![]() ![]() So it makes some sense if you’re doing that sort of spectacle as Lee was, to go out to a broader public, to go much larger. “It doesn’t take much now in retrospect to link everything together and think, ‘Why are we putting so much effort into a show that goes out for three hundred journalists and buyers who are a bit pissed off to be there, ‘cause it’s an hour late?’ If you look at McQueen shows, you know they were incredible bits of theatre, fashion theatre. Basically, we’d gone on asking him season after season after season to do it and eventually he said yes.” HE WAS COMMITTED TO MAKING HIS SHOWS DEMOCRATIC At first, he was a bit timid but then something clicked inside him and he came back to me that season and said, ‘I really want to do it.’ That was the same season Burberry came to me and said exactly the same thing, but my affiliations were more with McQueen – I had a longstanding history with Lee. ![]() ![]() I’d been speaking to Lee about it, trying to convince him to do one of the shows live. “We’d been doing live streaming on ShowStudio since about 2002 – it was part of why it was started – and we did a live streamed shoot called ‘Transformer’ where Alexander McQueen made a bridegroom into a bride. Here, SHOWstudio founder and legendary fashion photographer Nick Knight recalls his memories of the day. Tragically, it was to be his final show – but it was one that has gone down in history as a moment that not only defined his creative output, but set the benchmark for the future of the industry. It was a testament to fashion’s eagerness not only to adapt itself to a changing world but to be at its forefront, and for McQueen, it proved his status as the world’s most visionary designer. Still, as the stream struggled to broadcast itself, a gap had been crossed between the industry and the world at large – with Suzy Menkes describing the show as “the most dramatic revolution in 21st-century fashion”. In what was arguably the first case of high fashion truly meeting the power of the digital masses, the site buckled under the pressure, and the stream went down. But the unexpected happened: just before showtime, Lady Gaga tweeted out the link to the stream to her millions of followers, revealing that her new single “Bad Romance” was to premiere on the runway. Such a future-facing theme needed to be experienced in every aspect of the show, and McQueen teamed up with Nick Knight’s SHOWstudio to broadcast the runway live over the internet. They shimmered in iridescent scaled creations, wore dresses made from fabric that shimmered like a jellyfish, and appeared like kaleidoscopic visions of butterflies and snakes, stalking the runway in those now-iconic claw-like armadillo shoes. She was followed by the kind of creatures never before seen on a catwalk, their hair twisted back into towering, Predator-like sculptures, some a foot high. The first model emerged in impossibly high platform heels, her dress a digital print that veered between animal and alien, her head covered in a series of ridge-like braids. As he had with his VOSS show of SS01, where guests had been confronted with their own reflections as they gazed upon a box of mirrored glass, McQueen turned the focus on his audience, the cameras scanning the crowd. In a darkened space, the audience watched as snakes slithered over the projected figure of model Raquel Zimmermann, before, out of the shadows, two imposing mechanical cameras sprung to life. The venue was the setting for Alexander McQueen’s SS10 Plato’s Atlantis show, inspired by the idea of a time when humanity, having wreaked havoc on earth, returns to the oceans. On October 6th, 2009, in an indoor arena in Paris’s 12th arrondissement, the future of fashion changed. With social media posts and live streams broadcasting to the masses, the fashion show is no longer the reserve of a rarefied few. But while the internet may have kicked things into overdrive, it’s also been responsible for the opening up of the once-secretive world of fashion, giving outsiders a glimpse into its previously hidden inner workings. ![]() Driven by technology and the need to fill the endless appetites of online audiences, fashion is a constantly turning carousel of campaigns, videos, Snapchats, and live streams, all responding to an unceasing demand for newness. From click-to-buy catwalks to creative directors citing the relentless pace as the reason behind their departures, the industry is spinning with ever-dizzying intensity. If fashion today is defined by one thing, it’s speed. ![]()
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