alexander mcqueen, and covering women's faces

Visiting the Alexander McQueen exhibition at the Met today made me feel strange. The walk through the show was captivating; I lost my friends quickly and whenever we did run into each other in the crowd, nobody said anything. The lighting was mostly dark, and the mannequins were either wooden headless ones (in the beginning) or tall, white humanoids with their heads and faces covered. The head coverings and treatments were all done by the same person, hairstylist and McQueen collaborator Guido Palau.

To me it is a little bit visceral to see a woman's shape with the head and face entirely covered. It is a trope common in fashion because it is so total, so complete, so literally head-to-toe. It is a political statement, too. (Remember this Fever Ray appearance?) And we've seen it all over, from McQueen himself to this high-movement fringe bodysuit designed by my friend Viktor. The face is a locus of all the senses, and to cover the senses isolates the wearer, seals her off. It made me feel so uncomfortable to see the faces and heads of all the mannequins covered in leather, metal, horsehair.

So by the time I emerged from this sensory overload, I had that funny feeling. I know that McQueen was very feminist, into women and women's power; he was obsessed with the feminine shape and embellished it to frightening and powerful extremes (huge hips and huge shoulders with terrifyingly clean lines). I also know that the focus of a fashion exhibition is the clothes, not the bodies that inhabit the clothes. But in this video you can see some of the mannequins with their faces; this repeated image juxtaposed with the ethereally draped, windswept Kate Moss hologram has a weirdly emotional effect on me.