Alexander McQueen: The Sublime and Melancholy
This article considers the concepts of Melancholy and the Performative Sublime in the catwalk presentations of the late designer Lee Alexander McQueen (1969-2010). I will examine No 13 (1998) and The Widows of Culoden (2006) to establish how McQueen explored philosophical concepts deeply associated with the fine arts. In doing so, I will not argue that McQueen’s output was art, but will demonstrate how his engagement with artists and artistic philosophy elevated his creations.
No. 13
On 27th September 1998, buyers, journalists, and photographers crowded into five rows of bleacher-style seating at the disused Gatliff Warehouse in London’s Victoria. Attendees filled the aisles and sat cross-legged at the foot of a low, square-shaped wooden stage. In the center of the space, two robotic arms borrowed from a vehicle manufacturing plant stood inactive. The audience was gathered to see Alexander McQueen’s Spring-Summer ready-to-wear fashion presentation, No. 13. [1] By 1998 McQueen had already secured his reputation as a showman, and in addition to his eponymous brand’s two annual shows he also was designing up to five annual collections for the Parisian label Givenchy. He was a prolific, internationally recognized designer at the height of his fame in a decade renowned for big spectacle fashion shows. No. 13 would be no exception.
After the main catwalk presentation, model and former ballerina Shalom Harlow emerged alone into the presentation space. Wearing a simple white strapless dress that puffed dramatically outwards with layers of synthetic tulle, she settled on a flush, round platform between the two robotic arms. The platform began to rotate and on either side of her, the robotic arms began to slowly move as if waking from sleep. Gradually, they seemed to become aware of the figure rotating between them and began to investigate her. All the while, French composer Camille Saint-Saëns’ The Swan was playing, contrasting with the electronic music that had played through the main presentation. In time, the two robotic arms focused their attention on the model and the energy switched from curiosity to aggression as they began to spray the white dress in paint — one of them emitting a jet of black and the other a jet of acid yellow. [2] Writing in AnOther Magazine, British fashion journalist Susannah Frankel recalled how many at that time considered the finale to either signify the dying Swan in Swan Lake or a symbolic representation of sexual climax. [3] However, McQueen himself stated that he had been inspired by the 1994 retrospective at the Serpentine Gallery of installation artist Rebecca Horn’s work, with emphasis on the piece High Moon (1991). [4] Horn’s work was largely interested in the human body and how it can be extended, refashioned, and altered [5], reflecting the wider themes of McQueen’s SS99 presentation.
“Technology is at once exciting and terrifying, especially when it dares to express humanlike qualities [...] the robotic arms seem to consider the rotating Harlow before lashing her with paint like the outstretched arms of an inspired artist thrashing his brushes across a bare canvas.”
It could be argued that Horn’s work is either being mined to give McQueen’s presentation an artistic aura or else that the appropriation of her work is relevant at some deeper conceptual level. Given McQueen’s training at Central St Martins College of Art and Design (CSM), we know that he and the other MA students of his generation were strongly encouraged to seek design inspiration by looking to art. Former Dean of Fashion at CSM Jane Rapley was keen on students starting to think conceptually and work across the disciplines of fine art and fashion to create work of “cultural significance.” [6] [7] This was in contrast to many other British and international fashion design institutions at that time. Most fashion courses were focused on practical matters such as pattern cutting, dyeing techniques, and drapery. By contrast, CSM was renowned for encouraging its would-be designers to embrace wider conceptual, artistic, and political influences.
McQueen’s engagement with art was part of his design method. As such, No 13. is not simply elevated by association with other art, but is in dialogue with that art and should be regarded as art in its own right. This is most apparent when you consider the wider narrative of McQueen’s presentation, which was described by Andrew Bolton, curator of 2011’s Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty, as “a tension between craft and technology, man and machine.” [8] The collection was inspired by the Victorian Arts and Crafts movement and focused on materiality, the body, and the organic versus the inorganic and the gradual proliferation of machine technology. The Paralympic athlete Aimee Mullins opened the show fitted with hand-carved prosthetic legs, demonstrating the fusion of organic flesh and the man-made object. The body of woman and the commodification and materiality of her as an object is explored by the fusion of woman and object; the question is, where does the product end and the model begin?
In Fashion at the Edge (2003), Caroline Evan explores the commodification of femininity in commerce and art. She notes that, according to Walter Benjamin, women are the embodiment of Charles Baudelaire’s Modernity; they are the consumer, the consumed, the object, and the symbol. [9] Which brings us back to Harlow and the robotic arms. Robotic arms represent technology, automation, the inorganic, and the modern. They are the modern embodiment of the immaterial given form and life by the ingenuity and skill of man; the Golem, the Frankenstein, Galatae of Greek mythology. Technology is at once exciting and terrifying, especially when it dares to express humanlike qualities, as we will examine in greater depth later. [10] The robotic arms were of course programmed in advance but the spectacle presented had an aura of spontaneity, sentience, and creativity; the robotic arms seem to consider the rotating Harlow before lashing her with paint like the outstretched arms of an inspired artist thrashing his brushes across a bare canvas.
“The machine age and capitalist consumption are thrown into focus by McQueen, who presents the finale of No. 13 as an institutional critique of the fashion industry and the wider consumer culture.”
This anthropomorphism of the robotic arms and the fear and awe we experience can be described as a contemporary reimagining of Edmund Burke’s idea of the Sublime. Like the majesty and volume of a mountain, or the power of a crashing wave, the viewer is relocated from their mortal realm to a psychic realm of the known and the unknowable. It is unsettling, even uncanny. In Sigmund Freud’s essay on ‘The Uncanny’ (1919), he states early on that the “uncanny belongs to all that is terrible, to all that arouses dread and creeping horror,” which American art critic Thomas McEvilley later equated directly with Burke’s views on the Sublime. [11] McQueen unsettles his audience and in so doing creates a gateway to the Sublime—but not the Sublime in nature, rather the Sublime in the uncanny power of the machine age. McQueen’s desire to unsettle the audience could also be found in the smallest details of his presentations. As model Emily Gold recalled, “He placed the heel in the middle of the shoe. He told me during my fitting that he placed it there to give the illusion of a woman who could fall at any moment.” [12]
In No.13 both the Sublime and Uncanny are unleashed upon the viewer. Robotic arms defy our understanding of mechanical machines by moving in a life-like manner to the music. Simultaneously, we know that these machines cannot see or sense Harlow rotating between them but somehow do seem to sense her. As they begin to blindly sense her, we the viewer project innocent curiosity, then menace, onto them. We anthropomorphize the robotic arms, granting them intelligence, lucidity, and consciousness that our logic tells us they cannot have. This dual belief that the machines are dumb actors in this dance and also intelligent participants creates anxiety in the audience. In 1970, Japanese robotics Professor Masahiro Mori described the sensations felt in the presence of increasingly lifelike machines as the ‘Uncanny Valley.’ The Uncanny Valley describes a person’s level of ease when a machine emulates human behavior and reaches a certain point of believability. At this point, when a respondent recognizes both the artifice and the life-likeness, they become uneasy with the machine. [13] In the language of the Sublime, we become threatened, yet still enraptured, by what we are seeing. Returning to No.13, this unease is elevated when the robotic arms begin to spray Harlow with paint. The connotations are simultaneously violent, sexual, and artistic, furthering the anthropomorphic qualities of the robotic arms. The Sublime would not exist in a still image of the scene, nor does it exist in the spray-painted dress exhibited on a mannequin on a museum. The Sublime experience was prompted by the performance, the careful choreography of the whole event. If this is to be described accurately as the Sublime, it is the Sublime within the performative element of the presentation; it is the Performative Sublime.
As if bookending his presentation with man’s attempt at mastering all matter, McQueen commenced with our human mastery over wood (and how it empowers and commodifies the flesh) but concludes with a vision of our mechanical creations remaking us. Harlow is remade by the invisible expressions of the commercial robotic arms and, by the end, through her gestures, arched back and open arms, she signals she has succumbed to their irresistible power. The machine age and capitalist consumption are thrown into focus by McQueen, who presents the finale of No. 13 as an institutional critique of the fashion industry and the wider consumer culture. He would go on to produce other powerful institutional critiques, including The Horn of Plenty in 2008, which he described as “a sackable offence,” in reference to his all-out assault on the fashion industry. Models with overdrawn, grotesque red lips parade around a heap of rubbish featuring the detritus of his early shows. At once he succeeded in satirizing the impossible beauty standards of the fashion industry and also the disposable and deathly cycle of fashion production. [14] Highlighting the failures, the ugly, and the hypocrisy of the fashion industry was a theme to which McQueen would return time and time again throughout his short career.
But what of the piece that inspired the finale, Horn’s High Moon? Why did McQueen reference it? This is not easily answered, as McQueen’s inspirations were sometimes thoroughly researched and considered (like Highland Rape (1995), based on the Jacobite uprisings) but could also be fleeting and simple like It’s Only a Game (2004), inspired by the chess scene in the film adaptation of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001). McQueen may have simply been struck by the immediacy of Horn’s installation when he saw it in 1994, or else he may have explored her oeuvre deeply, exploring the notions of isolation, space, and mechanization.
Rebecca Horn, High Moon
Horn has described her sculptures as “Consciousness electrically impassioned,” and is regarded as imbuing her sculptures with elements of the sexual and erotic. [15] High Moon, with its clear plastic tubing and blood-red liquid, feels distinctly biological or medical. The messy splatter of the red paint and the trough intended to catch it call to mind an abattoir or slaughterhouse. McQueen was presumably attracted to the piece because it speaks, however vaguely, of life and death — themes found routinely throughout his work. What isn’t quite so vague is the inclusion of the two Winchester rifles intermittently spraying blood-colored water, sometimes at each other and sometimes not; it is sexual and violent. For a mechanical object, it feels distinctly human-like in how imperfect and inconsistent it is. In 2016 the work was included in an exhibition titled ‘What We Call Love: From Surrealism to Now’ at the Irish Museum of Modern Art. The exhibition title is revealing and suggests we should interpret the actions of the rifles as a reflection of the way human beings love and interact with each other. How at once the sculpture is an illustration of human relationships, with their lust, chaos, pain, and danger. The work aspires to its own idea of the Sublime by walking the fine line between tension and release, or as Professor of Visual and Environmental Studies Giuliana Bruno puts it in the exhibition catalogue, by highlighting “pleasure and pain, danger and sensuality.” [16]
Perhaps McQueen knew all of this. He may have intuited it, or perhaps he didn’t. Whatever the level of understanding he had or level of research he undertook, he took the inspiration, translated it and (factoring in the other key influence, the Arts and Crafts movement), he responded. An engagement with art, culture, and history was central to his work. Art was especially influential and, as soon as he could afford to, he began collecting works by the likes of Francis Bacon, the Chapman Brothers, Sam Taylor-Wood, and Joel Peter Witkin .[17] However, the mode of his art was most akin to performance and even he was acutely aware of this fact. In February 2009, McQueen told Susannah Frankel:
“When I think back, I was quite happy just doing the performance, happy working as a performance artist. I always looked forward to doing the show with no ties. At the beginning, I never even used to sell the collection. I did that on purpose. It was all about making a statement and the communication of that statement was — and still is very important to me.”[18]
Considering No. 13 as a piece of performance art that took inspiration from a sculpture means we have to consider the role of the human component, Shalom Harlow, in greater depth. Harlow sharing the stage with the mechanized robotic arms calls to mind Le Marchand de Cœurs (The Merchant of Hearts) (1927) by Italian sculptor and stage designer Enrico Prampolini. [19] This Futurist performance included live human performers and an array of abstracted mechanical marionettes. The marionettes, unencumbered by human emotions and complexities, were presented as purer and more truthful, a fundamental belief of the Futurists. [20] Assuming a Futurist interpretation, this positions McQueen’s robotic arms as the objective truth in opposition to the contrived emotional deceit of Harlow. This reading denies the robotic arms their fullest anthropological qualities that are key to establishing the unease we feel. In turn, this would prevent us from experiencing the Uncanny Valley. So, a full Futurist reading cannot work with No. 13; however, it does succeed in allowing us to interpret Harlow as a false temptress, in contrast with the more honest and simple machines. Another helpful comparison to consider might be the Anthropométries (c. 1960) by Yves Klein, in which the artist is choreographing the actions from a safe distance. Klein collaborated with female models, or “living brushes” as he referred to them, and directed them to paint their naked bodies and press themselves against canvasses to create painterly impressions. Klein was criticized for reducing his female collaborators to mere tools, quite literally objectifying them. His absolute control over the models and his detachment from the process seemed to mirror and emphasize the power of the patriarchy over women. [21]
With Anthropométries and Le Marchand de Cœurs in mind, it is worth asking how this changes our understanding of the finale of No. 13. Upon first consideration, it is the robotic arms that assume the role of Klein’s “living brushes.” Although imbued with human-like characteristics such as expressiveness and rhythm, they are under the strict control of a human creator. This then reduces the woman, in this case Harlow, to something subjugated to a machine, which in turn is subjugated to man. If she is the unruly temptress implied by Prampolini’s Le Marchand de Cœurs, then where do our sympathies lie? The wider theme of the presentation was, of course, the Victorian Arts and Crafts movement and this finale, on its surface, seems to speak about the defeat of humanity in the face of the awesome and undeniable power of the machine age. It is nihilistic and euphoric at the same time, with Harlow’s fear and trepidation turning to sexual ecstasy and release. But, a more nuanced gendered reading, factoring in the history of women’s inclusion in performance art by men, suggests a narrative of abuse. In contrast with the objective and truthful machines, Harlow is the emotional, manipulative female and these machines, under the command of McQueen, have the power to enforce the patriarchy. In this respect, the Sublime power of the machine and its uncanny ability to emulate human-like qualities is anchored to the human tendency to dominate and oppress.
No. 13 draws on a host of conscious influences that include the Arts and Crafts movement, High Moon, and perhaps less conscious influences such as Anthropométries and Le Marchand de Cœurs. Through his experiences as a tailor on Savile Row, he learned firstly the exacting craft of manipulating materials and later, through his time at Red or Dead and Romeo Gigli, he learned about the conceptual origins of a collection. Designer John McKitterick, formerly of Red or Dead, explained that when speaking with McQueen about the Space Baby (1990) collection, McQueen “didn’t understand this idea of visual research or historic references or sexual references.” [22] After learning all he could about silhouette and garment construction he enrolled on the MA course at Central Saint Martins, where he discovered the process of using art inspiration to fuel fashion design. From here he found design inspiration in not just art but his own personal traumas and family heritage:
“My collections have always been autobiographical, a lot to do with my own sexuality and coming to terms with the person I am—it was like exorcising my ghosts in the collections.”[23]
If the finale of No. 13 is a piece of performance art in dialogue with the Sublime, then what of McQueen’s later work? Could it be argued that the Performative Sublime, or something very like it, can be found in other presentations?
The Widows of Culloden
McQueen’s Autumn Winter 2006 show was presented at the Palais Omnisports de Paris-Bercy, Paris, a modernist arena built in 1984 that rises from the ground like a truncated pyramid made of grass, steel glass, and concrete. [24] Guests ascended a broad staircase and walked through a glass pyramid entrance before taking their seats. The Widows of Culloden (2006) was a welcome return to the grand spectacle McQueen show after two seasons of more conventional presentations. Echoing the set design of No. 13, McQueen placed the audience on four sides of a simple wooden square stage. This time, however, the stage wasn’t populated by two sleeping robotic arms, but yet another large glass pyramid. As the show began, the models emerged to the score of Michael Nyman’s The Piano wearing romantic tweeds, graphic tartans, and gothic taffeta ruffles. Walking purposefully counter-clockwise around the glass structure, the models projected an aura of otherworldly grace and refinement, with each garment sinking the audience deeper into McQueen’s melancholic vision of Scotland after the Battle of Culloden in 1746. His widows existed in stark contrast to his earlier representation of the historic abuses suffered by Scotland at the hands of the English. In Highland Rape, his models staggered down his runway, barely alive, physically brutalized but galvanized, representing the enduring spirit of the Scots in the face of English genocide. With Widows, McQueen presented a dignified, stoic pride and elegant refinement in the face of another devastating loss of life. Walking the rough wooden stage, his models are visions of gothic heroines stalking the candle-lit corridors of an ancient castle. By the end of the presentation, the gothic visions and melancholic overtones would culminate in one of McQueen’s most enduring and iconic finales.
John Henry Pepper, Pepper’s Ghost
As the last model exited the stage, the lights dimmed and the music transitioned to John Williams’ Theme from Schindler’s List (1993). Inside the glass pyramid, a glowing, amorphous white vapor twists and expands before finally coming into focus as a ghostly translucent silhouette, framed by a flowing silk organza dress. Her face is in shadow and the gently glowing silk organza moves about her slowly as if she is suspended in water. As the cellos and violins slow, the silhouette is illuminated and the audience recognizes that the ethereal sprite floating before them is Kate Moss. As the music swells, Moss rotates, tilts her head, slowly and weightlessly moves her limbs. After barely two turns she gradually diminishes until finally her form begins to blur and she is reduced to a grouping of ethereal lights that fly in circles before vanishing like a collapsing star.
McQueen and his team had recreated Pepper’s Ghost, a Victorian theatrical illusion that could create the illusion of translucent ghost-like figures on a stage alongside living actors. In a stage production of Charles Dickens’ The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain (1862), John Henry Pepper placed a large pane of glass between the stage and the audience and illuminated an actor concealed under the stage. The actor’s illuminated form would reflect off the glass making the actor appear to be on stage, as a semi-translucent ghost-like apparition. In the stage production and Dickens’ 1848 novella, The Haunted Man is the story of Redlaw, a desperate man lost in melancholia who makes a deal with an otherworldly apparition to erase the memories that haunt him. The story explores the Victorian interest in the role of memory, illusion, and perception with Dickens’s central character left raging and half-mad once his memories are vanquished. Dickens believed that it is the memories and even the melancholia that civilizes the human race and the suppression of either would be catastrophic.
“For the visual or the performative to evoke the mood of melancholia, it must stimulate positive and negative emotions. The tension between these two states is where the experience of melancholia resides.”
Just as Melancholy is evident in McQueen’s source material, it is wholly present throughout his final presentation. But what are the aesthetics of melancholia, and how do they intersect with the Performative Sublime? Originally, melancholia was one of the four humors: physical liquids present in the body that, out of balance, could lead to physical mental impairments. An excess of melancholia, described as a black bile, would result in bodily sickness, depression, and hallucinations. In the late middle ages, as scientific understanding of the body improved and the idea of the four humors fell out of favor, the meaning of melancholia shifted and became a romantic affliction of the artistic genius. Like the Sublime, Melancholia has both positive and negative elements. Whereas someone encountering the Sublime may feel on the precipice of immense power and energized by the experience, someone in a melancholia enters a state of self-reflection and takes bittersweet pleasure in sad beauty and fading memories. Just as the Sublime permits us to walk the fine line between awe and terror, Melancholy permits us to walk the fine line between sadness and reverie.
In 2003, Emily Brady and Arto Haapala wrote Melancholy as an Aesthetic, arguing that Melancholy can be best described as a fine balance between positive and negative emotions, and that music, through a special calibration of “slow tempo combined with episodes of vivacity” and “brighter and darker notes” can trigger the melancholic mood of light reflection. They give the example of Jane Campion’s The Piano, in which a mute Ada McGrath (played by Holly Hunter) is denied access to her beloved grand piano, her only means of expression. Michael Nyman’s score evokes the feeling of melancholia, where the viewer experiences the sweet sorrow of Ada’s longing. The aesthetic of melancholia is likewise in the fine calibration of the positive and negative. They further write of our encounters with ancient ruins that at once offer a pleasing spectacle but also trigger our recognition of a lost, decayed past. For the visual or the performative to evoke the mood of melancholia, it must stimulate positive and negative emotions. The tension between these two states is where the experience of melancholia resides. [25]
Michael Nyman, The Piano
Returning to the finale of Widows, McQueen presents us with a ghostly spirit or, in simpler terms, a memento mori. The memento mori is present throughout McQueen’s oeuvre and this reminder to die, or reminder of death, was, to him, nothing to be afraid of. The ‘spine’ corset designed by Shaun Leane for McQueen’s Untitled (1998) presentation is a perfect example of this interest. McQueen and Leane are exposing the bones of the body, a spectacle that is only possible in death. Like the memento mori of Widows, we are asked to recognize the beauty and the horror. With the spine corset, it is the exquisite craftsmanship and materiality, whereas with Widows, it is the beauty of the flowing silk organza and the elegance of the slow movements. As Moss slowly turns in her glass cage, Williams’ Schindler’s Theme plays, reinforcing the tensions between beauty and heartache. As an aesthetic emotion, melancholia can seep in through the smallest crack and then dominate all other emotions. McQueen took no chances with his finale and dialed the Melancholy up as high as it could go. This is evident in the music, the dress, the performance, and even the casting of Moss.
At this time, Kate Moss was still reeling from a 2005 tabloid exposé that threatened to end her career. After her casual use of cocaine was made public, major international fashion houses began to sever ties with the model. For her modelling career to be reborn, “cocaine Kate” would have to die. [26] In one sense, the finale of Widows marked her death and the start of her renaissance. McQueen was playing on the fears of his audience — that Moss, a powerful symbol of British fashion, was fading away before our eyes. The sadness was tempered by the hope of rebirth, a fashion afterlife that redeems Moss and all that she symbolizes.
The Sublime and Melancholy are two emotional states that exist in between other, more powerful emotions. Their subtlety and their dual nature create a soft dynamism and a delicate uncertainty in the viewer. The ability to invoke a tension between two certain states is what elevates a good painting to the level of greatness. This also applies to music and is used to great effect to underscore the visual elements at play in popular cinema. So, it’s only logical to presume that such a powerful effect could be used in a live production. Where the live spectacle of performance is combined with evocative music, and both are wrestling to trigger conflicting emotions, we should expect feelings equal to or even greater than those felt in the presence of a great melancholic painting. This paper did not set out to argue that McQueen’s creations were art (we will leave that for you to decide); however, we did set out to argue that he engaged with artists and artistic philosophy to elevate his creations. The Sublime and Melancholy don’t concern themselves with the beautiful but, rather, that which contains the power to move us. McQueen embraced the ugly, the disturbing, the sad, and the overwhelming to move his viewer. He wanted powerful emotions, and I would argue overwhelmingly that his performances achieved that.
Notes
[1] Susannah Frankel, "The Magnificent Impact of Alexander Mcqueen S/S99", Another Magazine, 2016 www.anothermag.com/fashion-beauty/9225/the-magnificent-impact-of-alexander-mcqueen-ss99
[2] Kristen Bateman, "Show To Know: When Alexander Mcqueen's Robots Spray-Painted Shalom Harlow", Allure, 2018 www.allure.com/story/alexander-mcqueen-shalom-harlow-runway-show
[3] Susannah Frankel.
[4] Katherine Gleason, Alexander Mcqueen Evolution (New York: Race Point Publishing, 2012). p. 59.
[5] Lynne Cooke, “Rebecca Horn. New York, Guggenheim Museum.” The Burlington Magazine, vol. 135, no. 1086, 1993, pp. 658–659
[6] Dominic Lutyens, "The Fine Art Of Fashion", The Independent, 2018 www.independent.co.uk/life-style/the-fine-art-of-fashion-1173543.html
[7] "Jane Rapley", Another, 2018 www.anothermag.com/fashion-beauty/1158/jane-rapley
[8] "82nd & Fifth: "Extreme Fashion" By Andrew Bolton", Youtube, 2018 www.youtube.com/watch?v=41DBE2mh5o8
[9] Caroline Evans, Fashion At The Edge (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012). p. 114.
[10] Eduardo Kac, “Foundation and Development of Robotic Art.” Art Journal, vol. 56, no. 3, 1997, p. 60–67.
[11] Simon Morley, The Sublime (London: Whitechapel Gallery, 2010) p. 201
[12] Emily Gold, Researching Alexander McQueen. 2nd April 2018. Personal Interview.
[13] Masahiro Mori, Karl MacDorman and Norri Kageki, "The Uncanny Valley [From The Field]", IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine, 19.2 (2012), pp. 98-100.
[14] Andrew Bolton, pp. 25-27.
[15] Kristine Stiles, Theories And Documents Of Contemporary Art (Berkeley, Calif.: Univ. of California Press, 1996), p. 585.
[16] Giuliana Bruno, "Interior Views: The Anatomy of the Bride Machine", in: Rebecca Horn , exh . Cat. Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin - Prussian Cultural Heritage, Berlin; Kunsthalle Wien et al., Ostfildern 1994, pp. 93-111,
[17] Andrew Bolton, p.25.
[18] Andrew Bolton, p.26.
[19] Jaak Van Schoor and Peter Benoy, Historische avant garde en het theater in het Interbellum (Asp / Vubpress / Upa, 2011) pp. 83-84
[20] Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, "The founding and manifesto of futurism." Le figaro 51.1 (1909).
[21] K. Russell, (2017). Feminism and Yves Klein’s Anthropométries. [online] Untitled (Blog). Available at: www.blogs.walkerart.org/visualarts/2011/01/19/feminism-and-yves-klein%E2%80%99s-anthropometries/
[22] Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui, Mcqueen (Lionsgate, 2018).
[23] Andrew Bolton, p. 16.
[24] Lomholt, I., The Accorhotels Arena In Paris - E-Architect. www.e-architect.co.uk/paris/the-accorhotels-arena-in-paris , 2020.
[25] Emily Bradly and Arto Haapla, “Melancholy as an Aesthetic”, Contemporary Aesthetics (Vol. 1 2003)
[26] The Telegraph. Controversial Fashion Moments. www.telegraph.co.uk/fashion/people/controversial-fashion-moments/kate-moss-cocaine-scandal 2015.
