1996: during his time at Central Saint Martins, Alexander McQueen met the one and only Sarah Burton. From that moment on, the two-headed genius team ceaselessly enlarged the possibilities of what fashion could be… Runways were for them the occasion to tell a story, to stage a play. Sometimes poetic, sometimes jarring, the McQueen runways brought clothing into the ranks of contemporary art more than once. Just like the Armadillo shoes… Inspired by nature and all its savage unpredictability, Alexander McQueen highlighted a shoe for mermaids in an obscure and mystical time gone by. The artist saw beauty beyond forms and stitching; death, barbarity, obscurantism, these are the keywords in McQueen’s art. But make no mistake, there’s nothing morbid in play here; Alexander never used references to death in a literal way. He was first and foremost an artist, someone digging down inside himself to find the essence of his own inventions – imagining what didn’t exist yet, dreaming with no strings attached and no limits: this is how Alexander McQueen created. Despite being a master of cuts, he dedicated his life to turning fashion norms upside down. He was a creator; the kind that invented an entirely new vocabulary.
Paris, 2010: fantastical, whimsical women like mermaids straight out of Atlantis perched on marvelous shoes went down the runway. The Armadillo shoes were incontestably the strangest and most amazing thing that had been created in fashion for a long while. These shoes, also called Alien shoes, are fantastically unwearable. And yet, their design comes straight from science: by taking the body into consideration, Alexander McQueen created a shoe that at first glance appears to be anything but practical. But that’s just the first impression. This runway was the first to be broadcast in a live stream and online; the only question was, “Can you walk with them?”
One of the models would later tell: “I couldn’t walk. So I found Lee and I said: ‘I can’t walk in these shoes even though I can walk in all the other ones. This could be a disaster. What if the girls fall down?’ and he said “If they fall down, they fall down.” This anecdote sums up the spirit of Alexander McQueen. But before the runway, he took the time to look each and everyone of his barely 18 year-old models in the eyes to tell them how proud he was, how perfect they were… He gave them so much confidence that they did the unthinkable: going down the runway in vertiginous shoes without any of them tripping or having any sort of mishap.
McQueen understood it: the world needs fantasy and imagination, not reality. Released in 21 copies, owning a pair of Armadillo shoes is a bit like having a Brancusi on your feet. It’s a work of art, nothing more nothing less. This is how democracy works in haute couture: everyone could see them, but no one could have them.
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