The Final Curtain Akimbo

16 immaculate looks marked the end of an era last week as Alexander McQueen's final show last week in Paris. Though the presentation was only open to a few select editors, AnA's own Dolly managed to sneak in just in time to open the show.

There she is, doing me and Ms. Streisand proud.

Well aware of what a momentous occasion this is in her career, Dolly refused to treat her posing lightly. Lee would have been proud.

A fitting end to one of the most brilliant careers in the history of fashion.

While You Were Sleeping: Sandy B - Style Icon

While drowning in a bottle of wine and watching my Wendy Williams last night, I heard a story that sounded vaguely familiar. About Sandra Bullock being the Oscar nominee most likely to generate sales from her red carpet appearances.
Huh.
Shocked -- not as shocked as the fact that she's probably going to win for The Blind Side of all movies -- I decided to investigate some of her recent looks.

With more than a little skepticism in my heart, I leafed through and was pleasantly surprised.

Sure, there were the horrible missteps:

The Lanvin on the left is just not her. Meanwhile, I prefer that she leave the awful bed hair to Cammy Diaz who always looks awful, but at least we expect it from her. And the Alberta Ferretti is unflattering on that flat chest and wide hips.

Here she is dressed as a beard. At least the make-up is fierce. Sandy's too.

But then we have these gems:

A double dose of McQueen. You can never go wrong there.

This Bottega Veneta number was a controversial choice:

But how does one grow unless one challenges oneself. She took a risk, I enjoyed it for that fact alone.

My favorite look, though, has to be this:

Halston with the perfect accessory: Ryan Reynolds. He goes with everything.

Mourning Glory

Lee Alexander McQueen was laid to rest today and his impossibly glamorous friends payed homage to his impossibly glamorous career by not resting on their funeral laurels.

Superwomen, Kate and Naomi, were suitably fierce...

Meanwhile Daphne Guiness was subtlety itself in this flowing McQueen cape and veil.

What better way to say farewell -- except maybe a black armadillo heel?

A Fitting and Fitted Tribute

Alexander, We Hardly Knew Lee

Or at all, really.

Alexander McQueen always existed to me as a distant, mercurial, fiercely artistic and utterly fabulous idea. And ideal. The label was what fashion should and could be. The man himself was just the genius behind the name. But oh what a genius and oh what a name! His was one of the first collections I learned to anticipate and delivered for me such emotions of which I had never known fashion to be capable.

One of my fondest memories of New York and of fashion, because to me they are inextricably linked, was the Anglomania exhibit at the Met almost four years ago. When it finally opened it, I eagerly went through it three separate times in one day and a fourth before it closed. I had always regarded fashion as art, but to see the detail, the history and moreover, the love, that went into the creations, my feelings were more than vindicated. McQueen was featured heavily, particularly a few dresses from his Spring 2005 collection (you know the one with the chessboard) and I marveled at their construction and their beauty. I left the Met enraptured and got subsequently wasted out of my mind later that night.

His apparent suicide took me completely off guard, as I'm sure it did with most of the world. So much so that I refused to believe it. When I realized it was not a rumor in poor taste, an incredible wave of sadness swept over me. I would never be able to see one of HIS shows, one that he had orchestrated and labored over, in person. Ever. I had never even been able to afford McQueen, let alone know him and now another door was closed to me that could never be opened. He was one of my heroes, one of my idols and if I didn't know him, I knew his work and that had touched me profoundly. He was my Lennon, my Cobain, hell, he was my Versace.

I spent the majority of yesterday looking through his past collections. My sadness was alleviated by the familiarity of shows that had refined my sense of fashion, my sense of art and beauty, as well as performance and spectacle. And I saw shows that I had never before seen. Shalom Harlow being assaulted by mechanical painters -- AMAZING! His is a legacy that will obviously live on, and though I will never be able to see the beauty of his work traipsing ten feet in front of me on an emaciated fifteen year old, the work will always be there. And that alone is a comfort.

Alas, if fashion is life, then life must indeed go on.

R.I.P. Lee Alexander McQueen. We hardly knew ye.

xoxo,

Ms. Ross

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