The Lost Treasure : Alexander McQueen
words by R.E.Saw
ကြယ္လြန္သြားတဲ့ အဂၤလန္နိုင္မွ Fashion ဒီဇိုင္နာ Alexander McQueen ရဲ႕ documentary က ဒီလမွာ ရံုတင္ၿပီဆိုေတာ့ ဒါကို အထိမ္းအမွတ္
ျပဳတဲ့ အေနနဲ႔ အေစာႀကီး ထြက္ခြာသြားတဲ့ သူ႔ဘဝကို ျပန္ေတြးမိပါတယ္။ သူမရွိေတာ့တာ အခုဆိုရင္ ၈ႏွစ္တာၾကာခဲ့ေပမယ့္ Fashion ေလာကထဲမွာေတာ့ ဒီဆံုးရံႈးမႈကို လက္မခံႏိုင္ၾကေသးပါဘူး။
သူ႔ရဲ႕ ၾကမ္းတမ္းတဲ့ ဘဝကို Fashion ေလာကက လူေတြ ေတာ္ေတာ္မ်ားမ်ား သိၾကပါတယ္။ သူကေတာ့ေအာက္ေျခလူတန္းစား ဘဝကေနၿပီး နာမည္ႀကီး Suit ခ်ဳပ္ဆိုင္ Savile Row မွာ အလုပ္သင္အျဖစ္ ဝင္ခဲ့တာပါ။ အဲဒီ့ အခ်ိန္မွာ အိမ္ေ႐ွ႕မင္းသား Charles ရဲ႕ Suit အတြင္းသား ထဲမွာ
ၾကမ္းတမ္း တဲ့ စာသားေတြကို ထည့္ခ်ဳပ္ခဲ့တယ္ လို႔လည္း ေျပာၾကပါတယ္။ သူ႔ရဲ႕ Fashion show ပြဲေတြက တကယ္ ရာဇဝင္ တြင္ၿပီး လူေတြၾကား အျငင္းပြားစရာေတြ ျဖစ္ေစခဲ့ ပါတယ္။ သူကေတာ့ သူ႔ Show ပြဲေတြဟာ သူ႔ရင္ထဲမွာ ျဖစ္ေပၚ နာက်င္ ေနရတဲ့ ခံစားခ်က္ေတြကို တင္ျပထားတာပါလို႔ ႐ွင္းျပခဲ့ပါတယ္။
McQueen Documentary ႐ိုက္ခဲ့သူ IanBonhote နဲ႔ Peter Ettedgui တို႔က Alexander McQueen ရဲ႕ အႏုပညာပါရမီ ျမင့္တာကို လူအမ်ားက သိၾကေပမယ့္ စီပြားေရး ဥာဏ္ေကာင္း တာကို သိပ္ မသိၾကဘူးလို႔ ေျပာပါတယ္။ Documentary ထဲမွာ သူ႔ရဲ႕ ကိုယ္ပိုင္ Brand အတြက္ ဝင္ေငြရဖို႔ Givenchy မွာ Creative Director အေနနဲ႔ ပါးနပ္စြာ လုပ္ခဲ့တာကိုလည္း ျပသထားပါတယ္။ ၂၀ဝ၀ခုႏွစ္မွာ Givenchy ရဲ႕ ၿပိဳင္ဘက္ Gucci Group နဲ႔အတူ သူ႔ ကိုယ္ပိုင္ brand အတြက္ပူးေပါင္းခဲ့ပါတယ္။ Gucci က ႐ွယ္ယာ ၅၁ရာခိုင္ႏႈန္းပိုင္ေပမယ့္ McQueen ကိုလြတ္လပ္စြာ ဖန္တီးခြင့္ အျပည့္ အဝေပးၿပီး လိုအပ္တဲ့ ေငြေရးေၾကးေရး ေတြျဖည့္ဆည္း ေပးခဲ့ ပါတယ္။
“သူ့စီးပြားေရးဥာဏ္က Zuckerberg ရဲ႕ အဆင့္ ေလာက္ေတာင္ ရွိတယ္။ ဒီကုမၸဏီ ႀကီးေတြကို လံုးဝ လွဲ႔လိုက္ႏိုင္တယ္။ အသက္ ၃၁ႏွစ္ အရြယ္မွာ ရွယ္ယာ၅၁ ရာခိုင္ႏႈန္း ႐ွယ္ယာေရာင္းၿပီး Creative ပိုင္းမွာ အကုန္လုပ္ခြင့္ ရတယ္။ လခလည္း ေကာင္းေကာင္း ရၿပီး Show ပြဲေတြလုပ္ဖို႔ ပိုက္ဆံ အမ်ားႀကီး ရတယ္။ အသက္၁၅ႏွစ္အရြယ္မွာ ေက်ာင္းထြက္ၿပီး အလုပ္ဝင္လုပ္ခဲ့တဲ့ လူတစ္ေယာက္ အေနနဲ႔ဆိုရင္ ေတာ္တယ္လို႔ ေျပာရမယ္။ သူ႔ေၾကာင့္ Gucci အဖြဲ႔ နဲ႔ Givenchy အဖြဲ႔ (LVMH) တို႔ Fashion တိုက္ပြဲေတြ ျဖစ္ခဲ့တာက ႐ုပ္႐ွင္ေတာင္ ႐ိုက္လို႔ရတယ္” လို႔ Bonhote ကေျပာပါတယ္။
Ettedgui ကေတာ့ ဓသူကအရမ္း ေခတ္ေ႐ွ႕ေျပး ေနတယ္။ သူ႔ရဲ႕ Highland Rape Collection ကိုပဲၾကည့္။ အဲဒီ့ အခ်ိန္တုန္းက မိန္းမမုန္းတဲ့ လုပ္ရပ္ေတြလို႔ စြပ္စြဲခံ ခဲ့ရတယ္။ သူ႔ရဲ႕ Theme ေတြက Time’s out တို႔ Me too movement တို႔နဲ႔ တူညီတယ္။ သူရဲ့႕ Voss Collection တုန္းကဆိုရင္လည္း စိတၱဇေဆးရံုပံုစံ setting နဲ့တင္ဆက္ခဲ့ျပီး စိတ္က်န္းမာေရးအေၾကာင္းေျပာခဲ့ပါတယ္။တကယ့္ ေခတ္ေ႐ွ႕ေျပးစစ္စစ္ တစ္ေယာက္ပါ။” လို႔ျဖည့္ဆည္းေျပာခဲ့ပါတယ္။
၂၀၁၀မွာ Alexander McQueen က သူ႔အေမ အသုဘ မတိုင္မီ တစ္ရက္အလိုမွာ ကိုယ့္ကိုယ္ကို အဆံုးစီရင္ ခဲ့တာက Fashion ေလာကအတြက္ ဝမ္းနည္းစရာပါဘဲ။ Alexander McQueen ရဲ႕ေနရာကို ဆက္ခံဖို႔အတြက္ သူ႔ရဲ႕ Brand က Fashion ေလာကမွာ လူမသိတဲ့ ဒီဇိုင္နာ တစ္ေယာက္ကို ေပးအပ္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။ McQueen ရဲ႕ အလုပ္အျပင္က လူေတြက Sarah Burton ဆိုတာ ဘယ္သူမွန္း မသိၾကပါဘူး။ သူက McQueen နဲ႔ အလုပ္အၾကာႀကီး အတူတူ လုပ္ခဲ့တဲ့ တပည့္တစ္ေယာက္ပါ။ ဒီလို Fashion ေလာကရဲ႕ အဖိုးတန္ရတနာ တစ္ပါး ဆံုးရံႈးခဲ့ရေပမယ့္ သူရဲ႕ Brand ကေတာ့ သူ႔ရဲ႕ ရဲဝံ့တဲ့စိတ္ဓာတ္ေတြကို ခံယူၿပီး ေအာင္ျမင္စြာ ေလွ်ာက္လွမ္းေနဆဲပါ။
(English Version)
With the release of the documentary of the late English Fashion Designer Alexander McQueen, we looked back at the genius who was gone too soon. His tragic death is still incredible raw even after 8 years as he has left an incredible void in the fashion world. McQueen’s tragic life was well-known for Fashion people. He was a working class East End boy who trained at the famous suit marker, Savile Row.
Legend has it that he put rather rude words inside the lining of Prince Charles’ Suit when stitching them. His fashion shows were theatrical, ground breaking and controversial. He explained that his fashion shows were autobiographical and he had put his inner dark thoughts and turmoil to the public. The filmmakers of the McQueen’s Documentary told Harper’s Bazaar Magazine that while he was known for his visionary designs, his business acumen was usually overlooked. The documentary showcases how McQueen used his role as Creative Director at Givenchy to finance his own brand. He paired up Gucci- big rival of his Givenchy bosses-in 2000 for a lucrative business deal. Despite Gucci controlling 51 per cent stake, McQueen was ensured that he got full and complete freedom while being supplied with financial backing needed for his brand.
“He was on the level of Zuckerberg,” said Bonhôte. “He played those conglomerates. He sold 51 per cent of his company aged just 31, kept creative control and was given a huge amount of money for his shows, along with a very healthy salary. Not bad for the kid who dropped out of school at 15. That fashion fight between the Gucci Group and LVMH could have been a movie in itself.” “He was so ahead of the time,” explained Ettedgui. “Look at the Highland Rape collection, which was considered misogynistic at the time. You can tease out themes within that which fit in with what’s happening now with Time’s out. He was vocal about mental health too with the Voss collection which was set in a makeshift asylum – he was genuinely a visionary.”
Sadly for Fashion world, McQueen took his life in 2010, a day before his mother’s funeral. To fill the enormous gap he had left, Alexander McQueen (the brand) appointed a virtually unknown designer to take over. No one outside of McQueen knew who Sarah Burton was. However, McQueen was her long-term mentor and she has worked very closely with him. And so while we have lost the great Fashion treasure, his brand retains his spirit and carries fiercely carries on.
