Fashion is one of the most powerful uses of art today and affects everyone every day in one way or another. Whether it’s a sale at the department store or the chic and expensive items created by some of the top designers. Two designers that have always inspired me not just by their clothes and creations, but by their background stories.
L’wren Scott is most notably famous for being the girlfriend of Sir Mick Jagger, lead singer of the Rolling Stones, but was also successful in her own fashion line. Scott had a very difficult childhood growing up as an adopted child in Ogden, Utah and raised strictly Mormon.
She always felt like she didn’t belong in that world and struggling to balance her dreams of living extravagant in New York and accepting her childhood upbringing in a small town. On March 17, 2014, Scott stood on the balcony of her Chelsea apartment in New York City and hung herself after finding herself in debt and feeling a loss of identity.
Alexander McQueen is one of the most famous fashion designers of all time, with his unique and outsider look into his designs. Just like Scott, McQueen had a tough time growing up in London and was bullied constantly because of the fact that he was gay and that he grew up poor. At the age of 16, he started working on men’s suits and soon found himself creating his own unique designs. Although he is renowned as one of the most talented and successful designers today, just like Scott, he chose to take his own life in 2010 in his London apartment.
Both of these amazing and brilliant artists grew up in a difficult environment, pulled those emotions into their work, and at some point decided to take their own lives. The passion of loss and love that they both felt throughout their lives shows in their work and it’s interesting to
see how both of them chose to explore those feeling through clothing.
L’wren Scott used very conservative and simple designs that you can see stem from her childhood. After being raised in a conservative environment with her Mormon family, she displays this mindset in her clothing lines through simple colors and simple designs that many celebrities have used as an opportunity to show off their figure and style on the red carpet.
One of the most prominent colors that she uses is a deep red or dark blue. She uses these colors to emphasize a woman’s sexuality and figure. Many relate her fashion aesthetic to old Hollywood with inspirations coming from actresses like Audrey Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor, and many more that were the example of high society and elegant lifestyles.
Scott designed her clothes for women like Hepburn and Taylor to show off their beauty, wealth, and curves with broad feminine colors and fabrics that gave off a wealthy vibe. Scott made sure that her dresses fit everyone of all sizes so that they could feel beautiful in whatever she made. She made sure to do this because of her own insecurities she had as a child. At the young age of 12 she was already 6 feet tall and growing, which caused her to receive a lot of bullying for her thin figure.
Alexander McQueen expressed himself for a lot of the same reasons that L’wren Scott found her inspiration, through a tough childhood and bullying for his unique style and homosexuality. McQueen blew the fashion world away with his insane concepts and he played with different shapes and colors to evoke different feelings.
The progression of his art is shown during the biggest stages of his life. He represents the youth of England with grey and simple colors to show the bland lifestyle he felt at the same age. His work got more and more strange and unique in the way he formed the clothing to the body and used color to express his anxiety and most importantly his sexuality.
His most famous fashion shows always took the audience on a journey starting from beginning to end. One of his most famous shows featured a model in a form-fitting and gothic red dress that covered her face, while a ring of red fire slowly got bigger and bigger as the model moved in a demonic way, looking out at the audience. McQueen used the color red and black to symbolize the danger and exciting nature of sexuality. His gothic aesthetic through dark colors scared yet enticed anyone lucky enough to attend his amazing shows.
Fashion is not only a major influence on the trends and clothing that we wear today, but L’wren Scott, Alexander McQueen, and so many other amazing designers prove that fashion can also be an amazing, enticing, and strange form of art that everyone can relate o.