This Alexander McQueen Tribute By Nick Knight Is Hypnotizing

The exhibition was the one main UK retrospective of the work of the visionary dressmaker Lee Alexander McQueen, extensively celebrated as one of the progressive designers of his era.

The ticket tally beat previous hit exhibitions including the Art Deco exhibition, which sold 359,499 tickets in 2003, and 2013’s David Bowie show, which attracted 311,956 visitors.

“Lee Alexander McQueen, 1969-2010″ includes footage of McQueen’s best designs – including a red feathered dress from his spring 2001 range and a sculptural hound’s tooth outfit from his fall 2009 collection – from before his untimely death in February of that year. Even before it opened, the exhibition’s run was extended by two weeks and a further 50,000 advance tickets were released.

Savage Beauty was originally presented at the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 2010.

It included a 3D holograph of Kate Moss gently twirling in a glass pyramid and the famous dress worn on a model who has two robotic arms fire paint at her. Some 2.3 million people have viewed the exhibition webpages and the specially commissioned interactive web feature “The Museum of Savage Beauty” which provides an insight into the techniques, inspiration and stories behind some objects has been visited 134,000 times.

Savage Beauty has been a balancing act between getting people in, ensuring they can enjoy the exhibition and managing the inevitable queues. The exhibition cost a reported £3m to produce-the most the museum has ever spent on an exhibition.

V&A also lured overseas visitors from places such as Germany, France, Holland, Belgium, Italy and Spain on the basis that they were close enough to Britain to consider a day trip to the McQueen retrospective, which will not be staged again. The exhibition has been open at the V&A since 14 March, operating for more than 1,000 hours for public opening and private events. “This will never be seen again”.