Met Museum honoring McQueen's legacy with exhibit

[November 11, 2010]  NEW YORK (AP) -- The Costume Institute of The Metropolitan Museum of Art will honor the memory and vision of the late designer Alexander McQueen through a retrospective exhibit next year.

The 100-piece exhibit, slated to open May 4, will examine McQueen's extraordinary career from his postgraduate student styles through his tenure at Givenchy and to the collection presented posthumously after he committed suicide in February.

Signature items, including the bumster trouser and the kimono jacket, will be included with items from the McQueen and Givenchy corporate archives and his private collection.

"Alexander McQueen was best known for his astonishing and extravagant runway presentations, which were given dramatic scenarios and narrative structures that suggested avant-garde installation and performance art," curator Andrew Bolton said in a statement. "He was a true romantic in the Byronic sense of the word -- he channeled the sublime."

The celebrity-studded gala connected to the spring fashion exhibit in 2011 will have honorary chairmen Francois-Henri Pinault, chief executive of luxury conglomerate PPR, and his wife Salma Hayek. Colin Firth, Stella McCartney and Vogue editor in chief Anna Wintour are listed as co-chairs.

[Associated Press; By SAMANTHA CRITCHELL]

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