Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty

Dress No. 13, Spring/Summer 1999
What began as a plain white shift became a colorful patterned creation when McQueen put model Shalom Harlow on a rotating platform between two robots spraying paint. "It almost became this like aggressive sexual experience in some way," Harlow said. "And I think that this moment really encapsulates, in a way, how Alexander related to creation. Is that all of creation? Is that the act of a human being being created, the sexual act? Is it the act of, you know, the Big Bang, if you will—that violence and that chaos and that surrender that takes place."

• Photos: New York Fashion Week 2011