Hasta La Ideas

“Lee [Alexander McQueen] got inspiration from everything. ‘I was walking to work and I saw this poster,’ or ‘I was watching Friends and Joey was wearing this green shirt.’ He loved the Discovery Channel and nature books. We all used to get National Geographic. It was that disparate. But he had an amazing way of editing. Each day was a different thing. He’d say, ‘I’d like this as a jacquard,’ or ‘I want this damask in a new laminated technique,’ or ‘Let’s get someone in the sewing room to make this into a suit.’ You never said, ‘No, I can do that,’ because either he could do it or you had to learn to do it, and he was always right.”

—Sarah Burton, creative director of Alexander McQueen, in the exhibition catalogue for “Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty,” opening today at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

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