Fifteen years after the death of Lee McQueen, the brand is struggling to maintain momentum. The founder is a hallowed name in the fashion industry, and one of the few modern designers to whose character and story the wider public feel a connection. But the generation who wore McQueen's original bumsters have aged out of shock-value fashion, and the name has less power over younger consumers.
His intention, he stated, was never to reveal the intergluteal cleft - or crack, as we more colloquially put it - but to experiment with attenuated tailoring. "They were never really about the bum," he said in 1996. "They were a technical experiment in how to elongate the torso." Nevertheless, he did christen them bumsters - he also mooned the press a few times in place of the usual polite designer bow, as if to underline the reference.
You have always made the most beautiful things out of absolute shit. This is Darrah Cloud's favourite line in her new play about Alexander McQueen, dubbed the bad boy or enfant terrible of British fashion. It's what he did, Cloud explains via Zoom from New York. He had the ability to translate trauma into beauty or joy into beauty or an oyster shell into a dress. I mean, what an extraordinary thing.
