Judith Thurman on Alexander McQueen:
He…certainly subjected his models – like the mannequins in the catalogue – to extreme trials. They were caged in glass boxes or padded cells; half smothered or drowned; masked; tethered; tightly laced; straitjacketed; and forced to walk in perilous “armadillo” booties, with ten-inch heels. In “Highland Rape” (1995), the breakthrough collection that earned McQueen, at 26, his notoriety as a bad-boy wonder, bare-breasted dishevelled girls staggered down the runway in gorgeously ravaged lace, sooty tartan, and distressed leather. According to feminist critics, the show eroticized violation. According to McQueen, it commemorated the “genocide” of his Scottish ancestors. “We’re not talking about models’ feelings here,” he said. “We’re talking about mine.”