Jack the Ripper Stalks His Victims
Editor Isabella Blow was fascinated by the runway show and insisted on purchasing the entire collection, later becoming McQueen's friend and muse.
McQueen held on to the narrative and aesthetic tendencies he established in Jack the Ripper throughout his career, earning a reputation for producing narratively-driven collections inspired by macabre aspects of history, art, and his own life.
Items from Jack the Ripper, including a pink frock coat with a thorn print, have appeared in the retrospectives Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty (2011 and 2015) and Isabella Blow: Fashion Galore!
[1][2] McQueen had a lifelong fascination with history, sexuality, violence, and death, which he translated into his designs from the beginning of his nearly twenty-year career to the very end.
[3][4][5] McQueen's work was highly autobiographical: he incorporated elements of his memories, feelings, and family history into his designs and runway shows.
[12][13] He began his career in fashion in 1984 as an apprentice with Savile Row tailors Anderson & Sheppard before briefly joining Gieves & Hawkes as a pattern cutter.
[17][26] Hillson considered him too young for this, but based on the strength of his portfolio – and despite his lack of formal qualifications – accepted McQueen into the eighteen-month masters-level fashion design course.
[32] McQueen told Hillson that he intended to present clothing that was distressed and stained, so the models would look like survivors of a violent attack.
[34][35] McQueen instead presented a narrative which described how his mother's study of genealogy led him to discover that a distant relative of his had owned an inn and rented a room to one of Jack the Ripper's victims, although his professors doubted the story.
The country's fashion industry lacked infrastructure to support newcomers, forcing them to rely on extreme showmanship to draw media attention in the hopes of attracting financial backers.
[42][43] The show notes described Jack the Ripper as a "Day into eveningwear collection inspired by 19th century street walkers".
[53] McQueen translated what he had learned from his various jobs directly into the collection: tailoring from Savile Row, complexity from Tatsuno, fetishwear from Red or Dead, and a decadent aesthetic from Gigli.
[69][70] Jeweller Shaun Leane was invited to the CSM show by chance; he and McQueen later became friends and formed a long-standing artistic collaboration.
[71] London artist Simon Costin loaned McQueen jewellery for the show, including his 1986 piece Memento Mori, made from bird claws, rabbit skulls, and synthetic jet stones.
[45][56][76] Isabella Blow insisted on purchasing the entire collection; McQueen later recalled her as "this nutty lady" who "wouldn't stop badgering me" about it.
In her biography of McQueen, Judith Watt writes that Blow paid £450 for a single jacket and then £5000 in monthly instalments for the entire collection.
[86] Judith Watt found a similarity between Jack the Ripper and the work of British designer John Galliano, whose 1984 degree collection from CSM had drawn on the violence of the French First Republic (1792–1804).
[45] Fashion theorist Christopher Breward wrote that McQueen's decision to reference Jack the Ripper could be seen as unoriginal, given the killer's persistent influence on popular culture, but concludes this would be an oversimplification.
[89] Writer Cassandra Atherton described using several McQueen collections, including Jack the Ripper, in a university-level creative writing course to teach a connection between poetry and fashion, particularly how one can inspire the other.
[56][60][92] McQueen held on to the narrative and aesthetic tendencies he established in Jack the Ripper throughout his career, earning a reputation for producing narratively-driven collections inspired by macabre aspects of history, art, and his own life.
[93][94] Frankel called out "the big shoulder, the dropped waist line, and the exposed midriff" seen in the collection's runway show as an early-career signature silhouette.
The Hunger (Spring/Summer 1996) pointed back at Jack the Ripper through design elements like sharply-pointed collars, smears of blood, trimmings that imitated human flesh, and prints of thorns.
The curators opted not to remove it during the textile restoration process, as they felt the burn "was a portal into exploring how Blow wore her remarkable wardrobe with such apparent disregard".
[105] When early McQueen employee Ruti Danan auctioned her personal archive in 2020, a pattern for one of the coats from Jack the Ripper sold for a reported US$3,025.
[106][107] In 2016, CSM student Tina Gorjanc presented her master's thesis project, Pure Human, which proposed to use McQueen's DNA, sourced from the hair used in Jack the Ripper garments, to grow skin tissue that would be made into leather goods.
Although she applied for a patent for the process which mentions McQueen's name, she never obtained his actual DNA, and all three prototypes she produced were made of pig skin.
[108] McWade describes this project as part of the "ghostly quality" that defines McQueen's posthumous legacy, in which he is often viewed as a haunting presence or is metaphorically resurrected.
