quite happily kept paying so I could stay in there.
I design my own clothes in my spare time - they haven’t gone any further than my sketchbooks - and am fascinated by fashion, even if I do spend most of my time in sweatpants. The main think I took from this is that McQueen showed us fashion isn’t always about the physical garment. It can be - the garment, the model, the material, the form, the fit - but it’s also about the setting, the meaning, the connotations, and most importantly, how it makes us feel.
There must have been thousands of images for Honigman to choose from and the ones chosen for this are just perfect for depicting McQueen’s inner turmoil. Ideally I would have loved a photo for each garment mentioned but you’d need a separate volume to fit them all in.
It’s not a particularly long book, perfect to read in one sitting if you’re lucky enough to have that spare time. It is informative and informative and interesting and important without being too heavy to read. I may have to buy a physical copy of it to add to my bookshelf.
As McQueen once said, “The world needs fantasy” - ain’t that the truth.
September 20, 2021
This book was archived before I could read it on Netgalley, but I wanted to read it so much, I bought my own copy and read it today. It is beautifully presented as a physical book. The black and white photograph of McQueen on the cover contrasts with the orange spine and text and the whole thing is graphically well thought out. The sections were interestingly presented and the photographs were great. There were a couple of things that let the book down for me. The first was that the text has been edited really poorly. There are quite a few typos and in one place, lines of text have been repeated. I would accept this in a review copy as you usually receive an uncorrected proof, but this is a published book I paid money for and it's such a shame, given the high quality of the rest of the book. It's also clear that the author is passionate about her subject and this lacklustre editing really lets it down. The second thing is that there are two entire sections dedicated to the iconic McQueen scarf. As I say, it is iconic, so I would definitely expect it to feature, but twice, with virtually identical wording in a book this short and a career as wide and varied as McQueen's seemed a bit of an overkill when the space could have been taken up with something else. I did very much enjoy it and as an introduction to McQueen and his work, it is a great resource.
June 30, 2022
Alexander McQueen is one of my favourite designers. This book is a pictorial, non-chronological, overview of the different, and often contrasting, elements of his fashion designs. It serves as a good introduction to his aesthetic and the themes he explored. However, it also suffers from not being in chronological order, making it hard to see the development of his themes over his design career, and although the are a lot of photographs, not every garment described has a picture included. The book also needed some proper proofreading, as there are numerous mistakes in the text.
Altogether a nice introduction to Alexander McQueen and his aesthetic.
Altogether a nice introduction to Alexander McQueen and his aesthetic.
April 20, 2025
This is truly the most boring book on a topic that fascinates me that I’ve ever read. By the end of the book I started skimming it because it was clear that Ana Finel Honigman didn’t actually have anything to say. I’d bet my mortgage she was just trying to make it to a specified word count because that how it read.
1. The image quality is not good enough that this would make a good coffee table book. Many of them are slightly blurry and many details like the background and the models faces are lost. Perhaps it would look better on glossy paper like in a magazine or art book, but nevertheless I would expect higher quality images in a fashion book depicting runway looks. It’s almost like they were plucked from google images and dropped in the book with little formatting and little relevance.
2. On the note of little relevance, the author regularly mentions a groundbreaking or controversial look McQueen did, and then provides no image for it, or provides an image of a different look in the collection. Why even mention Mcqueen’s most extreme corset - “The most intense corset was not worn by a cis female but by Mr Pearl for the designer’s collection The Birds” (pg126) and not provide an image of it? Not only was it still pretty groundbreaking at the time having a man wearing the corset, it was in fact an *extremely* cinched corset . Not only that but the next image provided was of a corset that McQueen featured in his Savage collection - made by Mr Pearl with no credit to him. This was the only corset Mr Pearl ever made for McQueen so that would’ve ACTUALLY been relevant information to add. It also never explained who Mr Pearl is. Why should I care that some guy was asked to wear a corset for McQueen? Maybe because he was an up and coming corsetière that worked with other big name designers like Vivian Westwood and Mugler and made custom pieces for the likes of Dita Von Teese! This would have been relevant context for the Savage image that followed that paragraph.
3. It was not in chronological order, and some important people in his life and career are not introduced until midway through the book. Isabella Blow for example, is regularly referenced in small image captions as though we should know who she is, and she is not introduced as the woman who bought McQueens first ever collection or his friend and muse until page 66. Some people like Philip Treacy are referenced regularly in image descriptions, and if you have no clue who he is like I didn’t you are left wondering how he is relevant to McQueen. If you’re brighter than me you might pick up the context clues that he’s specifically a milliner but until I took to google I was left wondering is he another designer? Does he work for/with McQueen or is this just a collaboration they did? Is he a fashion designer or just a hat designer? Other people like Shalom Harlow are reintroduced over and over again, as though we may have forgotten in the last two pages that she was McQueen’s favourite model and muse for several years.
4. The author clearly ran out of things to say and just started repeating herself. One chapter is called Celebrate Your Identity and speaks to Alexander’s use of Tartan - then the last chapter of the book is called Celebrate your Cultures Complexity which is again about the use of Tartan and Scottish influences on McQueens work. There is one chapter on the use of florals called Forbidden Florals, and another towards the end of the book called Love Roses and Their Thorns on the use of florals in his work.
5. The book reads as a love letter to McQueen. She briefly touches on controversies such as his use of turning photographs into prints and the grey area of copyright and IP or the controversial use of niqabs and cultural appropriation. These controversies are quickly glossed over however, and are seemingly written off as daring art and contextual to the statements McQueen was trying to make. Don’t get me wrong, most good art is controversial and it’s not to discredit his work or the message he’s trying to send with these collections, but the diminishing of criticism doesn’t actually give us a full insight into him and his work. Specifically the Eyes collection is a critique of religions such as Christianity and Islam and features a model wearing a Niqab and underwear with bare legs exposed - obviously controversial as it was seen as disrespectful to Muslims, Arabs, and objectifying towards women. It’s however quickly diminished as not as bad as the work of Hussein Chalayan’s “Burka” collection - despite the fact that Chalayan’s collection has the context of critiquing his own culture and not someone else’s.
The book also revels in McQueens inspiration of BDSM, his love for women, his championing of a feminine figure in an era of androgyny, without ever mentioning a huge controversy that many of McQueens critics had - that being that his work was often viewed as misogynistic and objectifying. His first ever professional runway featured a model who imitated fingering herself on the catwalk. His 2007 Voss show depicts a bare breasted woman having her clothes “torn” off by taxidermied birds. There is a lot of art in nudity and vulnerability and horror and the perverse that this book acknowledges, it just never acknowledges that those themes can also be upsetting and unnecessary and deserving of criticism.
I will give this book props, as it prompted me to go on google and actually research McQueen and his life and art - but I wouldn’t credit this book for telling me anything more than the names of collections I could google.
1. The image quality is not good enough that this would make a good coffee table book. Many of them are slightly blurry and many details like the background and the models faces are lost. Perhaps it would look better on glossy paper like in a magazine or art book, but nevertheless I would expect higher quality images in a fashion book depicting runway looks. It’s almost like they were plucked from google images and dropped in the book with little formatting and little relevance.
2. On the note of little relevance, the author regularly mentions a groundbreaking or controversial look McQueen did, and then provides no image for it, or provides an image of a different look in the collection. Why even mention Mcqueen’s most extreme corset - “The most intense corset was not worn by a cis female but by Mr Pearl for the designer’s collection The Birds” (pg126) and not provide an image of it? Not only was it still pretty groundbreaking at the time having a man wearing the corset, it was in fact an *extremely* cinched corset . Not only that but the next image provided was of a corset that McQueen featured in his Savage collection - made by Mr Pearl with no credit to him. This was the only corset Mr Pearl ever made for McQueen so that would’ve ACTUALLY been relevant information to add. It also never explained who Mr Pearl is. Why should I care that some guy was asked to wear a corset for McQueen? Maybe because he was an up and coming corsetière that worked with other big name designers like Vivian Westwood and Mugler and made custom pieces for the likes of Dita Von Teese! This would have been relevant context for the Savage image that followed that paragraph.
3. It was not in chronological order, and some important people in his life and career are not introduced until midway through the book. Isabella Blow for example, is regularly referenced in small image captions as though we should know who she is, and she is not introduced as the woman who bought McQueens first ever collection or his friend and muse until page 66. Some people like Philip Treacy are referenced regularly in image descriptions, and if you have no clue who he is like I didn’t you are left wondering how he is relevant to McQueen. If you’re brighter than me you might pick up the context clues that he’s specifically a milliner but until I took to google I was left wondering is he another designer? Does he work for/with McQueen or is this just a collaboration they did? Is he a fashion designer or just a hat designer? Other people like Shalom Harlow are reintroduced over and over again, as though we may have forgotten in the last two pages that she was McQueen’s favourite model and muse for several years.
4. The author clearly ran out of things to say and just started repeating herself. One chapter is called Celebrate Your Identity and speaks to Alexander’s use of Tartan - then the last chapter of the book is called Celebrate your Cultures Complexity which is again about the use of Tartan and Scottish influences on McQueens work. There is one chapter on the use of florals called Forbidden Florals, and another towards the end of the book called Love Roses and Their Thorns on the use of florals in his work.
5. The book reads as a love letter to McQueen. She briefly touches on controversies such as his use of turning photographs into prints and the grey area of copyright and IP or the controversial use of niqabs and cultural appropriation. These controversies are quickly glossed over however, and are seemingly written off as daring art and contextual to the statements McQueen was trying to make. Don’t get me wrong, most good art is controversial and it’s not to discredit his work or the message he’s trying to send with these collections, but the diminishing of criticism doesn’t actually give us a full insight into him and his work. Specifically the Eyes collection is a critique of religions such as Christianity and Islam and features a model wearing a Niqab and underwear with bare legs exposed - obviously controversial as it was seen as disrespectful to Muslims, Arabs, and objectifying towards women. It’s however quickly diminished as not as bad as the work of Hussein Chalayan’s “Burka” collection - despite the fact that Chalayan’s collection has the context of critiquing his own culture and not someone else’s.
The book also revels in McQueens inspiration of BDSM, his love for women, his championing of a feminine figure in an era of androgyny, without ever mentioning a huge controversy that many of McQueens critics had - that being that his work was often viewed as misogynistic and objectifying. His first ever professional runway featured a model who imitated fingering herself on the catwalk. His 2007 Voss show depicts a bare breasted woman having her clothes “torn” off by taxidermied birds. There is a lot of art in nudity and vulnerability and horror and the perverse that this book acknowledges, it just never acknowledges that those themes can also be upsetting and unnecessary and deserving of criticism.
I will give this book props, as it prompted me to go on google and actually research McQueen and his life and art - but I wouldn’t credit this book for telling me anything more than the names of collections I could google.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 8, 2021
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.
https://misawithbooks.blogspot.com/20...
I loved discovering the world of one of the best fashion designers that the world had ever known, his work is immortal.
While reading this book, I used Youtube in order to see what the author was talking about when it came to MCQueen's shows and creations and there is so much more to see and discover about his work. He was a genius and I could not stop watching his fashion shows, it was so fantastic, captivating, addictive and beautiful. I loved all his special designs. He was a real unique artist.
The author talks about his main influences when it came to his creations such as his sexual life, nature, his Scottish heritage with the Tartan, death "memento mori". Himself and his art knew no limits and that's what made it so alluring.
I love art in all its forms and fashion is no exception, this book was so interesting to read as a kind of fashion biography about Alexander McQueen and his legacy to this world.
https://misawithbooks.blogspot.com/20...
I loved discovering the world of one of the best fashion designers that the world had ever known, his work is immortal.
While reading this book, I used Youtube in order to see what the author was talking about when it came to MCQueen's shows and creations and there is so much more to see and discover about his work. He was a genius and I could not stop watching his fashion shows, it was so fantastic, captivating, addictive and beautiful. I loved all his special designs. He was a real unique artist.
The author talks about his main influences when it came to his creations such as his sexual life, nature, his Scottish heritage with the Tartan, death "memento mori". Himself and his art knew no limits and that's what made it so alluring.
I love art in all its forms and fashion is no exception, this book was so interesting to read as a kind of fashion biography about Alexander McQueen and his legacy to this world.
August 26, 2021
I don't know if it is the digital copy provided by the publisher but I really felt this whole book was let down by using low quality photographs. Nothing can really be appreciated fully plus the layout didn't suit, at least on my tablet it looked choppy. The timeline I also felt was a little haphazard- it seemed to me that arranging things as they happened may have made more sense than showing pictures from a collection then circling back to the same collection in the text then mentioning the same show later on for another reason.
I understand it is a lot of elements to explain as far as concepts, muses, influences and background but I wasn't a fan of the narrative choices. I am a big fan of AMQ since the 1990s which does date me a bit but having such great books and photography available about his work and life this did fall down a little by comparison.
I understand it is a lot of elements to explain as far as concepts, muses, influences and background but I wasn't a fan of the narrative choices. I am a big fan of AMQ since the 1990s which does date me a bit but having such great books and photography available about his work and life this did fall down a little by comparison.
March 18, 2023
What an amazing overview on McQueen. This book helped me to further understand his philosophies and sensibilities as a designer and a person, his inspirations, outlook on life and the world, and how he changed fashion. Just like McQueen, this book did not shy away from topics deemed uncomfortable by society. Talking openly about BDSM, sex, animals, intimacy, politics, history, etc. etc., I was able to fully dive into this book and McQueen’s designs. This book was easy to understand but also included more complex ideas and quotes, I felt like I learned something new on every page. I think everyone, even if you’re not at all interested in fashion or art, can gain something by reading this book.
September 10, 2021
I really thought this book was great, a perfect coffee table book as well.
Thank you NetGalley for my complimentary copy in return for my honest review.
Thank you NetGalley for my complimentary copy in return for my honest review.
September 24, 2021
This is a really cool book to read! To be quite honest, I didn't really know what to expect from this book but it ended up surprising me. It's a great read for lovers of fashion.
September 5, 2024
Nice summary of fascinating designer's life. Appreciated illustrations too!
November 9, 2021
“The world needs fantasy, not reality. We have enough reality today.”
As someone that has admired Alexander McQueen's work and would always, and I still do, use his work as influence during my years of studying fashion, this book certainly answers questions and brings to light a lot of what McQueen wanted to convey through his work, what we should all think about when designing. I still design in my spare time, I still have my mood boards that are full with his work Alexander brought so much fantasy to the world and stepped so far out of the box that fashion was and encourages us all to do the same, throw some fantasy in there, go against the grain and have fun doing it.
While this book is a little repetitive with quotes, and not as in depth into the subject as I would have loved it to have been this book, What Alexander McQueen Can Teach You About Fashion would not only be a great coffee table book but also a great gift and a wealthy source of research for any aspiring fashion designers.
As someone that has admired Alexander McQueen's work and would always, and I still do, use his work as influence during my years of studying fashion, this book certainly answers questions and brings to light a lot of what McQueen wanted to convey through his work, what we should all think about when designing. I still design in my spare time, I still have my mood boards that are full with his work Alexander brought so much fantasy to the world and stepped so far out of the box that fashion was and encourages us all to do the same, throw some fantasy in there, go against the grain and have fun doing it.
While this book is a little repetitive with quotes, and not as in depth into the subject as I would have loved it to have been this book, What Alexander McQueen Can Teach You About Fashion would not only be a great coffee table book but also a great gift and a wealthy source of research for any aspiring fashion designers.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews